281–290 of 441 posts
Presumably they have a cunning plan to use eye movements to decide which candidates are better programmers because eye movements suffice to tell apart the expert from the novices, in programming:
http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/u...
(...allegedly)
I think if anything the logic portion is the biggest travesty here. It doesn't have to do anything with programming and it boils down to a reading comprehension test that does not bode well with non-native speakers. But I guess that is there goal.
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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 just sends the wrong message. As a company, you are advocating tech that spies on people or in this case the test taker. Overall, it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth that a company would use technology such as this. What else would they be okay with doing once you start working there? Why not do an onsite if you want to make sure of the validity?
Even then only about 15% of the people pass my question. I'm sure there are plenty of fair interview questions you could ask where you don't have to care about cheating, and just see if they can come up with an answer.
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There is no cheating in programming. This is absurd.
I think Googling the question exactly and copy and pasting the answer would qualify as cheating. (Disclaimer: I completed an internship at Amazon and accepted a second internship)
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>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.
A significant one, surely.
> What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)?
Look, sometimes you can compromise for practicality. But even then there's pretty much always more than one option. Almost anyone can get a low wage job at department store/grocery store/restaurant/whatever so they can eat, guilt-free, and there are still degrees. You don't have to immediately go for the extreme of selling your soul to the devil, you have other options. (To bring it back to the concrete, especially as a tech intern; there are tons of companies that aren't Amazon.)