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Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

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Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#211
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

Actually, among the MAGMA companies I've found the _least_ bias for leetcode-memorization at Amazon. My interview with Meta was exactly as you described (a CS riddle taken from a textbook, to be solved without running the code or receiving hints). But in my interview with Amazon, each coding interview also included a couple leadership questions. If you want you can look up the exact questions that they'll give you to…

We have a question bank that we are required to ask from that can be found online.

Coding questions and system design challenges are individual to the interviewer. Some are good, some are bad, some are leet code, some are reasonable, it's kinda a crapshot. I saw a bar raiser (a bar raiser!) asking path finding algorithms as his coding challenge which is nuts to me. All that signals is if you've worked with path finding algorithms before, or remember your college class that taught A*

But I'll be honest, our interview process is public and online and hasn't changed in a long long time. We select mostly for people who have the spare time and dedication to learn our interview process.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you, y'know just get a new job offer and not tell them about it until your 60 days have elapsed?

Similarly could you tell your new employer "Hey don't officially hire me for another 3 more weeks - I'll still work for you now but Amazon will pay my salary - deal?"

I'm not sure why anyone would play this weird game of defrauding Amazon and working for a company for free when they could instead just do: "Hey I need some time, can my start date be X days from now", where X will probably be 30 or so days (given it takes time to apply to new jobs, go through the various stages of interview, etc).

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#213
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context: I recently left Amazon Some orgs within the company are fairly lean, some are hugely bloated. Amazon isn't homogeneous. For example, Alexa is very over-resourced and it's common to hear about 4+ teams working on slight variations of the same project. Lots of redundancy there. I believe Alexa as an org is losing $5b+ per year. Contrast that to all the criticism Facebook is receiving for their investment into…

I have an Echo and a Homepod and I rarely use the Echo anymore because of their "by the way, did you know..." responses. They know there are a lot of users who want to disable that but unfortunately their goals aren't aligned with their users' goals.

Everything I use Alexa for:

"Alexa, set a timer for x mins / wake me up at x time."

"Alexa, what's the weather today?"

"Alexa, can dogs eat ?"

"Alexa, play "

Mostly just the first two. I don't care about anything else they try to push on me.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#214
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

> They still do leetcode screening don’t they? I mean that's a big part of what makes it so easy. Near zero "culture fit" or anything random you just need to solve easy problems.

Our training material explicitly excludes culture fit questions or decisions since it is a source of bias.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that exactly what they’re optimizing for. They don’t want thinkers who re-invent the wheel?

Then why are they testing them on reinventing the wheel? Isn't that exactly what leet code is doing?

No it’s testing who copy-pasted a highly rated solution.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#216
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context: I recently left Amazon Some orgs within the company are fairly lean, some are hugely bloated. Amazon isn't homogeneous. For example, Alexa is very over-resourced and it's common to hear about 4+ teams working on slight variations of the same project. Lots of redundancy there. I believe Alexa as an org is losing $5b+ per year. Contrast that to all the criticism Facebook is receiving for their investment into…

I have an Echo and a Homepod and I rarely use the Echo anymore because of their "by the way, did you know..." responses. They know there are a lot of users who want to disable that but unfortunately their goals aren't aligned with their users' goals.

I got rid of my Echo mostly because of those types of responses. And also for how easy they make it for you to buy something accidentally off Amazon, or accidentally upgrade to Music Unlimited.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, among the MAGMA companies I've found the _least_ bias for leetcode-memorization at Amazon. My interview with Meta was exactly as you described (a CS riddle taken from a textbook, to be solved without running the code or receiving hints). But in my interview with Amazon, each coding interview also included a couple leadership questions. If you want you can look up the exact questions that they'll give you to…

We have a question bank that we are required to ask from that can be found online. Coding questions and system design challenges are individual to the interviewer. Some are good, some are bad, some are leet code, some are reasonable, it's kinda a crapshot. I saw a bar raiser (a bar raiser!) asking path finding algorithms as his coding challenge which is nuts to me. All that signals is if you've worked with path findi…

It's hard for me to interpret your comment since you never state who "we" refers to.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#218
post #147
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

I worked at Amazon for 5 years and was in over 100 interview loops. Amazon won't hire you if you don't have the skills, but they are/were relatively lax in hiring compared to other big FAANG companies. It is also helpful that they historically have been such a huge and growing company that if you have the skills and the basic interview techniques down, they will try pretty hard to find a place for you. Amazon at leas…

> they will try pretty hard to find a place for you.

Probably not working on the website though, which is hot garbage and has been for a decade.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#219
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that it can be hard to legitimately solve some of those tricky leetcode-style problems under time pressure, with no access to outside resources, and with the knowledge that somebody is judging your every move. Memorizing the common problems gives you a big leg up on being able to successfully pass an interview.

While memorization is involved, people make it seem like you need to memorize specific solutions to specific leetcode problems, and that's just not only false but also a bizzare and almost impossible strategy. What you do need to memorize are a small group of algorithmic designs and have a good sense of when to apply each one. The main ones include divide and conquer, greedy, graph, and what seems to be the hardest o…

I have literally seen interviewees expected to come up with Floyd’s linked-list cycle-finding algorithm independently (or rather, pretend they did).
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