AWS is really not the same as Amazon Retail. The culture, leadership and practices are really really different!
Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
261–270 of 365 posts
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#262AWS is really not the same as Amazon Retail. The culture, leadership and practices are really really different!
If anything that makes it worse.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
>One result set is equivalent to another, and as long as you aren't using unnecessary nested loop joins or such, there are a dozen ways to solve a query. If they consume similar resources I'd almost always opt for the simplest one to understand. In cases where the simpler one is less efficient, I might still use it if the task didn't require absolute optimization.
Sure, and that would be a fair criticism, to say, "is there a version of this that's more intuitive and easier to read with the same load on the server?" But the interviewer (assuming the OP faithfully represented the exchange and the domain) is insisting that the query does not do what was asked -- when it does -- and is saying so based on the interviewer's own incomplete understanding. That's not a good reason to r…
You're exactly right wrt interviewing. I was talking in general and not in the context of an interview.
If you are interviewing someone and they solve the problem you ask, and then you don't give them some sort of guidance or constraints to meet your "correct" guidelines, then you aren't doing a good and fair interview.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#264IIRC salaried workers at Amazon get 10 PTO days. This stops me from even applying. I wouldn't ever again consider less than 20, and really need a minumum of 25.
By PTO are you deliberately narrowing to vacation? Full time workers also get 6 days/year Personal Time. The current US vacation schedule also changes over time, from worse than 10 days to 15 days. 1st year: 5 days, 2nd: 10 days, 3rd: 11 days, 4th: 12 days, 5th: 13 days, 6th: 14 days, 7th+: 15 days. Thus, the time-off goes from 11 days to 21 days per year.
The max you can hope for is 21 days? That's obscenely low.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, and that would be a fair criticism, to say, "is there a version of this that's more intuitive and easier to read with the same load on the server?" But the interviewer (assuming the OP faithfully represented the exchange and the domain) is insisting that the query does not do what was asked -- when it does -- and is saying so based on the interviewer's own incomplete understanding. That's not a good reason to r…
Exactly, it would have been fair game to ask why I used a window function instead of an aggregate function + subquery joined back onto the main result set. Or, to ask if I could rewrite the query another way which would be more efficient. However, the interviewer didn't simply insist the query does not do what was asked (when it did indeed return the correct results). Instead, the interviewer actually insisted it was…
In this case it sounds like a bad interview and that they missed a good opportunity for discussion!
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happens everywhere; The superstar software developer (no) who knows everything (no) gets to interview you, and sometimes they are simply not right. Your story reminds me my ~7th (?) interview with Google where for LRU caching I mentioned Java's LinkedHashMap; which resulted in he explaining me "what a ridiculous, memory-wasting data structure would that be!" - and going on for a good 5 more minutes bashing my la…
This is pretty much why no one should feel bad if you're rejected after some FANG interview. It all 100% comes down to the people in your loop. You're likely to hit an ass hole or two. I made it into Amazon, but honestly, after sitting in on a bunch of interviews, I now appreciate the amount of pure dumb luck involved (i.e. I got a loop of people who liked me and had questions I understood) rather than any skill (whi…
Well I appreciate these interview loops because at least they are still far more objective than big company promo processes when whoever lies the most and forces others to do their dirty work gets promoted.
I do wish the interview process was even more objective, just administer and extremely difficult IQ Test instead.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual interview was more akin to the interviewer telling an interviewee that "python doesn't support multithreading"; something patently false. No, this kind of erroneous statement should not be glossed over. For your information, this was the later stage of questions. The very first question did involve a simple summation group by, so I'd already demonstrated my understanding there. I showed no frustration or a…
"python doesn't support multithreading" wait, what about the GIL?!? did they fix that?
Python does support multithreading. The only thing the GIL does is prevent you from simultaneously running python code in more than one thread. You can still use threads to do io in parallel or to help interleave CPU tasks.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#268I've also turned down countless Amazon interview offers. In fact, I don't get how I'm still on their recruitment lists after asking several times to be removed. Amazon has arguably the worst culture out of any large tech company, and generally treats its workers like dirt. Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they ha…
> Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they have the second highest employee turnover out of all Fortune 500 companies
It's worth emphasising that Amazon employs a LOT of seasonal employees in the warehouses, and there are a really large number of those warehouses. It's a terrific number of staff that are around for 2 months, during various peak times of the year. Not because they're burned out, injured or whatever, but just because the work isn't there for them at the time.
(I'm not generally disagreeing with the rest of your point. Been there, done that, got burned out by it after a couple of years)
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#269IIRC salaried workers at Amazon get 10 PTO days. This stops me from even applying. I wouldn't ever again consider less than 20, and really need a minumum of 25.
By PTO are you deliberately narrowing to vacation? Full time workers also get 6 days/year Personal Time. The current US vacation schedule also changes over time, from worse than 10 days to 15 days. 1st year: 5 days, 2nd: 10 days, 3rd: 11 days, 4th: 12 days, 5th: 13 days, 6th: 14 days, 7th+: 15 days. Thus, the time-off goes from 11 days to 21 days per year.
Imagine being a new hire in almost every part of the civilized world and still having more vacation time than a guy laboring in the mines for 7+ years.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual interview was more akin to the interviewer telling an interviewee that "python doesn't support multithreading"; something patently false. No, this kind of erroneous statement should not be glossed over. For your information, this was the later stage of questions. The very first question did involve a simple summation group by, so I'd already demonstrated my understanding there. I showed no frustration or a…
"python doesn't support multithreading" wait, what about the GIL?!? did they fix that?
I think the parent is saying you /can/ use threads, but they will all contend on the GIL.