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Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

rajk.me

221–230 of 441 posts

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it spying if they let you know what they will be doing?

Depending on which definition of "spying" you want to apply, it is spying. Moreover, it is invasive and unsettling. Perhaps most critically, it is a more subtle test for the prospective employee-- are you the kind of person who would comply with a ridiculous request that violates your privacy in the hopes that it will land you a job? I dunno. If I were an employer and an applicant actually installed this without ques…

I think you're reading too much into this. It's to make sure that the interviewee isn't trying to game the system. Pretty simple. You can opt-out anytime you want. You don't even have to start in the first place. It's not spying by any definition of the word. Unless you make one up for it.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#222
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a big company that operates with a fairly proprietary set of programming language and tools (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS ), and they hire a good number of people right out of undergraduate degrees. I remember there being a large proportion of non-CS students from across the country there interviewing for engineering positions. What they're looking for, I think, is not necessarily your ability to…

> and they hire a good number of people right out of undergraduate degrees If they're using mumps they have to get them early before they know any better.

Personally, I always thought MUMPS was pretty cool. Database support as built-in to the language as you can get.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#223
post #23

Earlier 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....

I'm so tired of the assertion that it's "difficult" to fire someone, even insofar as "difficult" means "HR won't allow it." HR's reasons are stupid, particularly if you're in a so-called "right to work" state. I work on multi-million dollar lawsuits for a living, and in every single employment suit I've worked on involving an individual who was fired from a large organization, that person had already been through some kind of PIP.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#224
post #188
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.

There's different types of coding. Using xyz UI framework or fancy runtime environment will of course require reference. Sorting a list of points or finding a simple pattern in an array will not. If you need SO to answer the types of questions they ask, you probably shouldn't be seeking an engineering position at a software company.

I disagree.

I know I might get shit for it from HN, but I don't remember jack shit about specifics of implementing sorting algorithms or how to invert a binary tree, because I don't need it right now. I know some of the ideas about why and when you need some sorts over others, but the ins and outs I can get if or when I need them.

Currently I could talk you damn ear off about 9 different ways of doing a topological sort (and which ones you can use if it's guaranteed to be a DAG, etc...), but that's only because I spent my last few days working very closely with stuff like that. Ask me in a month and I'll be back to knowing jack shit about the specifics.

I'm terrible at these kinds of interview questions, but I feel I'm a productive developer.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#225
post #78

As a developer at Amazon who does interviews, what the fuck? I imagine part of this is a response to the very, very large amount of time we spend interviewing interns every winter (I know I typically do 2 or 3 sessions of 3 1-hour interviews in a row). There's just too many interviews to do. Someone wants to innovate and find ways to sort the good from the bad without SDE time spent, I would guess. I hope this isn't…

Years ago I was flown out to Amazon to interview for them. I had like five interviews that day, all from different teams who were all asking questions that had nothing to do with the job I was applying for, never asking about my relevant experience. They were asking me CS questions and I had never gone to college. They asked about computer design - like, draw a diagram of a computer (I had never made a diagram before) and explain how the northbridge on the motherboard works (this was a while ago). Granted, I could have taught myself a lot of that, and I had a general idea about most of it, but they also just could have said "We are looking for someone who has the same skills and knowledge of a Computer Science graduate", and I probably wouldn't have gotten on the plane.

So perhaps a big part of the problem is figuring out what candidates you want to interview first. A lot of these questions are designed just to rule out people who aren't very logical or won't take the time to do it properly, and I understand that.

A manager once told me about a hire they had to fire on the first day. They did a lot of interviews remotely as he was in India. When they finally flew the guy in and put him in the chair, he was a different person. Literally. He had someone else do all the interviews for him so he could get in the door. Pretty weird that he thought they wouldn't notice, but people are that weird sometimes.

If you have too many hires to do, it sounds like you either need to outsource hiring, or build an internal hiring team that can do the technical interviews. This could be a semi-global or traveling team if you're often looking at non-local talent. Or they could do a lot of interviewing via webcam, perhaps with a second webcam shipped by Amazon (it's not like you don't have cheap shipping already) the user could point at their own screen for extra security.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#226

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.

Having just reread 1984, it seemed familiar to me. Sure, people cheat all the time to try to get a job (I have no idea why, even a cursory phone call will eliminate the ditch digger). Maybe Amazon should focus on making the jobs more enjoyable so people stick around and they wouldn't need such excess to find live bodies.

The reason Amazon (and other large tech giants) are hiring so many people isn't because they are loosing good talent -- it's because the company is growing at such an aggressive rate that there are always new positions opening.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This immediately brings to mind the history of scientific racism, specifically with craniometry being used to 'prove' that certain races are inferior. I realize this probably isn't what they're doing, but the fact that they're giving themselves permission to store facial data for later analysis seems questionable given the context.

> This immediately brings to mind the history of scientific racism, specifically with craniometry being used to 'prove' that certain races are inferior.

I can't imagine why...? That would be like seeing a freeway and instantly thinking of the Nazis.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#228

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.

No, an in-person interviewer will not know the tabs on my browser or the programs running on my computer.

Also at an in-person interview, the interviewee has a symmetrical power relationship to the interviewer in that they can both observe on another. This practice slides the power relationship heavily toward the interviewer.

Furthermore, at an in-person interview, the information is not analyzed in an unspecified manner which further skews the power balance toward the large corporation.

Finally, at an in-person interview, the information is not digitally stored at an unspecified location for an unspecified time and transmitted to unspecified parties. Nor is it subject to unauthorized access by unspecified parties in unspecified countries due to unspecified security arrangements.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#229

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…

If this test was happening at their own premises on their own machines then sure. But if I personally had to do this on my own machine on my own premises without being notified beforehand? My response would have been "Please erase my details and never contact me again". My current employer has very strict privacy and confidentiality concerns which I respect. But a prospective employee who has no contract with me? They can kindly GTFO.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not do an onsite if you want to make sure of the validity? Convenience and logistics. Is it worth yours (or Amazon's) time to pay for travel expenses, when applicants could literally be located anywhere? Evidently not, at least not in the early stages of the process.

If it's not worth Amazon's time to interview me in person then it's not worth my time to consider them as a potential employer. This is just lazy and they will end up with lower quality candidates because of it.

I agree with your reasoning, i think the alternative perspective is that traveling somewhere to interview is a significant time commitment on my part, and I might welcome alternative testing approaches where I don't have to fly somewhere until I'm reasonably confident I'm going to get an offer.
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