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Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

rajk.me

231–240 of 441 posts

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#231

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.

[deleted]

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand that the goal is to stop cheaters. That's an admirable goal, and a perfectly legit one. However it's the completely wrong way to do it and sends a very strong message to anyone applying that "our company, for any reason that serves our interest, expect you to be compliant, to give up your personal privacy, and to submit to our invasive internal processes whenever we feel it's necessary. Expect more."

Asking this of you, before you're even working for them is presumptive and not a good sign that this is a place you're going to want to be. It's basically a huge flashing "We Fuck Our Employees!" right there on your job application.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#235
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.

The last time I screened with Amazon, they wanted me to have a notebook handy, write down the code in the notebook with a pencil, and read it back to them over the phone. That's just how they roll there so unless you can implement linked lists, sorts and the like from memory, don't work for Amazon.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#236

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.

They will probably fly you out after this, for another stage of the interview. But at the "FizzBuzz stage", they do really need to make sure that the person answering the question is the same person they're later flying out. There are a surprisingly large number of college students who've gotten used to "paying for grades", who attempt things like that.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#238

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…

What's wrong with it is that real programmers constantly use whatever means possible to get the answer to questions as fast as possible. What they describe as "cheating" is what real programmers do all day long.

Unless you are working with a really small API surface then it is unlikely that a programmer is going to have much of the API memorized than the ones he uses on a daily basis. And with people radically changing their stacks every few years it is unreasonable to expect it.

Also, people copy/paste/tweak things from StackOverflow all the time. Disabling clipboard is unreasonable for that reason.

What a programmer can do using only things completely in their head is quite different than what programmers do in reality. Programmers are constantly looking up things they don't know throughout the entire day.

Keep in mind too that online tests are for screening, not a complete interview. You bring people in after that and do several rounds of interviews. Under that circumstance having a friend next to you or supplying you the answers doesn't really get you far if you know you have to do similar tests once you get into the office. There's isn't a lot of incentive to cheat.

The bigger concern is that this is a red flag about the work environment / culture. If I saw that I wouldn't go anywhere near it as well. In fact I deliberately put things in resume that some companies might find objectionable in order to purposely weed out with such cultures.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US corporations have a multi-hundred year history of using thinly veiled proxies for race as part of their hiring practices. This continues to this day, including in the tech industry.

It's not exactly that far fetched to think that someone might someday think it's a good idea to start applying some of those new AI APIs to the candidate interview videos just to see what happens. In fact given enough time and enough departments/companies, it frankly seems more likely than not.

Especially given that we already have AI scouring GitHub looking for people to recruit. Assuming it's not already happening, it seems unlikely that there won't be startups applying AI to hiring interview videos within the next couple years.

Re: Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

#240

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…

> 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.

If Amazon has chosen to use use Proctorio, with an understanding of how it operates, then it's very much Amazon's restrictions.

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