This may not be legal. See this very famous case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
If tests aren't directly relevant, they may be breaking the law.
Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
141–150 of 441 posts
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an employer is so disorganized that this doesn't become obvious during the first month of working there, they probably have much greater problems than cheating on their idiotic cargo cult coding tests, and fixing the cheating would do absolutely nothing to save the company.
"this doesn't become obvious during the first month of working there" This is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Do you know how difficult it is to fire a person? Do you know how much it costs to hire someone? You've given this person a relocation bonus, possibly put in the work to set up a visa, given the first chunk of a signing bonus....
While still not cheap in total, Amazon has a 2 year clawback in their relo bonus.
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#143Just a few days ago I did a fun and completely ridiculous exercise and compared Amazon to a country, and then wanted to see how it would look like. I ended up with Stalinism. (I'll just paste it here and add some more to it): * Personality cult: Bezos = Stalin * You sing praises to the great leader: the 14 leadership principles. * Officially they have a zero-tolerance policy for harshness. But I bet if anyone complai…
I wouldn't paint Amazon with that kind of brush, but you could make a good case that old-school IBM worked that way. They even had a corporate anthem.
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#144As 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…
An HR person who signs off on this without requiring verification by a vetted software engineer would demonstrate poor judgment indeed.
The whole point of having a responsible person is that the buck stops with them.
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
saying "if you don't like it get an interview elsewhere" is pretty unhelpful, because that's pretty much what he did; refused to continue with the current process. it also doesn't really work in the real world, because nothing would ever get fixed. if there were awful terms in a license agreement and someone found out, it's all well and good to say "go somewhere else", but what if it's in something like, say, windows…
Yeah, I somehow felt that people were going to read that last sentence and forget everything before it. Bad call keeping it in I guess.
well, as i said in another comment as well, if your questions can be answered by a quick web search, then maybe they should think about how you actually work; you web search a LOT. ask questions that filter on something less obvious
there are still in person stages; this is just a filter for them. it's not like it's the only data you get to hire or not hire someone
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#146The 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.
So, what if I run the browser in a VM, and cheat in a second VM? With a secondary input device to switch between which VM is displayed on my screen? Or even an overlay?
They’d be completely fooled.
It’s completely useless, and so needlessly invasive.
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, obviously putting paper over the webcam would result in a FAIL grade for the test, so it's hardly that easy. Maybe you could record yourself staring intently at the screen and play that back to the webcam during the exam.
What happens if you have an old laptop like a Thinkpad T60 that doesn't have a camera?
Or a desktop computer sans camera?
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#148I find this funny, stupid and creepy at the same time.
Creepy - recording a dude's facial reactions, eye movements, mouth movements.. All this for a remote interview screening?
Stupid - I believe quickly Googling for some documentation, or even better solutions can save loads of a developer time in this day and age with StackOverflow. I would instead consider a person that was smart enough to cheat in a code test like this as a great choice. This reminds me so much of schooling system in India where the kid who memorizes essays verbatim scores higher than the kid who actually understood it and reproduced in own words.
Funny - Did they really think no one would object to this and post this on social media or HN?
My current manager who hired me right out of Grad school tells me, "Interview is a two-way process. A candidate need to be tested whether is talented and is a good fit for the team. Equally importantly, the candidate should be sold on the idea of working for us(company)."
On that case, Amazon has even tougher job of convincing a candidate. Not all sane people would want to work for above average pay while putting up with ridiculous work pressure [thinking about that guy who jumped off of Amazon work place].
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-wo...
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#149If I ever decide to stop being a human being and start being a lab rat I know I have plenty of options.
Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience
#150By all means, this is not unique to Amazon - not that it makes it any better. I did a post-grad interview for Epic (epic.com - healthcare software) in a similar fashion, that was at least as draconian. After passing a 15 minute phone screen, they sent me a link to a service that: * Installed their proprietary software on my Mac * Connected me to a real person who verified my DL against who they were expecting * Had m…
Wow. I would not consent to that.
Then again, I run i3wm atop Linux. Even if I wanted to take such a test, it would be... interesting.