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I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

benadam.me

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Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#291

Post by majormajor »

ghaff wrote: post #284
majormajor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine if instead of coding exercises we had the interview process from other industries that weighs degree and past experience more heavily in the absence of any other sort of testing. What would it look like to break in then? Completing a BS in your spare time? EDIT: Most ideas I've seen about replacement for live coding - like take home projects or contract-to-hire - are not really any more friendly to people…

Or how impressive their GitHub is. Or another mostly (rightfully so IMO) choice you see here. Set a low bar to hiring but have a probationary period after which you fire a notable percentage.

Yeah probationary period would be great for companies, maybe better for people trying to break into industry (unless they can't fired and can't get their old job back), and not so good for most people already in the industry.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#292

Post by autokad »

aspaceman wrote: post #249
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used Leetcode, but it keeps coming up here. I've been interviewer a lot lately and I keep trying to find ways to filter out the candidates that care more about interview prep than solving real problems. Is this a nonstandard perspective?

I think it's pretty common at small to mid sized companies + startups. Your more "trendy" companies and your F500 companies do the type of Leetcode interview you hear everyone on HN complain about. It typically looks like a 15 minute phone interview with HR, followed by a lengthy Leetcode/ take home exam (that's auto graded, no humans), a computer form where you input your school, GPA, and courses taken (seriously).…

to get around to the algorithmic portion of the interview process (filling out your GPA and hoping for a recruiter call), try reaching out to the recruiters directly. they only go to that pool when their existing leads runs dry, and they'd often love the opportunity to add some self motivated candidates.

How I got my job is I searched linkedIn for + recruiter and just added all of them. That alone generated lots of recruiter calls. This was 2018, not sure if things have changed

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#293

Post by garbagecoder »

samstave wrote: post #221
oblio wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he did say: > ego-driven hazing ritual :-)

The worst "Biggest Swingin' Dick on Campus" ego-fest I have ever experienced was working at the F in FAANG... -- Such a den of.... you can fill in the rest... I know someone who was literally fired for being "too social" -- and all they did was participate in the stupid parties that were had like "Build you're departments happy hour bar, here is $400 for alcohol to stock it up!!"

I had a few FAANG+M people join my (reserve) unit in the army doing cyber and 6-shop stuff who thought they were hot shit. Some actually were, but the mentality was universal regardless of ability.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#294

Post by benadam11 »

zzleeper wrote: post #243
benadam11 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pushed an update - btw Cloudflare pages are fantastic its been perfection for a personal site.

I'm curious, how do they compare against S3? (cheaper, easier to use, ...?)

I had my site fronted with CF previously w/ an origin on S3 and it cost about $0.53/mo (super cheap). CF Pages current pricing is free for unlimited bandwidth which is pretty incredible - https://pages.cloudflare.com/#pricing

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#295

Post by notreallyserio »

mbfg wrote: post #142
yonig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replies laid out what it means on paper but what is the employees actual best move? Sounds intentionally impossible to climb out of. Are they given a buyout option to leave or just sit in purgatory for 6 months?

As soon as you get a PIP, get out when you can.

Agreed. I can't see any possible upside for staying.

It's like if someone threatens you with a lawsuit. You don't communicate with them ever again, you tell them to contact you via lawyer and hopefully you never hear from them again.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#296

Post by rPlayer6554 »

kentonv wrote: post #4

Please consider increasing the contrast on your text. As is (light-gray-on-lighter-gray) I cannot read it as it literally hurts my eyes trying to focus on it. EDIT: It seems this is not intentional, some of the stylesheets are returning 404 for me but not other people... weird. EDIT: Amazingly, it turns out this site is hosted on the platform of which I'm the lead engineer (Cloudflare Workers / Pages) and the problem…

This kind of thing is why I love to be on HN. It's so interesting to be able to discuss technologies with the people that created them.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#298

Post by mywittyname »

colinmhayes wrote: post #219
MattGaiser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of nearby human beings to be concerned about retention. https://www.essence.com/news/amazon-burning-through-workers/

This article is about warehouse workers, not developers.

Workers are workers to management. Regardless of whether you pick up keyboards or press them.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#299

Post by georgemcbay »

majormajor wrote: post #250
geodel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field. Very good point. I didn't really think about it much before. It is even difficult for candidates who are in IT field but not in FAANG type companies.

Now imagine if instead of coding exercises we had the interview process from other industries that weighs degree and past experience more heavily in the absence of any other sort of testing. What would it look like to break in then? Completing a BS in your spare time? EDIT: Most ideas I've seen about replacement for live coding - like take home projects or contract-to-hire - are not really any more friendly to people…

The craziest part of tech interviews for me is the way its just accepted that you do it this way regardless of how long someone has been in the industry.

If companies were grilling people new to the career trying to figure out if they could FizzBuzz their way out of wet paper bag (I realize some can't) it would be one thing. Without a track record you don't have much to go on, but the fact that you can work in the industry for decades, ship well-received products people have heard of, have a long list of references willing to verify that you were instrumental in shipping those products, and a lot of companies still expect you to jump through "reverse this string in place" type code puzzles seems kinda bonkers to me... but a lot of the industry just accepts that This Is The Way.

You can bypass this with direct personal connections of course, but its weird to me that so many companies put effectively 0 weight into prior easy to verify accomplishments if the people looking to hire don't know the person on a personal level.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#300

Post by pyrale »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #60
sharkweek wrote: post #25

Hey congrats on making it 10 months! "Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work" Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn't immediately delivering on som…

>he came back from parental leave and his direct reports had all been put on a PIP while he was out Wow. It’s really difficult to imagine a likely scenario where that’s justified.

Imagine getting fired because your manager is on a leave and their manager sees you as free real estate.
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