Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Interviews with Amazon

thesocietea.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 270 posts

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#71

Post by wernercd »

jc4p wrote: post #50
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…

I have just under ten years of experience and lead teams of developers, Amazon routinely spams me asking me to do 120 min online coding tasks before even a phone screen too. It's just fucking disrespectful of my time, to be honest.

I'm at a new job where the "old team" of two developers is being replaced by 5 devs... the old team had ~15 years of experience and can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.

Not saying anything about YOU... experience is important... but 15 years experience doesn't mean 15 years of good experience or lack of bad habits.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#72

Post by superuser2 »

brianwawok wrote: post #63
sgk284 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not defending it, but when you and your fellow engineers are spending a majority of the time interviewing instead of programming, such a system is certainly tempting.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#73

Post by sneezing_turtle »

kentosi wrote: post #53
hellogoodbyeeee wrote: post #12

I'm a little confused. The recruiter said that $170-$200k was an acceptable range. Then they offered him the position for significantly less than that. I don't understand why he even considered the offer. I would have been really upset that they wasted my time with a bait and switch. Am wrong for feeling that way? Are there other factors to consider?

I was going to say the same thing. I would be infuriated, considering this to be another recruiter ploy to make commission. If they clearly can't afford your salary range then this should be made upfront.

Internal Amazon recruiters don't make commission. The likely scenario is that candidate was initially tagged for a senior position, but during the interview only qualified for a lower band offer.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#74

Post by serge2k »

Bartweiss wrote: post #7
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…

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…

> I was expected to be on webcam the entire time to verify identity and prevent cheating. No joke about the entire time part - there was a reminder to get any water or office supplies I would need before sitting down, because the interview would be terminated if I left the frame of the cam.

That's new and stupid.

I'd tell them to get fucked.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#75

Post by tcoppi »

ryandrake wrote: post #54
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…

Cost-of-living is only one cost to consider. I also used to work in Nowhere, USA and now work in the Bay Area. While my "cost of living as a percent of salary" is much higher, so is my "salary minus cost of living" which is a more important measurement. To put it into concrete hypothetical terms: Person A lives in rural Iowa, makes $50K a year after taxes, and their cost of living items (housing, gas, food, etc.) add…

If you can take a job somewhere with more than double your after-tax salary(what you would have to do to go from $50k after tax to $100k after tax) and only double your living expenses, of course you will come out ahead. I don't think that is a common situation for a family unless you either downgrade your standard of housing(smaller, add roommates, less desirable area, increase commute, etc) or are seriously underpaid. For single people it might be more commonly possible. Probably explains why a lot of people seem to come to my relatively high CoL area straight out of school and move away as soon as they start a family.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#76

Post by sneezing_turtle »

ytanotheramzn wrote: post #43
hellogoodbyeeee wrote: post #12

I'm a little confused. The recruiter said that $170-$200k was an acceptable range. Then they offered him the position for significantly less than that. I don't understand why he even considered the offer. I would have been really upset that they wasted my time with a bait and switch. Am wrong for feeling that way? Are there other factors to consider?

When I've seen this with people interviewing in Amazon, it's generally because they're tagged to a higher level position, and during the interview, they decide they're not a fit at that level, but possibly at the one below it. i.e., he might have originally been interviewing for an SDEII position, but they felt his skill-set was closer to what they look for in an SDEI, but still wanted to make him an offer to join th…

This is the correct answer.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#77

Post by 0xEFF »

ivraatiems wrote: post #5

Good on the author for making the decision based on his and his family's needs and not "but it's a top-tier company, man, you gotta work for the best be the best do the BEST." People often don't consider cost-of-living when making job decisions. I think the way to do it is to equalize the salaries based on cost-of-living across each company you're considering. So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's…

> If you make $80,000 in a small midwestern town, you're coming out ahead of the guy/gal pulling six figures in SF.

Home prices have risen much more quickly out West than they have in the Midwest. If you're in a position to buy a home, I recommend factoring this into the equation and plan as well. It can be a great financial investment to move out west for at least two years, then back to the Midwest after selling or renting the home for some time.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#78

Post by serge2k »

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.

It's not condescending to point out that Amazon is a company that will at times require people to know their CS fundamentals.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#79

Post by plandis »

gdulli wrote: post #31
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…

You can find anecdotes about how working at any company is a bad experience and others about how it's a good experience. With Amazon, however, there's something qualitatively different. The anecdotes and evidence of it being a terrible place to work far outweigh the positive. Its bad reputation is confirmed by things you read about their policies, quotes from Jeff Bezos, etc. Poor treatment of employees is consistent…

I've worked at Amazon for around 4 years now. I work 9-5 most days. The days I don't I'll work 10-6! I still work there because I get to work on interesting distributed systems. I've never really had any of the bad experiences that others have seem to had. I reasonably get along with my manager, his manager, and the VP of my organization. They are not the assholes that every complaint seems to mention.

Even in Seattle my pay definitely puts me in the upper middle class. I can afford Seattle property reasonably well ($600k range).

Interviewing at Amazon is kind of weird. They keep trying out new ideas to see how they work and includes things like: standard phone screen, coding test (don't know a better word for it), on site all day interviews, group interviews, etc... Chances are that if you had a weird interview process it was probably because you were trialing some different interview format.

I guess I don't really have a point in this post but I didn't see one positive post about Amazon and thought I'd share (at least anecdotally) that it's not all bad.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#80

Post by johnwheeler »

serge2k wrote: post #78
johnwheeler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't be condescending.

It's not condescending to point out that Amazon is a company that will at times require people to know their CS fundamentals.

I meant the tone of the response. Specifically, mocking my OP by adding 'or whatever' at the end was distracting.

I think the substance of dgemm's comment has merit though. It could be Amazon was trying to place the candidate so were assessing the breadth of his/her skill.

My OP was more generalized. Most positions in software don't require fine-grained understanding of algorithms and data structures, but interviewers nevertheless focus on those. A general understanding is good enough along with more important factors:

Are they talented at what we're hiring them for? Are they an asshole? Will they finagle their way out the door and on home when production is on fire?

Post reply on HN