My Interviews with Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#111

Post by aianus » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

plandis wrote: post #88

aianus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather be homeless and broke in a sunny third world country than ever visit Seattle again. So what?

I'm curious why is Seattle so bad you'd give up the relative safety to live in a third world country?

I did an internship there and didn't see catch a glimpse of the sun for three straight months. I've never been so depressed in my life.

That's the main reason; it also smells like pee, there are aggressive hobos everywhere, the public transit is useless, it rains every day, and everything closes at 6pm.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#112

Post by Bartweiss » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

throwaway52584 wrote: post #96

Bartweiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Although being asked to code on webcam is obnoxious, it's probably also a symptom of cultures where people exploit every trick in the book to game university admissions, exams, job interviews, etc.

Absolutely. That's part of why I stressed that it didn't seem to be standard Amazon policy - it looked like some hiring agent had decided "No fraud on my watch!" and pushed through an aggressive policy to make it happen.

My complaint was that it seemed both ineffective (imagine candidates with the Big-O cheatsheet taped above their monitor) and obnoxious (I wasn't even going to talk to an employee until I jumped through a bunch of hoops). If you're going to be demanding (and uncommonly so), then security theater with no engagement with the candidate is a bad way to go.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#113

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

plandis wrote: post #79

gdulli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find anecdotes about how working at any company is a bad experience and others about how it's a good experience. With Amazon, however, there's something qualitatively different. The anecdotes and evidence of it being a terrible place to work far outweigh the positive. Its bad reputation is confirmed by things you read about their policies, quotes from Jeff Bezos, etc. Poor treatment of employees is consistent…

I've worked at Amazon for around 4 years now. I work 9-5 most days. The days I don't I'll work 10-6! I still work there because I get to work on interesting distributed systems. I've never really had any of the bad experiences that others have seem to had. I reasonably get along with my manager, his manager, and the VP of my organization. They are not the assholes that every complaint seems to mention. Even in Seattl…

$600k real estate puts you well above "upper middle class" nationally. Maybe not in a limited geographic area, and certainly not SF/NY/DC, but that's well over 3x the median home value for the entire country.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#114

Post by Buge » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

magic_beans wrote: post #100

george_ciobanu wrote: post #59

I thought one is not supposed to share actual technical interview questions?

Only if one has accepted the offer, which, spoiler alert , this guy did not.

I'm pretty sure I had to sign NDAs regarding coding questions before any interviews happened (not Amazon, a different company).

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#115

Post by hibikir » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

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…

The difference in practice is nowhere near that though: I made those 60K when I graduated, in 2000! Salaries in the midwest for experienced engineers are far better than 80K: A few years ago, I made 120K as a full time employee in St Louis. A darned good house is 200K. Consulting gigs pay more: Last year I billed 220K, just a single customer.

In comparison, I know senior engineers in the bay area making 150K at companies you'd recognize, with stock packages that don't mean squat without liquidity events. And a SF house equivalent to the 200K St Louis house is 2M. They aren't getting a good deal.

It seems to me that the problem with your argument here is not that you aren't right, but that you are providing numbers so far away from reality that people can pick them apart and claim that the midwest is a bad deal. A 60K salary upgrade would make San Francisco appealing. But in practice, the range is far smaller, and that's without taking into account companies that hire remote.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#116

Post by wyldfire » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #72

brianwawok wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that is great, robots hiring staff.

Not defending it, but when you and your fellow engineers are spending a majority of the time interviewing instead of programming, such a system is certainly tempting.

Maybe that problem only impacts productivity significantly when attrition is high (suggesting that the problem might be with talent retention and not engineering effort spent on interviewing)?

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#117

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#118

Post by Bartweiss » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

cydonian_monk wrote: post #51

Bartweiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 danced with Amazon once (casually, I have zero desire to move to a Pacific Coast state), and had a similar "first step" experience, just with no webcam. Had they asked me to code on a webcam I too would've refused. At this point I don't recall if it was CollabEdit, InterviewStreet, or something similar (it's been some time and I deleted the emails), but I remember that if I tabbed out of the interview page at any t…

I didn't look too carefully. There were other options open and I quickly decided to pass on that much hoop-jumping for something not high on my list. The general implication was that it would just be to ensure you didn't cheat (so there'd be no value once your candidacy ended), but I don't remember any actual contract, and I assume that anything not stated to expire is kept forever.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#119

Post by freyir » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

ehotinger wrote: post #21

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…

$120k in Seattle is not equivalent to $120k in the Bay Area...

No yet, but the cost of living in the Bay Area has leveled off somewhat (or even dipped slightly), while it continues to rise in Seattle.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#120

Post by fredliu » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

His package (base salary + bonus + average vested stock each year) seems to be standard with regard to the position he's applying. Still, with that package, if Seattle's cost of living is the show stopper (not cheap by any means), then I guess never bother trying at Google/Facebook/equivalents in the Bay Area...