101–110 of 118 posts
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I may have worded it wrong. A large swath of programming jobs do not require a college degree, and in those cases it's illegal to require one. This is why job ads will say, "Desired: College degree or equivalent experience ." They don't describe it as a requirement for a reason.
It's illegal to require one? Citation?
> [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 "p…
http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node...
It's being a leader in what you do, which isn't necessarily the same as leading a group of other people.
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.
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I remember my own interview process with Amazon. I wasn't interviewing for an SDE position but a TPM role. I made it through the gauntlet and it all fell down due to Amazon's grossly unrealistic understanding of what the going rates for experienced PMs are. I mostly had fun with it, but I was also frustrated. The phone screens were the hardest in a purely technical sense, lots of algorithm questions that really didn'…
> couldn't have made small talk if he had a gun to his head To be fair, I think this describes most people.
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Being partly facetious here: I don't know how you actually propose not to hire jerks. The industry is full of jerks. Jerks are doing the interview much of the time. The industry wants people who claim to be the best, and that's hard to do while also selecting for niceness.
Personally, I have a bias against subjects who claim to be the best. Some of the best people I've worked with, would say things like, "Oh, I guess I'm ok at that" and then blow me away. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] in action. Because of that, I generally avoid people to self-evaluate versus others. I think it's ok to ask them to compare on purely internal things (e.g., "What languages are you strongest in"); pe…
'Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know.'.
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Paid more than one standard deviation higher than average for that level of competency, scarcity, and bargaining power.
If you could have hired someone equally competent for less money, why didn't you? If you couldn't find such a person, the person you hired is hardly overpaid.
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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.
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> couldn't have made small talk if he had a gun to his head To be fair, I think this describes most people.
It describes most technical people who are also introverted and spent most of their lives with minimal face-to-face social interaction.
People who are excellent at small talk have to be very charismatic and seem genuinely interested in the conversation even when it's very boring. Very few people are capable of either of these things, and in my experience it's actually management & marketing types who are the worst at both.
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.