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My Interviews with Amazon

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Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#11

Post by ryanlm »

larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

I'll work for them in a heartbeat. Seriously, I want to work somewhere where I'm never bored, and can take part in conversations, etc. It seems like a good place for an ambitious new grad for a few years. If there are any Amazon employees reading this, please reach out!

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#12

Post by hellogoodbyeeee »

I'm a little confused. The recruiter said that $170-$200k was an acceptable range. Then they offered him the position for significantly less than that. I don't understand why he even considered the offer. I would have been really upset that they wasted my time with a bait and switch. Am wrong for feeling that way? Are there other factors to consider?

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#13

Post by patja »

What is the general take on the initial ballpark of 170k - 200k vs. the actual offer of low 6 figures? Is that just how the game is played and to be expected (e.g., never believe anything they say to get you into interviews), or is it something to be affronted by: why did we both waste all of our time on this process?

Or is it likely to be somewhere in the middle...maybe if he blew everyone away in the interviews he would have received an offer for 180k, but he didn't so it was more of a 115k assessment?

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#14

Post by cloudjacker »

ivraatiems wrote: post #5

Good on the author for making the decision based on his and his family's needs and not "but it's a top-tier company, man, you gotta work for the best be the best do the BEST." People often don't consider cost-of-living when making job decisions. I think the way to do it is to equalize the salaries based on cost-of-living across each company you're considering. So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's…

Genuinely curious, do people really not consider these things? I've noticed it is continually easy to wow people with dollar numbers, but I don't know what their thought process is.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#15

Post by ivraatiems »

cloudjacker wrote: post #14
ivraatiems wrote: post #5

Good on the author for making the decision based on his and his family's needs and not "but it's a top-tier company, man, you gotta work for the best be the best do the BEST." People often don't consider cost-of-living when making job decisions. I think the way to do it is to equalize the salaries based on cost-of-living across each company you're considering. So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's…

Genuinely curious, do people really not consider these things? I've noticed it is continually easy to wow people with dollar numbers, but I don't know what their thought process is.

I know I didn't until it was pointed out to me that I should. It's one of those things where it's totally logical but also not something somebody who's never moved from city to city (like me, until that point) would realize.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#16

Post by cloudjacker »

> I was honestly pretty shocked that I had gotten an offer, and told the HR person that I would get back to them within a week after I discussed this with my family.

Upvote if your startup pretended that your offer would expire in 48 hours

#WordGamesFromSandHill

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#17

Post by johnwheeler »

It's wasteful for companies to focus so much on implementing data structures for front-end coding jobs when they're packaged commodities nowadays.

If you're going to be building search engines or whatever, OK. And, time complexity questions should be asked. But chances are, the broad majority will end up doing line of business apps that require three data structures of which you will never write a better version than your stdlib: list, hash, set.

There's only one time in my 20 year career I've ever had to implement my own data structure (Directed Graph), and I basically copied it line by line out of a book and ended up replacing it with Neo4j.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#18

Post by dominotw »

Bartweiss wrote: post #7
larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

Interestingly, I opened the Amazon door as a new dev and found something very different than what this post describes. The first step - before speaking to anyone about my background or interest - was going to be an intensive, one-hour coding session. It looked like it would be more "independent proof of competence" than "friendly programming task to evaluate you". I was expected to be on webcam the entire time to ver…

I applied to amazon last month, they asked me to do interviewstreet coding for 2 hrs. After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. He simply stopped all communications with me.

Reflects their attitude of treating ppl as mere 'resources' , I would work for amazon if I have no self-respect.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#19

Post by perspectivep »

ivraatiems wrote: post #5

Good on the author for making the decision based on his and his family's needs and not "but it's a top-tier company, man, you gotta work for the best be the best do the BEST." People often don't consider cost-of-living when making job decisions. I think the way to do it is to equalize the salaries based on cost-of-living across each company you're considering. So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's…

> So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's the same as making $120k in Seattle or the Bay Area.

Not true at all. I made almost that exact jump when moving from the Midwest to Seattle.

You're forgetting things like raises, bonuses, and 401(k) matching that are a % of your salary. Sign-on bonuses and stock benefits are common out here but rare in the Midwest.

Plus, even if your housing cost doubles, other expenses don't. Food costs, gas, vacations, and everything on Amazon is the same. I actually spend a lot less on transportation because I can take public transit instead of a car. We were able to sell one of our cars too.

Not to mention you can probably keep most of your salary if you decide to move back to the Midwest.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#20

Post by ryanczak »

kevan wrote: post #8
larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

>When I brought this up to one recruiter a few years ago, they basically acknowledged the reputation and their intent to improve. I recently interviewed, one of the interviewers actually brought up the NYT article and said that the retail side is intense, the tech side is more laid back, for whatever that's worth.

haha. when I worked at AWS we considered retail where people went to rest and vest.
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