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My Interviews with Amazon

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Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#61

Post by dominotw »

collyw wrote: post #56
dominotw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but programmer has to know what ds/algorithm to choose, of course you can look up complexities and stuff but it doesn't help in cases where performance tuning of caches ect is necessary. you have to understand what that particular algorithm/ds is actually doing to tune it properly.

I learned that sort of stuff 15 years ago. By now it is forgotten, but I am perfectly capable of reading up on stuff and relearning it. I learn new stuff all the time in this line of work.

> but I am perfectly capable of reading up on stuff and relearning it

How do you prove this to a potential employer though? Also, it should be possible to read up on algorithms for the interview.correct?.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#62

Post by tcoppi »

perspectivep wrote: post #45
ivraatiems wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm telling them that cost-of-living is a valuable consideration when deciding on a job offer in a different city. They suggested that it wasn't (or maybe misunderstood what I was saying). I'm not disrespecting their particular experience; it's awesome that their move worked in their favor. But I have interviewed for jobs in cities like SF and I have crunched the numbers on their salaries and so I have direct experie…

Say you're making $60k with $40k in expenses. Saving $20k. You move and now make $120k and your expenses double to $80k. You're saving $40k; twice as much. But in reality, not all of your expenses increase that much, and the other benefits (bonuses, matching, raises, interest, etc.) are % based, so the discrepancy increases quickly.

Taxes are also percentage based, and progressive at that. Your effective tax rate at $120k is quite a bit higher than at $60k, so you won't be saving double in that scenario because more of it will be going to taxes. Also, the percentage increase of 401k contributions etc. is very easy to calculate out to a dollar value, I recommend everyone do that when comparing salaries(though you have to remember not to consider taxes for those).

I find the idea of overall expenses only doubling for a family moving from OK or MI to a place like Seattle somewhat silly. The vast majority of household budget's largest expense by far is housing. If they want to downgrade their standard of living from a 3-4 br 2000+sq feet house, then maybe it will only double. Otherwise it could easily triple or quadruple, as the original article discusses and evidence for is easily found. Salaries are not 3-4x larger in high CoL areas generally. The difference is pretty stark even starting from an area like Metro DC/Baltimore that isn't exactly known for being cheap, but nowhere near SF, Seattle, NYC or Boston levels.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#63

Post by brianwawok »

sgk284 wrote: post #52
Bartweiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I opened the Amazon door as a new dev and found something very different than what this post describes. The first step - before speaking to anyone about my background or interest - was going to be an intensive, one-hour coding session. It looked like it would be more "independent proof of competence" than "friendly programming task to evaluate you". I was expected to be on webcam the entire time to ver…

Bezos set a mandate to HR a few years ago that he wanted them to be able to hire a new grad without ever needing to speak to a human engineer. That is, he wants the entire interview process automated (specifically for new grads, at least for now). What you experienced is part of their experiment in figuring out how to make this work. They've got a number of variations of interviews going on right now. I believe this…

Oh that is great, robots hiring staff.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#64

Post by RussianCow »

dgemm wrote: post #26
johnwheeler wrote: post #17

It's wasteful for companies to focus so much on implementing data structures for front-end coding jobs when they're packaged commodities nowadays. If you're going to be building search engines or whatever, OK. And, time complexity questions should be asked. But chances are, the broad majority will end up doing line of business apps that require three data structures of which you will never write a better version than…

> If you're going to be building search engines or whatever, OK. But this one does build search engines or whatever.

But not every dev working at Amazon works on the search engine, or anything super challenging (from a CS standpoint).

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#65

Post by deanCommie »

johnwheeler wrote: post #55
dgemm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're going to be building search engines or whatever, OK. But this one does build search engines or whatever.

Please don't be condescending.

The whole point is that Amazon DOES work on search engines, and systems of a kind of scale matched by less than a dozen other companies and requires in depth understanding of algorithms, data structures, and distributed design.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#67

Post by linkregister »

larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

> unlike HN, I've never seriously considered joining a mega-corporation

Isn't the startup deified on HN more than any other type of company? Of course there are all kinds on here; it seems strange to stereotype HN posters that way.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#68

Post by larrykubin »

sgk284 wrote: post #52
Bartweiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I opened the Amazon door as a new dev and found something very different than what this post describes. The first step - before speaking to anyone about my background or interest - was going to be an intensive, one-hour coding session. It looked like it would be more "independent proof of competence" than "friendly programming task to evaluate you". I was expected to be on webcam the entire time to ver…

Bezos set a mandate to HR a few years ago that he wanted them to be able to hire a new grad without ever needing to speak to a human engineer. That is, he wants the entire interview process automated (specifically for new grads, at least for now). What you experienced is part of their experiment in figuring out how to make this work. They've got a number of variations of interviews going on right now. I believe this…

Maybe they are starting a new service to spin up engineers on demand as part of AWS.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#69

Post by cookiecaper »

perspectivep wrote: post #28
ivraatiems wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, even if your housing cost doubles, other expenses don't. Food costs, gas, vacations, and everything on Amazon is the same. I actually spend a lot less on transportation because I can take public transit instead of a car. We were able to sell one of our cars too. That's actually not true. I'm referring to cost-of-living, which includes housing, gas, food, etc. All the things you list. Here's a calculator you c…

The proof is in the pudding. My savings are growing at an astronomically higher rate than it was in the Midwest. I used to tell myself the same thing before I moved.

It really depends on the individual situation.

The biggest cost variance is in housing. In the Midwest, you can get a 2,500 sq ft home for ~1.3k +/- $350. [0] Under normal leasing standards (no more than 1/3rd your income to rent), you can pay that if you have a job in the $50k-$60k range. And that's almost the standard -- big houses and big yards for everyone.

In LA or SEA, you're looking at 2.5x-4x that, which is at least $3500/mo. [1] Under normal leasing income standards, you'd have to have a salary of $140k+ to barely meet the minimum requirements, and that's for a "cheap" rental home. The other option is to live way out in the burbs, where prices are probably closer to 1.5x-2.5x, and spend 2.5 hours commuting every work day.

(In SF or NYC, you probably can't obtain a comparable living situation, but a 2500 sq ft apartment apparently runs around $15k/mo, meaning you'd have to make almost $1M/yr to barely afford one)

If you're a single person or just have a partner, you can probably take a hit and go from a $800/mo 2-bedroom apartment @ $55k to a downsized $1600/mo apartment @ $110k and still make a lot more money than you did in the place with a lower CoL (even after calculating a 30-50% increase in the cost of some goods, like utilities, gas, and food).

However, if you have kids, this quickly becomes impractical, because it's way harder to jump from a $1300/mo home @ 60k to a $3500/mo home @ 115k.

For extra credit calculate the change to net pay based on differing tax laws. This is especially large if you're coming to CA, which has the highest state income tax in the nation at 13.3%. Most Midwestern states have tax rates between 4 and 7 percent. Some of the most populous "flyover" states (Texas and Florida) have a 0% tax rate (and to Amazon's credit, WA does too). [2]

[0] http://archive.is/OKMTb

[1] http://archive.is/8R5aI

[2] http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#70

Post by npinski-AWS »

larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

Everyone's mileage may vary. I've been at Amazon for 3 years in 2 different offices on two different orgs (Vancouver-AWS, Europe-Retail).

I love it, and I don't know anyone that left disgruntled or unhappy due to being burnt out. (A couple of people I know left because they didn't want to do any oncall at all anymore, but noone was misled, and as far as I know they are not bitter about it)

But, the key is that there is no one "Amazon". A lot of freedom is given to each individual team and org, and as a result wild variations in work culture and expectations. I know teams that are great, and I know teams that are tougher. But, my reasoning for why those teams might be difficult to work with is because they are working on new bleeding-edge services (AWS, Echo/Alexa), and as a result there is a lot of pressure to stay ahead of our competitors. Which is completely understandable when Google and Microsoft are either just behind or just ahead on everything.

Maybe I've just been lucky? But I work with a lot of teams in a lot of countries, and generally by and large people are challenged and content.

I'm not saying there are no problems. And I'm sure all the people in the NYT article are not lying. But at a huge company of 200,000 employees, there's always going to be some unhappy and disgruntled people.

I don't think I'll be able to convince you otherwise - I am a city-dweller through and through, so I sense we have probably quite different personalities.

edit: I should acknowledge that I don't have direct experience with American work culture. Y'all work way too many hours, but that's not just at Amazon. And Silicon Valley is even worse.

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