Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
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Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
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Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#2[dead]
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#3This is hard to take seriously from Amazon.
I realize it's a big org with many diverse teams. It's just that the company seems to be rotting from the head down. And it's hard to overlook the stories of how some employees get so exploited.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#4Mastery of the subject matter is never overrated when the goal is ambitious and the success criteria is unforgiving.
Bloated monopolies with compliant regulators can afford this sort of thing. FAANG was hungry once, and we got along because we respected each other’s abilities and were knife fighting our competitors.
Focus on an attitude of humility around what one still has to learn, what one always still has to learn. Focus on an attitude that others may always have something to teach.
Focus on an attitude that mastery is never attained, only arbitrarily pursued.
The interpersonal dynamics of mutual respect fall out.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#5This is hard to take seriously from Amazon. I realize it's a big org with many diverse teams. It's just that the company seems to be rotting from the head down. And it's hard to overlook the stories of how some employees get so exploited.
I fear that many people high up in comfortable positions - ie L6+ - have drank the kool-aid with respect to this corporation, and why wouldn't they they get paid rather well, it's the L4s and L5s that get screwed over or have a carrot of promises dangling in-front of them.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#6It is definitely an attitude thing. However, you shouldn’t be focusing on improving your soft skills so much as it’s improving your mindset, and then the soft skills will just flow like hot butter.
This is what I tell my friends:
Don’t see interviews as an adversarial thing. At the end of the day, your mindset should be:
* The company is looking for someone to do a specific job
* You have a unique set of skills and you are very good at doing certain things
* You are looking for certain things from a job
Interviewing is finding out if a relationship will work out — like a first date.
When I look at job qualifications, I am trying to figure out what actual job they need done and whether my experience and skills would be good for that. I honestly don’t even care that they are looking for X years of Y. They’re not looking for a warm bag of bones with a laundry list of skills: they’re looking for someone to do a specific job.
When an interviewer asks me questions, it’s because they like to do things a certain way and they just want to check if I do things similarly. They’re really asking about scenarios they’ve personally dealt with and trying to figure out my approach. I just tell them a story from the closest scenario that I’ve dealt with.
And when it’s my turn to ask questions, it’s the reverse. I know that I like to do things a certain way too and I want to find out if they do things like me. I just have question after question on the spot to build out a mental image of how they work, from day to day to overall company culture.
If you come in with a mindset of “be honest” without making yourself look inexperienced, you don’t have to be worrying about bullshitting, which they will pick up on anyway.
While there is an imbalance of power for sure, seeing interviews as a “fitting” process is much more advantageous and makes interviewing a breeze. It’s a first date. Don’t make it weird.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#7Interviewers need to be careful to remain unbiased and objective about their criteria. Saying you evaluate on attitude and personality is pretty similar to letting personal biases and stereotypes drive the process.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#8This is hard to take seriously from Amazon. I realize it's a big org with many diverse teams. It's just that the company seems to be rotting from the head down. And it's hard to overlook the stories of how some employees get so exploited.
To be fair, in a comment on the original article, the author does confirm that this was a career fair type of event, where I'd assume the "hiring bar" is usually lower, and I'd assume there are certain target numbers to hit.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#9The title of the article, is, of course, just click-bait. And the author of the story could only make Chen (the subject of the story) an offer because they had others on staff who could be tasked to train him and/or cover the gaps in his technical skills.
I guess the main point was that enthusiasm, self-awareness, openness, curiosity, leadership, etc. are of important. Of course they are, does anyone disagree with that? But I think an important point lost in how the message is presented is that these things are not in opposition to technical skills. You can have both.
Re: Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude
#10> He demonstrated a knowledge of Amazon’s business and history and explained how he would put in any energy necessary to be a successful part of the company.
I really can't do that if I was him, because it means I have to lie.
Latest news I read about amazon is that they were banned from lobbying in the EU parlement for refusing to answer to allegations regarding their labor practices.