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Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

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Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#101

Post by will_hughes »

andrewguenther wrote: post #83
rl3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention: Any website you visit What a fantastic way of driving away virtually every candidate that's even remotely high-caliber.

Keep in mind, this is during the test. What are you going to do, take a break and load up some porn? These conditions only apply for the 24 minutes in which you take the test. How is this different than if a person were watching you during an interview?

Keep in mind that if you have extensions installed, many of those extensions will make callbacks to other services. This will track the use of those, too.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#102

Post by hermitdev »

SilasX wrote: post #74
hermitdev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "it's not much different from a math instructor having you clear the memory on your graphing calculator before an exam" This sort of behavior by teachers is exactly what got me to write my first serious z80 assembly program to mimic all of the menus on the TI-83 circa 1996. Teachers had already caught on to the fact that there were programs that would display the "Mem Cleared" message on the calculators, so mandate…

I can assure you that, for the vast majority of the population, it has the intended effect of keeping the calculator from storing digital cheat sheets. I admire your tenacity too.

I do not disagree with your assessment, but it was a great motivator for me to learn z80 assembly. I just wish I knew how to use the stack. Modern me shudders at how horrible that code was - it worked, but god damn was it ugly. I still have the Z80 assembly reference manual on my bookshelf. It just hasn't been opened in close to 20 years. I've never had a physical x86(_64) reference manual, but I usually keep PDFs handy - just in case while debugging. I think I still have Atmel AVR & Motorola 68k docs physically somewhere...

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#103

Post by jasoncchild »

kafkaesq wrote: post #52
drubio wrote: post #43

As much as I would like to bash Amazon for their draconian and insane interview loops -- which I've been put through once. The post clearly states these clauses were part of an exam taken on https://proctorio.com/ for the Amazon interview. So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses. I would happily bash Amazon interview loops all day long, but in this particular case, I would also need to criticize an…

So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses. By all accounts, Amazon is a pretty tightly-run organization. And given the scale of the hiring they do, you be pretty sure that in fact, yes they are exactly aware of what proctorio is doing -- and chose them for precisely that reason.

Both of these points are conjecture

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#104

Post by Skuzzzy »

downandout wrote: post #71

I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone & webcam. I realize this doesn't address the principle of the issue, but it does address the practical issue of applying for the job without giving into much of the creepiness here. That said, with employees literally throwing themselves off of buildings to get away from Amazon [1], I'm not sure how much nonsense I'd put up with to get a job there…

>I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone & webcam

It's required that you take the test with these enabled.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#105

Post by djsumdog »

hermitdev wrote: post #49
bsg75 wrote: post #27

> You will not be able to open any tabs or windows If I had to code purely from memory, without the benefit of language or library docs, I would not be able to write anything of use. Personally when hiring, I'm not interested in a candidate's memory recall, but the ability to use resources when faced with a new challenge.

Indeed. When I was interviewing candidates, one of my goals was to get the candidate to respond along the lines of "I don't know.", to which I would follow up with, how would you find out? No engineer knows everything. I also don't want a candidate that is going to try and bullshit me. Admit to me you don't know, but then tell me how you would rectify that. Google SO, MSDN, man pages, whatever, I don't care so long a…

It's like that old CS professor joke, "I know everything, just not all at once. It's a virtual memory problem."

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#106

Post by draw_down »

Spooky23 wrote: post #42

Have you ever done lots of remote interviews in a big company? The scamming is unbelievable. I've personally seen outright fraud... the guy in the video was a redhead with freckles, his name was an ethnic Vietnamese. Somehow they brought him in for an in-person interview, a Vietnamese dude shows up. - Clueless. Guy was literally reading a manual. - One guy offered me a bribe. - one guy asked if his status as an illeg…

I can believe a company has their reasons for doing this. I also think they can kiss my ass if they expect me to agree to this.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#107

Post by dgritsko »

kafkaesq wrote: post #18

The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam: Your microphone Your webcam Your physical location Your head movements Your eye movements Your mouth movements Creepy as all get-out. By all means, lets have more leaks like this.

It's worth noting that these are Proctorio's (https://proctorio.com/) restrictions; they're just a third-party company that Amazon is using to administer the test. I've used a couple of similar systems (e.g. ProctorU - https://www.proctoru.com/, where a human will actually watch you via webcam(!), or ProctorTrack - http://www.proctortrack.com/), and "monitoring" of this sort is pretty much par for the course (no pun intended).

These companies are typically used in settings where some level of rigor is expected (e.g. administering an exam for an accredited university). In that context, I think these restrictions make sense in order to ensure some degree of validity in the test results (especially since you're only expected to run the software for the duration of the test).

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#108

Post by notyourwork »

zeppelin101 wrote: post #4

Wait, I see nothing wrong with any of this. Obviously Amazon is trying to curb cheating on remote coding/compatibility tests. They don't actually care to collect any info about you beyond what you do during the test. They don't care which websites you visit before or after the test. Or how you use your clipboard - after the test. But during the test, it's not so unreasonable. People do cheat, especially if they can g…

Get out of here with the reasonable analysis.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#109

Post by andrewguenther »

imsofuture wrote: post #35
zeppelin101 wrote: post #4

Wait, I see nothing wrong with any of this. Obviously Amazon is trying to curb cheating on remote coding/compatibility tests. They don't actually care to collect any info about you beyond what you do during the test. They don't care which websites you visit before or after the test. Or how you use your clipboard - after the test. But during the test, it's not so unreasonable. People do cheat, especially if they can g…

The premise that cheating is a major risk or issue in job interviews is .... nutty.

It is actually (unfortunately) incredibly common.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#110

Post by superuser2 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #18

The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam: Your microphone Your webcam Your physical location Your head movements Your eye movements Your mouth movements Creepy as all get-out. By all means, lets have more leaks like this.

All of this information is available to an interviewer in person.
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