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Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

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Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#31

Post by Daniel_Newby »

ignoramous wrote: post #20
armon wrote: post #2

I've worked at Amazon, both in the warehouse management division as well as AWS, and the whole "bar raiser" phenomenon is mostly just marketing fluff. There are a handful of engineers who don't mind interviewing (or at least hate it less than most), and they get picked often to be part of the interview circuit. After some number of interviews, you are considered one of the mystical "bar raisers". However, in my exper…

Bar Raisers do go through a round of training every year or so. Regular interviewers themselves are encouraged to attend a program called 'Making Great Hiring Decisions' every once a year or so. AFA engg roles are concerned... because the interview process is distributed, and because Amazon is growing too big too fast, there is a high chance that a lot of 'B' candidates get hired, but the general consensus is that th…

> ... the general consensus is that those 'B' candidates can't survive the break-neck pace of innovation ...

Judging by the stream of Kindle regressions, Amazon could use a bunch of slow, reliable engineers grinding out the innovations of the 80s.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#32

Post by ignoramous »

walshemj wrote: post #14
seivan wrote: post #5

Some HR goon wants to tout their new revolutionary system. The only way they actually look like they get work done.

Any experienced HR person woudl be having nightmares god only knows what discriminatory hiring practices are going on here.

It is not that Bar Raisers get away with just the Veto. Usually the process involves discussion between every one involved in the interview loop, including the manager, BR, other engineers, and the HR. A final "hire" or "no hire" call is made based on "data-points" collected over the course of the interview / interactions had with the candidates by the people present in the interview loop.

As evident, BRs clearly have a final say in the hiring process, but they don't always go about vetoing every candidate just because they can. They usually justify it with valid "data-points" and if one or two others have "data-points" to make a compelling argument against what the BR says, then they usually do so. And BR do listen to others who have contributed to the interview loop... they aren't in the mold of dictators exactly.

Even BRs get evaluated for performance... since the HRs are also involved in the discussion, one can be sure that no HR would tolerate discrimination, let alone 4-8 other engg or managers on the interview loop.

Again, just my take on things, I do not speak on the behalf of my employer.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#33

Post by bane »

This happened to me. I got pretty far into a TPM interview and had a couple interviews with people that were so far out of my area they may as well have been working in a different company.

I still had fun and don't regret not working there, but thought it was odd that somebody who interviewed me for logistics backup plans had anything to say in my hiring process.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#34

Post by codex »

rhizome wrote: post #30
codex wrote: post #7

I imagine using a bar raiser increases the randomness of the interview process at Amazon, as it effectively reduces the number of interviewers down to one in the veto case. Thus, more noise. However, reducing the false negative rate isn't a high priority in most organizations, and Amazon is so desperate for employees that you often see the same person interview multiple times until they get in, so perhaps it doesn't…

Amazon is so desperate for employees that you often see the same person interview multiple times until they get in This doesn't make sense to me. Wouldn't they hire them first time around if they were truly desperate?

Because the interview process is structured to "raise the bar" but is also highly random. As with any tech company, you have to run the gauntlet to get a hire. It's politically easier to have candidates reinterview when they fail rather than get permission from executives to "lower the bar."

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#35

Post by amzbr »

codex wrote: post #29
amzbr wrote: post #18

There are a lot of factual mistakes with this article. (see notes at the end before flaming) Amazon interviewers typically go through a long "shadowing" process where they calibrate their questions and evaluation criteria. You can't just go on to interviewing candidates on your first week. Also, interviwers interview for their own "job families", so e.g. SDEs and SDMs will typically interview technical roles and like…

Rather than use a BR to make sure that a group doesn't compromise on quality, why not just have interviewers interview candidates outside of their group, or interview them for a generalist pool which are assigned to groups later, or randomly? That prevents the BR from inserting subjective bias into the process. Everyone has bias, but the best way to cancel it out is to distribute influence, not concentrate it, nor at…

That's one of the ideas often toyed with in Amazon. It hasn't worked out so well in Amazon because of rapid expansion of the company. As an SDE/SDM you have only so much time to devote to hiring, and with lot of pressure to hire, people like to devote time to hiring for their own team. Hence, the BR becomes the "balancer" to the process.

A BR can not be a "bar raiser" on his own team's interview loops.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#36

Post by Isofarro »

blazespin wrote: post #25
JonFish85 wrote: post #4

"With a word, they can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with the prospective employee's." Ah good, giving some extreme power to someone otherwise completely un-involved in the hiring process. Why should Rachel in accounting get to veto Sara as an engineer? "Sailesh Rachabathuni, who developed software for Kindle devices before leaving Amazon in 2012, says he once vetoed…

Bar raisers have a reputation bringing on super stars at the company. They track everything. I worked for Amazon for awhile.

It depends on which part of the Amazon organisation.

The ones in Amazon Instant Video in London are useless. Particularly in identifying suitable candidates for the AIV Retail Website stack. They've burned out their hiring credibility in London to the point that the three hires to London in 2013 have been from East Europe. Plus churning and burning through university interns. It's been a desperate mess for a good two years now.

I hear positive things about the AWS hiring process.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#37

Post by mingfli »

JonFish85 wrote: post #4

"With a word, they can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with the prospective employee's." Ah good, giving some extreme power to someone otherwise completely un-involved in the hiring process. Why should Rachel in accounting get to veto Sara as an engineer? "Sailesh Rachabathuni, who developed software for Kindle devices before leaving Amazon in 2012, says he once vetoed…

I'm sure there's context missing in that quote. Bar Raisers would not veto someone just because they didn't know specific things about a programming language ... unless they claim to be masters of a certain language.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#39

Post by jeffbarr »

mingfli wrote: post #37
JonFish85 wrote: post #4

"With a word, they can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with the prospective employee's." Ah good, giving some extreme power to someone otherwise completely un-involved in the hiring process. Why should Rachel in accounting get to veto Sara as an engineer? "Sailesh Rachabathuni, who developed software for Kindle devices before leaving Amazon in 2012, says he once vetoed…

I'm sure there's context missing in that quote. Bar Raisers would not veto someone just because they didn't know specific things about a programming language ... unless they claim to be masters of a certain language.

I was about to say the same thing. The only reason that a bar raiser would ask the question would be if the applicant claimed to have the knowledge. If your resume claims a certain number of years of experience with a language, and you are asked how well you know it, you'd better be very confident before you say that you are an expert.

Re: Amazon's Current Employees Raise the Bar for New Hires

#40

Post by johnrob »

It sounds like the amazon hiring process takes a long time, which probably also contributes to their goal: employees who stay long term. Filtering on quality gives you little guarantee as to how long someone will stay (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if those attributes were reversely correlated). But a slow hiring process will definitely reduce the field to those looking for a long term commitment.
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