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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

#111

Post by agilebyte »

arecommender wrote: post #110
agilebyte wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have gaps in your algo knowledge check out this book ( http://www.algorist.com/ ), it's a dense read but comprehensive. Why be a broad thinker when you can be an everything thinker?

Thanks. Even just the website gives a nice outline of some of the different problems and how to solve them.

Gaps in my algo knowledge are there on purpose since to me they are a solved problem and easily found online.

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

#112

Post by tdenkinger »

AsymetricCom wrote: post #87
bane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

My understanding is when they fly you out, you're pretty much a shoe-in and now they're letting their devs have a shot at trying to interview, while getting a feel how you work with others. i.e. are you sane or will you eat on of our disposable dev's face?

This was not my experience. I did not get an offer after being flown out and spending the day interviewing. I did not do well in the whiteboard coding, but I found the people I interacted with to generally be interested and smart.

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

#113

Post by pnathan »

eropple wrote: post #88
rhizome wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't interview you on your experience, but whether you can can solve network/graph algorithms taken from Knuth exercises. I believe this is a backdoor method to requiring a college degree for positions that do not require one within labor law.

This doesn't make sense to me on first read. I'm unaware of a labor law that requires you to interview people without college degrees. Care to elaborate?

If you design your interviews to focus on knowledge and abilities taught in college, you tend to cut out people without college degrees who don't have the personal grit to go teach themselves those subjects. Since most people don't care for academic learning, this effectively requires a college degree in general.

That said, the big G does hire a number of people without degrees, I hear.

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

#114

Post by saraid216 »

walshemj wrote: post #107
michaelt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite thats the point I was making there is no God given "correct wage" just the market unless saraid216 thinks we should move to a fully communist model where the state says what job you get and how much you get paid?

No, no. The fully communist model is where you have listings of every single worker in existence and choose your hires based on that so that you have an accurate estimate of scarcity.

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

#115

Post by xsmasher »

iyulaev wrote: post #43
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's one thing this article misses, and one thing I totally disagree on. Hiring for prior experience - the author emphasizes this, and based on my experience this should be de-weighted. The issue is that as soon as you start to define an area of experience, your hiring pool shrinks dramatically. Consequently you are more likely to pick a less powerful engineer. Another, bigger downside here is that companies are t…

Raw smarts is one thing, and experience with a particular platform/problem space is another, and both are valuable on the job, and both should be weighted in hiring.

Sometimes it's appropriate to hire a brilliant person who's unfamiliar with your problem space, but not often. Sometimes you need an expert who already knows what they're doing and doesn't need to ramp up on the company's dime.

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

#116

Post by AsymetricCom »

crucifiction wrote: post #94
AsymetricCom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is when they fly you out, you're pretty much a shoe-in and now they're letting their devs have a shot at trying to interview, while getting a feel how you work with others. i.e. are you sane or will you eat on of our disposable dev's face?

Its generally the opposite, the phone interviews are the sanity check.

"sanity check" in this context is a bit different than in software.

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

#117

Post by gavinpc »

James_Duval wrote: post #109
laichzeit0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It describes most technical people who are also introverted and spent most of their lives with minimal face-to-face social interaction.

Most people in general. A lot of people think they're much better at small talk than they are, and blame the other guy when an interaction doesn't go as smoothly as they hoped, or there's an awkward silence. 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 ex…

OT, but I just meant that one would be preoccupied with the gun to one's head.

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

#118

Post by L_Rahman »

learc83 wrote: post #86
afandian wrote: post #4

"No matter how many times they say it, most still make decisions based on gut feel, basic credentials, GPAs, ivy league educations, flashy company names - even SAT scores. Roseman objects." What's a Roseman object? Is it some psychological classification of the means by which we just things? Of course, I mis-read it. Shame, that could have been an interesting topic.

>SAT scores Wait...what? Is this a thing? Are people actually putting this on their resumes? I had the highest SAT in my county (still just a 1360/1600), but I don't go around putting 2002 "STAR student"[1] on my resume. [1]Local award for highest SAT score. I think each school in Georgia awards this.

Most undergrads right out of college will have a standardized test score on their resume. Usually it's the SAT or the GRE.
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