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The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

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Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#31

Post by agilebyte »

evanjacobs wrote: post #21

In my 10 years at Amazon, I interviewed lots of engineers and I think Amazon's interview process is fatally flawed. Of course Amazon is still able to hire good candidates but I believe it is in spite of this process and not because of it. Here were the most frustrating aspects of interviewing for me: 1. Bar raisers don't ask questions that they themselves don't know the answer to. I believe this is what Roseman is re…

Re 2.: I have taken some code challenges in the past and I find the Amazon open-ended questions the best. Sure, some people can (and possibly like to?) memorize different data structures and algos, but broad thinking suits me best and companies like Google and Facebook don't seem to be doing it enough.

Basing it on the interview questions posted online.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#32

Post by jpalioto »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #30
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Amazon's interview process is fatally flawed. The topic of interviewing comes up often here, and this sentiment is overwhelmingly the top sentiment for every single company's interview process. Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., have all been pilloried here about the interview process. I suspect the real problem is the implication that this is even a solvable problem.

I agree. I don't think it's a solvable problem. It's like people who champion the removal of SAT/ACT from college admissions. Okay, so statistics demonstrate the SAT only correlates with the first year of college...great, what do you have to replace it with? We work with what we have, and take the benefits it gives us. Systems can always be gamed, and that's an unfortunate (fortunate for some, I guess) reality.

It's a maximization problem. The goal is to have the best possible ROC curve for your hiring process. Maximize true positives while minimizing false positives.

My personal threshold attempts to minimize false positives even to the extent that I will pass on people that would probably have done a good job. I tune it this way because I think that bad hires are one of the worst things that can happen to a team. But, each individual has to calibrate this for themselves.

I'm not looking to solve the problem, I'm looking to make the best possible decision based on the information I have available.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#33

Post by pnathan »

evanjacobs wrote: post #21

In my 10 years at Amazon, I interviewed lots of engineers and I think Amazon's interview process is fatally flawed. Of course Amazon is still able to hire good candidates but I believe it is in spite of this process and not because of it. Here were the most frustrating aspects of interviewing for me: 1. Bar raisers don't ask questions that they themselves don't know the answer to. I believe this is what Roseman is re…

> There is no room in the Amazon interview process to "try out" a candidate for a week or two in a real world setting to see how they perform.

When looking for work, I have no room for companies that want to do this: I already have a job and commitments. Also, I might not even be in the same state as the company I am talking to.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#34

Post by hyperbovine »

freyr wrote: post #22

"The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP" And more recently, a former Zynga VP. Surprising that such an expert at evaluating people chose to work for Zynga, of all places.

Money is a hell of a drug.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#35

Post by Matt_Mickiewicz »

awakeasleep wrote: post #6

The one element no one ever accounts for is the interviewers. You're never going to have a perfect technical interview because you're an imperfect human. You're incapable of judging whether someone is a perfect cultural fit, and someone who doesn't fit the culture might help the company more than someone who does. That isn't even getting into the the conflict between whats good for the company and whats good for you.

When Google pushed out their interview-results data this year, one of the big findings was that there is NO SUCH THING as a good interviewer.

To quote the NY Times interview with Laszlo Black of Google - "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert."

That being said, there are a lot of very disorganized interviewers out there, especially among seed stage companies. I've been amazed about how many people grumble about the "talent shortage", yet regularly miss interviews with "hot" candidates because of meetings, forget them altogether, or just lack a sense of urgency & speed when it comes to running an effective hiring process.

A large part of having a hiring culture is about decisiveness. Loosing a fantastic Engineer because you spent 4 weeks making up your mind, or you didn't want to pay an extra $10K/year is just silly when it means that you won't hit your product roadmap goals.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#36

Post by jotux »

pnathan wrote: post #33
evanjacobs wrote: post #21

In my 10 years at Amazon, I interviewed lots of engineers and I think Amazon's interview process is fatally flawed. Of course Amazon is still able to hire good candidates but I believe it is in spite of this process and not because of it. Here were the most frustrating aspects of interviewing for me: 1. Bar raisers don't ask questions that they themselves don't know the answer to. I believe this is what Roseman is re…

> There is no room in the Amazon interview process to "try out" a candidate for a week or two in a real world setting to see how they perform. When looking for work, I have no room for companies that want to do this: I already have a job and commitments. Also, I might not even be in the same state as the company I am talking to.

How is trying out a practical for anything other than unemployed new grads? I see this constantly suggested but I don't know a single person who would even consider quitting or taking vacation time to go work for a prospective company.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#37

Post by kenster07 »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #29
kenster07 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re Wall Street: It's unfortunate that some of our brightest are tempted into playing multi-million dollar poker, rather than focusing their energy on producing any significant long-term value. I believe software engineering wages will continue to rise over time, and will eventually reflect the true value the industry produces.

I have no shame in admitting that I would rather use high-level mathematics and programming to play "multi-million dollar poker" on Wall Street than join half of the startups and big tech companies and have a boring job churning out insignificant apps at a desk. In fact, the way you phrased it, being a quant sounds really fun :) you don't want to play multi-million dollar poker? I mean, sure, meaning and existentiali…

That's the fundamental problem. The function of the finance system in a healthy economy is to ensure efficient allocation of capital. Playing poker has a neutral to negative effect on the system.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#38

Post by RogerL »

Matt_Mickiewicz wrote: post #35
awakeasleep wrote: post #6

The one element no one ever accounts for is the interviewers. You're never going to have a perfect technical interview because you're an imperfect human. You're incapable of judging whether someone is a perfect cultural fit, and someone who doesn't fit the culture might help the company more than someone who does. That isn't even getting into the the conflict between whats good for the company and whats good for you.

When Google pushed out their interview-results data this year, one of the big findings was that there is NO SUCH THING as a good interviewer. To quote the NY Times interview with Laszlo Black of Google - "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candida…

I think that is perhaps telling. Google doesn't interview you on your experience, but whether you can can solve network/graph algorithms taken from Knuth exercises. I would expect a random mess from that. It sounds like this person actually drilled down into what the candidate actually knew.

I think it is far more useful to ask somebody about what they actually did. Are they excited and engaged by it, did they come up with novel thoughts about it, do they understand the CS literature in relation to it, and so on. Program a hash table on the whiteboard when you have been just fine using the built in one in your favorite library or language? I'm not sure what that predicts about my on job performance. If I had to do that I'd reread the literature and then whip one up, easy peasy. I can state that with confidence because I read the literature on other topics and do that every day. Have me explain the new numerical filtering technique I just implemented and I'll give you good interview. Ask me to implement a smart pointer? Not so much.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#39

Post by umsm »

hyperbovine wrote: post #34
freyr wrote: post #22

"The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP" And more recently, a former Zynga VP. Surprising that such an expert at evaluating people chose to work for Zynga, of all places.

Money is a hell of a drug.

That's how you get the best talent. There is no secret question you can ask to find great talent.

I've interviewed persons that did very very well during the interview process, but failed miserably on a day-to-day basis.

Re: The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

#40

Post by hobb0001 »

> [he] believes every phase of the process needs to be meticulously designed to drill deep into skill sets, ... and leadership potential

Ugh. I hate this. For a technical interview, why is leadership potential a priority? Speaking for myself, I've done the leadership thing and don't care for it. People tell me I'm good at it, but I still prefer dealing with algorithms over humans, and I actively decline offers for "promotion". (I already have my very own batch of little humans of to deal with, thank you very much.)

Unfortunately, no matter where you go, there's always the deep-seated cultural mindset that manager > worker. In terms of the corporate efficiency calculation of effectiveness/hour, I suppose that's still true. But for me, personally, that's not the equation that I care to maximize.

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