20 ms·

My Interviews with Amazon

222 points by voltagex_ 10y ago

vonmoltke 10y ago
Sounds like my experience last month, except I was interviewing for a low-level software position and didn't get an offer. :/ Actually, I only asked for $130k base and felt guilty about that.
- The_Hoff 10y ago
  No joke, I've heard of companies equating ask-salary to self-worth and that a modest request can cost you.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    That thought has crossed my mind. Sometimes I feel like that question is some sort of bullshit test to see if you over- or under-value yourself. Based on the StackOverflow transparency discussion yesterday I think I am underpaid by about $10k to begin with, which I have still not fully internalized.
larrik 10y ago
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 brought this up to one recruiter a few years ago, they basically acknowledged the reputation and their intent to improve. Perhaps unlike HN, I've never seriously considered joining a mega-corporation like Google, Facebook, or Amazon. I just don't see the appeal, nor do I want to work in a city (SV, Seattle, NYC, or otherwise).
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  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 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. Between the blind hostility of that opener and the meat-grinder rep, I passed without interviewing (and passed with the next Amazon recruiter shortly after, who had no idea they'd pinged me before). I'm sure this routine is reserved for new grads, and the weird "don't lean out of frame" stuff seemed to be from some interview-management third party, but it was still the most stilted process I've seen from an actual software company.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    I applied to amazon last month, they asked me to do interviewstreet coding for 2 hrs. After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. He simply stopped all communications with me. Reflects their attitude of treating ppl as mere 'resources' , I would work for amazon if I have no self-respect.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. That's pretty common recently for companies. I'm not sure why.
      - serge2k 10y ago
        Some claim it's them covering their ass thanks to the SUE SUE SUE culture of the US. I understand that, but when it's a purely technical decision they could easily enough give you constructive feedback. You missed these two edge cases. Your code crashes on certain inputs. This is very inefficient, you could have done XYZ. You could automate chunks of this, and protect yourself from any discrimination lawsuits by just making any engineer who reviews the code have zero knowledge of the candidate.
ivraatiems 10y ago
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 the same as making $120k in Seattle or the Bay Area. If you make $80,000 in a small midwestern town, you're coming out ahead of the guy/gal pulling six figures in SF. It's an important consideration and one I think many employers try to get you to ignore.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Genuinely curious, do people really not consider these things? I've noticed it is continually easy to wow people with dollar numbers, but I don't know what their thought process is.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    I know I didn't until it was pointed out to me that I should. It's one of those things where it's totally logical but also not something somebody who's never moved from city to city (like me, until that point) would realize.
- perspectivep 10y ago
  > So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's the same as making $120k in Seattle or the Bay Area. Not true at all. I made almost that exact jump when moving from the Midwest to Seattle. You're forgetting things like raises, bonuses, and 401(k) matching that are a % of your salary. Sign-on bonuses and stock benefits are common out here but rare in the Midwest. 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. Not to mention you can probably keep most of your salary if you decide to move back to the Midwest.
  - 10y ago
steven777400 10y ago
I had a similar situation (but with Microsoft), and although in my case it would have been a net improvement in income (probably), there was impact on family and stability to consider, so I declined the offer. I think being aware of priorities for each person and each phase of life is important. There's times when big name or (relatively speaking) big salary is the prime factor, and that's great, and go for it! There's also times when being close to family, staying rooted, and being stable is the prime factor, and that's ok too.
hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
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?
- kentosi 10y ago
  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.
  - sneezing_turtle 10y ago
    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.
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  No, you aren't wrong. That recruiter did not do a good job. The salary range talk is always up front to ensure that candidates and the company aren't wasting one anothers time. If the process gets to the offer stage, it needs to be in the range discussed up front. It costs me money (in terms of PTO) to come out and interview, and it costs the company thousands in time and expenses to conduct it. That recruiter essentially pissed away a couple grand without any real prospect of hiring. As a hiring manager, I'd be upset about that if it happened in my company. I had this happen early in my career. Recruiter and I talked about a range, went through 3 rounds of interviews, and I got an offer below what I was currently making. Absolutely not in the discussed range. The offer came via email and I was insulted - I declined without negotiation. I still have the email, and I was apparently pretty polite. A week later they pinged me back to ask if I had considered it, if I was dissatisfied and that they could go up. I just politely restated my decline. They'd already wasted my time, and as junior as I was, my time was still valuable - I took time out of work, traveled, etc. That was almost 10 years ago and I'm still salty about it. That should tell you what kind of impression this behavior leaves behind. Looking back at the emails now, I am very surprised at how professional and polite I was about it - my memories of 20-something me are apparently overblown :)
patja 10y ago
What is the general take on the initial ballpark of 170k - 200k vs. the actual offer of low 6 figures? Is that just how the game is played and to be expected (e.g., never believe anything they say to get you into interviews), or is it something to be affronted by: why did we both waste all of our time on this process? Or is it likely to be somewhere in the middle...maybe if he blew everyone away in the interviews he would have received an offer for 180k, but he didn't so it was more of a 115k assessment?
- vkou 10y ago
  They interviewed him assuming he was a senior candidate, the interviewers gave feedback that said "Good enough to hire, but not good enough to hire as a senior."
cloudjacker 10y ago
> I was honestly pretty shocked that I had gotten an offer, and told the HR person that I would get back to them within a week after I discussed this with my family. Upvote if your startup pretended that your offer would expire in 48 hours #WordGamesFromSandHill
johnwheeler 10y ago
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 your stdlib: list, hash, set. There's only one time in my 20 year career I've ever had to implement my own data structure (Directed Graph), and I basically copied it line by line out of a book and ended up replacing it with Neo4j.
- nogridbag 10y ago
  I was actually quite surprised the questions were relatively basic (and web-dev focused) for a position with the AWS team.
  - segmondy 10y ago
    Perhaps he would be working on the front end, have you seen the frontend for AWS? Nothing fancy!
- dominotw 10y ago
  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.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    It's much more important to get a smart and adaptable programmer than one who memorized his compsci textbooks. Yes, an understanding of data structures and algorithms can be helpful, but unless messing around in that space is really going to comprise a large percentage of on-the-job duties (and as the grandparent indicated, it's not for 99% of us who can just use the canned implementations from the stdlib), it's stupid to make it a large percentage of success in the interview process. I'm glad to hear that Amazon kept the textbook-style questions light -- it's not what you usually hear about happening in interviews with big tech companies.
dudul 10y ago
Nice post. Confirmed that I was right to systematically ignore Amazon recruiters.
jasoncchild 10y ago
this is by far the most thoughtful mic-drop i've read today
jvehent 10y ago
And this is why remote work for tech people is the future. Timezones are still an issue, but if you're willing to adapt your work hours to meet the majority, being remote allows you to work for fantastic companies without sacrificing your way of life.
- envyUser 10y ago
  They tried this with India, it failed. It's why we need such a robust H1b "solution".
  - e12e 10y ago
    One of the few interesting presentations I've seen by a top consulting firm, was given by a regional manager in Norway for Accenture - he talked about their experience with outsourcing to India (this was in the early 00s). Basically it came down to a cultural (business culture) divide, communication, and differences in education. Throwing half-baked specs over the fence to people from a different culture, who's main qualification wasn't that you could get them at all, but that you could get them cheaply unsurprisingly lead to catastrophic project failures. Sending consultants both ways to work locally together for a while, creating real mixed teams -- worked better. Tell Stackoverflow, Trello and Gitlab that remote teams doesn't work. Of course it can work, but you need to plan for it. Oh, and team members that are any good, will command a high salary. Don't pay them, and they'll jump ship.
- markest1973 10y ago
  You are correct. I work remotely for Red Hat in a generally lower cost-of-living area. Big company salary (plus 401k match, stock, bonuses, etc.) in an area that is, from what I read, ~11% cheaper than average. Life is good.
kentosi 10y ago
My experience was the complete opposite. I interviewed for them when they came to Sydney. The recruiter on LinkedIn said that it was for a senior Java developer role. We even spoke over the phone to go through some of what the role involved. The actual interviewing process was half a day of being interviewed by various people from different departments, some asking sysops questions, some asking general BA questions, some asking network/IP related questions, and 2 (if I remember correctly) actually asking programming/developer questions. One was shocked that I didn't have a laptop with me, which was not at all part of the instructions. The process was nowhere near as organised as what's mentioned in this blog, and this was somewhat recent (late 2015 I think?) Perhaps their overseas recruitment arm seriously needs better coordination?
thecodeboss 10y ago
Hey - I wrote this! =D
ozten 10y ago
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't think it is a good idea to post the actual questions one is asked. As an interviewer, I like to use the same question so I can calibrate across candidates.
- mrswag 10y ago
  They made him lose his time, I think it's fair game.
saosebastiao 10y ago
I'm gonna ignore the fact that this is for Amazon, which has its own criticism. Anybody who is baffled by the author's insistence on $170-200k but the offer of low 6 figures needs to read up on negotiation. I recommend the various videos/books/posts by Ramit Sethi that are specific to salary negotiation. If you give the number first, you lose. They will only negotiate downward from there. You can deflect in a million different ways (which are covered by Ramit extensively), and each time you deflect your advantage increases. They can persist in a million different ways ("I'm sorry, this is just procedure" is probably the most common), but if you cave and give them a number, it will only go down from there. If you give them a range, the best offer you will ever get is the low part of the range. Don't give them a number...wait for them to offer, then negotiate upwards.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- linkregister 10y ago
  I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with this as a steadfast maxim. I think overall your statement fits maybe even 75% of negotiations but many do not fit this mold. Overall, your BATNA (and your counterparty's) is the most important factor in the negotiation. Numbers can certainly go up, especially with changes in your BATNA. Case in point: "I've just received a higher offer; I would accept yours if you could match it + $10k." People post articles on HN all the time talking about how they get companies to outbid each other. More important than "never giving the number first" is being steadfast in what you want (within realistic bounds). I have followed both styles but haven't been penalized by starting with the number first. If you're the best candidate, the company will pay what you insist on. Otherwise, the "never giving the number first" was never going to work to begin with.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
  That is the traditional advice, but I'm not sure how true it is. You should read up on the anchoring principle. Basically, all negotiations revolve around the first number given, so it is often in your best interest to throw out a large number.
- deleted 10y ago
deanCommie 10y ago
I'd rather be homeless and broke in Seattle than living in a mansion in OKC.
- aianus 10y ago
  I'd rather be homeless and broke in a sunny third world country than ever visit Seattle again. So what?
  - plandis 10y ago
    I'm curious why is Seattle so bad you'd give up the relative safety to live in a third world country?
    - larrykubin 10y ago
      I live in Seattle. I get really depressed from December-February due to the lack of sunshine, and I've found it to be a more difficult place socially compared to other cities I've lived and worked in. To the point where I have frequently thought about leaving. That said, I played beach volleyball all day yesterday with some friends as the sun set over the Olympic mountains in the background, and it was greatness. But it took me a couple of years to find my place. Happy as can be at the moment, but it's odd how the gray can send me into a spiral of inward reflection that drives me nuts. Everyone posts the beautiful pictures of Mount Rainier and sunsets, which are gorgeous, but half the year you can feel lethargic and go into a hibernation mode which messes with your head if you don't have a strong social circle already.
      - drewrv 10y ago
        The secret to living in Seattle is to take a week off in February and go to Hawaii or Cabo.
      - fragola 10y ago
        I live in Seattle. I love the look on new coworkers' faces when they see Mt Rainier for the first time in April: "HOLY COW IS THAT A VOLCANO??"
george_ciobanu 10y ago
I thought one is not supposed to share actual technical interview questions?
- magic_beans 10y ago
  Only if one has accepted the offer, which, spoiler alert, this guy did not.
  - Buge 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure I had to sign NDAs regarding coding questions before any interviews happened (not Amazon, a different company).
    - freyir 10y ago
      What are they going to do? Take you to court for vaguely describing a coding question?
      - asuffield 10y ago
        The status quo is that the company whose questions you leaked will never hire you again in the future, and other tech companies who find out about this while researching you as a possible hire might also decide to never hire you. It's the difference between a polite "this offer doesn't work for me at the moment", and burning your bridges. (However, this particular article doesn't seem to discuss any specifics of technical questions, so I don't see an issue here)
    - eamsen 10y ago
      Interesting, I've never had to sign an NDA before my interviews (at top tech companies) including the on-site/offer stages. I don't share questions as a matter of principle, fwiw.
    - brown9-2 10y ago
      Did the NDA specifically refer to the interview process? Usually they mention any sort of business practices or plans you might learn about in the course of interviewing; recruitment is highly unlikely to fall under that definition.
Phlarp 10y ago
Hearing that the recruiter more or less committed to a 170K+ range, only to waste significant amounts of interviewee time before rendering a below market offer is really concerning. Amazon is in direct competition for talent with Google, Facebook and Microsoft and from what information I can gather they all pay significantly more while also lacking the bad reputation Amazon has accrued over the years for being a complete meat-grinder. (whether or not the others are actually meat-grinders is still up for debate: but they don't have a public reputation for being such) Why does talent in our industry continue to accept this kind of treatment? If name brand law firms tried to pull this shit with associate lawyers I suspect they would get sent invoices for the billable hours.
- amzn-336495 10y ago
  Amazon is not in direct competition with those companies. Amazon bottom feeds on new grad hires, people with restrictive visas, and interns. Their 90th percentile pay for developers is going to be about $120k per year with maybe a $150k total comp target. They may hire a few dozen top people per year, but for the most part no one ever quits those companies to go to Amazon.
  - Phlarp 10y ago
    Of course few people quit google or facebook to go work for amazon unless it's a Marissa Mayer-esque jump in the org chart. The real question to ask is how many individual technical contributors does Amazon lose to the others?
outworlder 10y ago
A whole day dedicated to onsite interviews, plus traveling time. How do employed people manage that? I understand that, from the company's point of view, 1 day is still to short to assess someone. But it is still a lot of time dedicated to an offer that may or may not materialize.
- ljk 10y ago
  > How do employed people manage that? taking day off from work.
- icedchai 10y ago
  We either call in sick, or make something up. I have used various excuses. Once I said I had to "get some tests on my thyroid" and would be unavailable for most of the day.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Employed people mange that by not being chained to their desks?
linkregister 10y ago
Kudos on the author for sticking to what he said was his bottom line. This episode benefits all developers/engineers because we need to incentivize software companies to branch out beyond SF, Seattle, Boulder, and NYC.
SonicSoul 10y ago
Great write-up! I'd love to see the linked in profile that generates such great leads. I've tried to improve and polish my linked in profile but still not hearing from recruiters. I must be doing something horribly wrong
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  If you are on LinkedIn and have not been contacted by recruiters, I would suggest that you go ahead and get that face tattoo removed, then replace that profile picture of you committing several capital crimes at once with a boring headshot (the photographic kind) of yourself in business attire. Statistically speaking, after the first week or so, you should have at least been pinged by a bot or two. Perhaps your profile should explicitly say that you are a live human with a pulse?
- thecodeboss 10y ago
  Hi - Here it is https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkrauss48 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkrauss48 While I got recruited about 10 months ago, all the information should be the same (besides a new job).
- asuffield 10y ago
  The only plausible way for this to happen is for you to check all the "privacy" buttons in the settings, so that no recruiters can find you. Otherwise you should expect to receive a lot of recruiter spam.
fredliu 10y ago
His package (base salary + bonus + average vested stock each year) seems to be standard with regard to the position he's applying. Still, with that package, if Seattle's cost of living is the show stopper (not cheap by any means), then I guess never bother trying at Google/Facebook/equivalents in the Bay Area...
deleted 10y ago
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derptron 10y ago
I'm so nervous in interviews that I get nervous just reading these stories.
ktRolster 10y ago
This is the proper way to handle recruiters: I responded saying that working for Amazon would be awesome, but for me and Layla to move up to Seattle would require a 170-200k salary. I assumed this recruiter would take a look at that number, scoff, and politely end our conversation – but she affirmed that they could work with that, and asked if I wanted to set up a phone interview. If you still get too many, then it's time to increase your salary requirement.
overcast 10y ago
Pretty nice of Amazon to say high hundreds, waste time, and then offer low hundreds. Even after explaining from the very start, that this was a requirement.
iamleppert 10y ago
I wouldn't work for Amazon if my life depended on it. I interviewed once with A2Z. Phone coding interview, working on their music service. I was just coming from a major company in the space where I did the exact thing they needed and they recruited me based upon the strength of the product I developed. I answered and passed all questions without a sign of issue. I was expecting the new step was an in-person interview, and in fact was told that. Although I was local, I got called again to do another phone screen, more coding. I told the recruiter that I already had other offers and would be more than happy to do coding on site, so I could streamline the process. She didn't like this and put up a hard-lined attitude about it, insisted I needed more basic questions. Totally treated me like less than a person and didn't care that I had other offers that would expire. Acted like it was a gift that Amazon was interested in me at all. Who seriously puts up with this crap? One can only imagine how working for a company must be if this is how their hiring process works. I hung up the phone and last I checked I wouldn't want to be working at the music thing anyway.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  It's a really tough job market for a lot of people. I would guess as a total ballpark that 80% of people who apply to Amazon would absolutely jump through hoops all day just to get an interview. They're almost always not going to be a good fit, but if you deal applicants all day and they're overwhelmingly kissing your ass for the time of day, it's easy to see why someone with narcissistic traits would get huffy when someone doesn't follow their every whim.
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throwaway_ddb 10y ago
I had a couple phone screens with them for an AWS role in Palo Alto. They not only forgot to call me for both of them (we rescheduled both times), but my interviewers could not have come across as less interested had they tried. I went through some basic algorithms with them and asked questions about how they wanted to handle errors and edge cases only to be brushed off "do whatever" or "that's fine"--and not in the friendly "don't worry about that" sense, more with a "why are you wasting my time?" tone. I asked about what they worked on and was told either very basic details that I knew as a user or "I can't talk about that." /shrug A week after the second screen, I got sent a form letter "no" from my recruiter, which was just fine by me. I've accepted an offer from a rival of theirs and I can't wait to kick their asses.
whybroke 10y ago
A point I hope employers note: The first reason he lists for declining the offer; salary was too low relative to housing prices.
nso95 10y ago
Why is everything opposed to algo/ds questions? If you understand them conceptually and know how to program, you should be able to implement them.
bastijn 10y ago
I read a lot of comments on bad behaviour of Amazon, which might be. Also a comment series on the lowball offer and wasting his time if there wouldn't be an offer in the 170k range. Also true. But I think it is in order to tell the author of the story as well not to waste their time. This time it's Amazon who most of us don't like, but in generic it could be any company. If your main reason for not going has nothing to do with the offer or job itself but only with something you could, and should have considered beforehand you effectively wasted the companies time, not the other way around. They gave you a free test.
ruirr 10y ago
My experience being interview by Amazon is mixed...I had a screening call + three phone interviews with Amazon, for an elite devops system/network team. They were amazing and very nice people, from the initial RH contact to the technicians evaluating me. Actually to be fair, EXTRA nice people. On the other hand, some other recruiter messed up, and put me with an interview that I only found out at the last minute it was for a system help desk position in some other occasion. That experience was horrible, and the technician who was supposed to conduct the interview missed it and passed on the interview to an indian employee which accent I barely could keep up with...I just did not abort the interview out of respect. What I would say is that they handle differently people that applies for the more important positions, and in that respect, they are not much more different from other big players in the industry. To give credit to Amazon, their hiring process seems to be saner than Google, where you get contacted by a lot of clueless 3rd party headhunters that try to coax senior people like me into lowly positions that do not match our experience.
draw_down 10y ago
I know people who have worked there and have read so many horror stories. And beyond that not even horror stories, just plain old stories about it being a shitty place to work. I'm sure it's possible to get a good job there, not everyone's life can be miserable there. But I wouldn't roll those dice, would you?

222 points by voltagex_ 10y ago

Sounds like my experience last month, except I was interviewing for a low-level software position and didn't get an offer. :/ Actually, I only asked for $130k base and felt guilty about that.

The_Hoff 10y ago
No joke, I've heard of companies equating ask-salary to self-worth and that a modest request can cost you.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  That thought has crossed my mind. Sometimes I feel like that question is some sort of bullshit test to see if you over- or under-value yourself. Based on the StackOverflow transparency discussion yesterday I think I am underpaid by about $10k to begin with, which I have still not fully internalized.

larrik 10y ago

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 brought this up to one recruiter a few years ago, they basically acknowledged the reputation and their intent to improve. Perhaps unlike HN, I've never seriously considered joining a mega-corporation like Google, Facebook, or Amazon. I just don't see the appeal, nor do I want to work in a city (SV, Seattle, NYC, or otherwise).

Bartweiss 10y ago
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 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. Between the blind hostility of that opener and the meat-grinder rep, I passed without interviewing (and passed with the next Amazon recruiter shortly after, who had no idea they'd pinged me before). I'm sure this routine is reserved for new grads, and the weird "don't lean out of frame" stuff seemed to be from some interview-management third party, but it was still the most stilted process I've seen from an actual software company.
- dominotw 10y ago
  I applied to amazon last month, they asked me to do interviewstreet coding for 2 hrs. After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. He simply stopped all communications with me. Reflects their attitude of treating ppl as mere 'resources' , I would work for amazon if I have no self-respect.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. That's pretty common recently for companies. I'm not sure why.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      Some claim it's them covering their ass thanks to the SUE SUE SUE culture of the US. I understand that, but when it's a purely technical decision they could easily enough give you constructive feedback. You missed these two edge cases. Your code crashes on certain inputs. This is very inefficient, you could have done XYZ. You could automate chunks of this, and protect yourself from any discrimination lawsuits by just making any engineer who reviews the code have zero knowledge of the candidate.

ivraatiems 10y ago

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 the same as making $120k in Seattle or the Bay Area. If you make $80,000 in a small midwestern town, you're coming out ahead of the guy/gal pulling six figures in SF. It's an important consideration and one I think many employers try to get you to ignore.

cloudjacker 10y ago
Genuinely curious, do people really not consider these things? I've noticed it is continually easy to wow people with dollar numbers, but I don't know what their thought process is.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  I know I didn't until it was pointed out to me that I should. It's one of those things where it's totally logical but also not something somebody who's never moved from city to city (like me, until that point) would realize.
perspectivep 10y ago
> So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's the same as making $120k in Seattle or the Bay Area. Not true at all. I made almost that exact jump when moving from the Midwest to Seattle. You're forgetting things like raises, bonuses, and 401(k) matching that are a % of your salary. Sign-on bonuses and stock benefits are common out here but rare in the Midwest. 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. Not to mention you can probably keep most of your salary if you decide to move back to the Midwest.
- 10y ago

steven777400 10y ago

I had a similar situation (but with Microsoft), and although in my case it would have been a net improvement in income (probably), there was impact on family and stability to consider, so I declined the offer. I think being aware of priorities for each person and each phase of life is important. There's times when big name or (relatively speaking) big salary is the prime factor, and that's great, and go for it! There's also times when being close to family, staying rooted, and being stable is the prime factor, and that's ok too.

hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago

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?

kentosi 10y ago
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.
- sneezing_turtle 10y ago
  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.
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
No, you aren't wrong. That recruiter did not do a good job. The salary range talk is always up front to ensure that candidates and the company aren't wasting one anothers time. If the process gets to the offer stage, it needs to be in the range discussed up front. It costs me money (in terms of PTO) to come out and interview, and it costs the company thousands in time and expenses to conduct it. That recruiter essentially pissed away a couple grand without any real prospect of hiring. As a hiring manager, I'd be upset about that if it happened in my company. I had this happen early in my career. Recruiter and I talked about a range, went through 3 rounds of interviews, and I got an offer below what I was currently making. Absolutely not in the discussed range. The offer came via email and I was insulted - I declined without negotiation. I still have the email, and I was apparently pretty polite. A week later they pinged me back to ask if I had considered it, if I was dissatisfied and that they could go up. I just politely restated my decline. They'd already wasted my time, and as junior as I was, my time was still valuable - I took time out of work, traveled, etc. That was almost 10 years ago and I'm still salty about it. That should tell you what kind of impression this behavior leaves behind. Looking back at the emails now, I am very surprised at how professional and polite I was about it - my memories of 20-something me are apparently overblown :)

patja 10y ago

What is the general take on the initial ballpark of 170k - 200k vs. the actual offer of low 6 figures? Is that just how the game is played and to be expected (e.g., never believe anything they say to get you into interviews), or is it something to be affronted by: why did we both waste all of our time on this process? Or is it likely to be somewhere in the middle...maybe if he blew everyone away in the interviews he would have received an offer for 180k, but he didn't so it was more of a 115k assessment?

vkou 10y ago
They interviewed him assuming he was a senior candidate, the interviewers gave feedback that said "Good enough to hire, but not good enough to hire as a senior."

cloudjacker 10y ago

> I was honestly pretty shocked that I had gotten an offer, and told the HR person that I would get back to them within a week after I discussed this with my family. Upvote if your startup pretended that your offer would expire in 48 hours #WordGamesFromSandHill

johnwheeler 10y ago

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 your stdlib: list, hash, set. There's only one time in my 20 year career I've ever had to implement my own data structure (Directed Graph), and I basically copied it line by line out of a book and ended up replacing it with Neo4j.

nogridbag 10y ago
I was actually quite surprised the questions were relatively basic (and web-dev focused) for a position with the AWS team.
- segmondy 10y ago
  Perhaps he would be working on the front end, have you seen the frontend for AWS? Nothing fancy!
dominotw 10y ago
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.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  It's much more important to get a smart and adaptable programmer than one who memorized his compsci textbooks. Yes, an understanding of data structures and algorithms can be helpful, but unless messing around in that space is really going to comprise a large percentage of on-the-job duties (and as the grandparent indicated, it's not for 99% of us who can just use the canned implementations from the stdlib), it's stupid to make it a large percentage of success in the interview process. I'm glad to hear that Amazon kept the textbook-style questions light -- it's not what you usually hear about happening in interviews with big tech companies.

dudul 10y ago

Nice post. Confirmed that I was right to systematically ignore Amazon recruiters.

jasoncchild 10y ago

this is by far the most thoughtful mic-drop i've read today

jvehent 10y ago

And this is why remote work for tech people is the future. Timezones are still an issue, but if you're willing to adapt your work hours to meet the majority, being remote allows you to work for fantastic companies without sacrificing your way of life.

envyUser 10y ago
They tried this with India, it failed. It's why we need such a robust H1b "solution".
- e12e 10y ago
  One of the few interesting presentations I've seen by a top consulting firm, was given by a regional manager in Norway for Accenture - he talked about their experience with outsourcing to India (this was in the early 00s). Basically it came down to a cultural (business culture) divide, communication, and differences in education. Throwing half-baked specs over the fence to people from a different culture, who's main qualification wasn't that you could get them at all, but that you could get them cheaply unsurprisingly lead to catastrophic project failures. Sending consultants both ways to work locally together for a while, creating real mixed teams -- worked better. Tell Stackoverflow, Trello and Gitlab that remote teams doesn't work. Of course it can work, but you need to plan for it. Oh, and team members that are any good, will command a high salary. Don't pay them, and they'll jump ship.
markest1973 10y ago
You are correct. I work remotely for Red Hat in a generally lower cost-of-living area. Big company salary (plus 401k match, stock, bonuses, etc.) in an area that is, from what I read, ~11% cheaper than average. Life is good.

kentosi 10y ago

My experience was the complete opposite. I interviewed for them when they came to Sydney. The recruiter on LinkedIn said that it was for a senior Java developer role. We even spoke over the phone to go through some of what the role involved. The actual interviewing process was half a day of being interviewed by various people from different departments, some asking sysops questions, some asking general BA questions, some asking network/IP related questions, and 2 (if I remember correctly) actually asking programming/developer questions. One was shocked that I didn't have a laptop with me, which was not at all part of the instructions. The process was nowhere near as organised as what's mentioned in this blog, and this was somewhat recent (late 2015 I think?) Perhaps their overseas recruitment arm seriously needs better coordination?

thecodeboss 10y ago

Hey - I wrote this! =D

ozten 10y ago

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't think it is a good idea to post the actual questions one is asked. As an interviewer, I like to use the same question so I can calibrate across candidates.

mrswag 10y ago
They made him lose his time, I think it's fair game.

saosebastiao 10y ago

I'm gonna ignore the fact that this is for Amazon, which has its own criticism. Anybody who is baffled by the author's insistence on $170-200k but the offer of low 6 figures needs to read up on negotiation. I recommend the various videos/books/posts by Ramit Sethi that are specific to salary negotiation. If you give the number first, you lose. They will only negotiate downward from there. You can deflect in a million different ways (which are covered by Ramit extensively), and each time you deflect your advantage increases. They can persist in a million different ways ("I'm sorry, this is just procedure" is probably the most common), but if you cave and give them a number, it will only go down from there. If you give them a range, the best offer you will ever get is the low part of the range. Don't give them a number...wait for them to offer, then negotiate upwards.

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linkregister 10y ago
I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with this as a steadfast maxim. I think overall your statement fits maybe even 75% of negotiations but many do not fit this mold. Overall, your BATNA (and your counterparty's) is the most important factor in the negotiation. Numbers can certainly go up, especially with changes in your BATNA. Case in point: "I've just received a higher offer; I would accept yours if you could match it + $10k." People post articles on HN all the time talking about how they get companies to outbid each other. More important than "never giving the number first" is being steadfast in what you want (within realistic bounds). I have followed both styles but haven't been penalized by starting with the number first. If you're the best candidate, the company will pay what you insist on. Otherwise, the "never giving the number first" was never going to work to begin with.
hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
That is the traditional advice, but I'm not sure how true it is. You should read up on the anchoring principle. Basically, all negotiations revolve around the first number given, so it is often in your best interest to throw out a large number.
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deanCommie 10y ago

I'd rather be homeless and broke in Seattle than living in a mansion in OKC.

aianus 10y ago
I'd rather be homeless and broke in a sunny third world country than ever visit Seattle again. So what?
- plandis 10y ago
  I'm curious why is Seattle so bad you'd give up the relative safety to live in a third world country?
  - larrykubin 10y ago
    I live in Seattle. I get really depressed from December-February due to the lack of sunshine, and I've found it to be a more difficult place socially compared to other cities I've lived and worked in. To the point where I have frequently thought about leaving. That said, I played beach volleyball all day yesterday with some friends as the sun set over the Olympic mountains in the background, and it was greatness. But it took me a couple of years to find my place. Happy as can be at the moment, but it's odd how the gray can send me into a spiral of inward reflection that drives me nuts. Everyone posts the beautiful pictures of Mount Rainier and sunsets, which are gorgeous, but half the year you can feel lethargic and go into a hibernation mode which messes with your head if you don't have a strong social circle already.
    - drewrv 10y ago
      The secret to living in Seattle is to take a week off in February and go to Hawaii or Cabo.
    - fragola 10y ago
      I live in Seattle. I love the look on new coworkers' faces when they see Mt Rainier for the first time in April: "HOLY COW IS THAT A VOLCANO??"

george_ciobanu 10y ago

I thought one is not supposed to share actual technical interview questions?

magic_beans 10y ago
Only if one has accepted the offer, which, spoiler alert, this guy did not.
- Buge 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure I had to sign NDAs regarding coding questions before any interviews happened (not Amazon, a different company).
  - freyir 10y ago
    What are they going to do? Take you to court for vaguely describing a coding question?
    - asuffield 10y ago
      The status quo is that the company whose questions you leaked will never hire you again in the future, and other tech companies who find out about this while researching you as a possible hire might also decide to never hire you. It's the difference between a polite "this offer doesn't work for me at the moment", and burning your bridges. (However, this particular article doesn't seem to discuss any specifics of technical questions, so I don't see an issue here)
  - eamsen 10y ago
    Interesting, I've never had to sign an NDA before my interviews (at top tech companies) including the on-site/offer stages. I don't share questions as a matter of principle, fwiw.
  - brown9-2 10y ago
    Did the NDA specifically refer to the interview process? Usually they mention any sort of business practices or plans you might learn about in the course of interviewing; recruitment is highly unlikely to fall under that definition.

Phlarp 10y ago

Hearing that the recruiter more or less committed to a 170K+ range, only to waste significant amounts of interviewee time before rendering a below market offer is really concerning. Amazon is in direct competition for talent with Google, Facebook and Microsoft and from what information I can gather they all pay significantly more while also lacking the bad reputation Amazon has accrued over the years for being a complete meat-grinder. (whether or not the others are actually meat-grinders is still up for debate: but they don't have a public reputation for being such) Why does talent in our industry continue to accept this kind of treatment? If name brand law firms tried to pull this shit with associate lawyers I suspect they would get sent invoices for the billable hours.

amzn-336495 10y ago
Amazon is not in direct competition with those companies. Amazon bottom feeds on new grad hires, people with restrictive visas, and interns. Their 90th percentile pay for developers is going to be about $120k per year with maybe a $150k total comp target. They may hire a few dozen top people per year, but for the most part no one ever quits those companies to go to Amazon.
- Phlarp 10y ago
  Of course few people quit google or facebook to go work for amazon unless it's a Marissa Mayer-esque jump in the org chart. The real question to ask is how many individual technical contributors does Amazon lose to the others?

outworlder 10y ago

A whole day dedicated to onsite interviews, plus traveling time. How do employed people manage that? I understand that, from the company's point of view, 1 day is still to short to assess someone. But it is still a lot of time dedicated to an offer that may or may not materialize.

ljk 10y ago
> How do employed people manage that? taking day off from work.
icedchai 10y ago
We either call in sick, or make something up. I have used various excuses. Once I said I had to "get some tests on my thyroid" and would be unavailable for most of the day.
draw_down 10y ago
Employed people mange that by not being chained to their desks?

linkregister 10y ago

Kudos on the author for sticking to what he said was his bottom line. This episode benefits all developers/engineers because we need to incentivize software companies to branch out beyond SF, Seattle, Boulder, and NYC.

SonicSoul 10y ago

Great write-up! I'd love to see the linked in profile that generates such great leads. I've tried to improve and polish my linked in profile but still not hearing from recruiters. I must be doing something horribly wrong

logfromblammo 10y ago
If you are on LinkedIn and have not been contacted by recruiters, I would suggest that you go ahead and get that face tattoo removed, then replace that profile picture of you committing several capital crimes at once with a boring headshot (the photographic kind) of yourself in business attire. Statistically speaking, after the first week or so, you should have at least been pinged by a bot or two. Perhaps your profile should explicitly say that you are a live human with a pulse?
thecodeboss 10y ago
Hi - Here it is https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkrauss48 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkrauss48 While I got recruited about 10 months ago, all the information should be the same (besides a new job).
asuffield 10y ago
The only plausible way for this to happen is for you to check all the "privacy" buttons in the settings, so that no recruiters can find you. Otherwise you should expect to receive a lot of recruiter spam.

fredliu 10y ago

His package (base salary + bonus + average vested stock each year) seems to be standard with regard to the position he's applying. Still, with that package, if Seattle's cost of living is the show stopper (not cheap by any means), then I guess never bother trying at Google/Facebook/equivalents in the Bay Area...

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derptron 10y ago

I'm so nervous in interviews that I get nervous just reading these stories.

ktRolster 10y ago

This is the proper way to handle recruiters: I responded saying that working for Amazon would be awesome, but for me and Layla to move up to Seattle would require a 170-200k salary. I assumed this recruiter would take a look at that number, scoff, and politely end our conversation – but she affirmed that they could work with that, and asked if I wanted to set up a phone interview. If you still get too many, then it's time to increase your salary requirement.

overcast 10y ago

Pretty nice of Amazon to say high hundreds, waste time, and then offer low hundreds. Even after explaining from the very start, that this was a requirement.

iamleppert 10y ago

I wouldn't work for Amazon if my life depended on it. I interviewed once with A2Z. Phone coding interview, working on their music service. I was just coming from a major company in the space where I did the exact thing they needed and they recruited me based upon the strength of the product I developed. I answered and passed all questions without a sign of issue. I was expecting the new step was an in-person interview, and in fact was told that. Although I was local, I got called again to do another phone screen, more coding. I told the recruiter that I already had other offers and would be more than happy to do coding on site, so I could streamline the process. She didn't like this and put up a hard-lined attitude about it, insisted I needed more basic questions. Totally treated me like less than a person and didn't care that I had other offers that would expire. Acted like it was a gift that Amazon was interested in me at all. Who seriously puts up with this crap? One can only imagine how working for a company must be if this is how their hiring process works. I hung up the phone and last I checked I wouldn't want to be working at the music thing anyway.

whamlastxmas 10y ago
It's a really tough job market for a lot of people. I would guess as a total ballpark that 80% of people who apply to Amazon would absolutely jump through hoops all day just to get an interview. They're almost always not going to be a good fit, but if you deal applicants all day and they're overwhelmingly kissing your ass for the time of day, it's easy to see why someone with narcissistic traits would get huffy when someone doesn't follow their every whim.

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throwaway_ddb 10y ago

I had a couple phone screens with them for an AWS role in Palo Alto. They not only forgot to call me for both of them (we rescheduled both times), but my interviewers could not have come across as less interested had they tried. I went through some basic algorithms with them and asked questions about how they wanted to handle errors and edge cases only to be brushed off "do whatever" or "that's fine"--and not in the friendly "don't worry about that" sense, more with a "why are you wasting my time?" tone. I asked about what they worked on and was told either very basic details that I knew as a user or "I can't talk about that." /shrug A week after the second screen, I got sent a form letter "no" from my recruiter, which was just fine by me. I've accepted an offer from a rival of theirs and I can't wait to kick their asses.

whybroke 10y ago

A point I hope employers note: The first reason he lists for declining the offer; salary was too low relative to housing prices.

nso95 10y ago

Why is everything opposed to algo/ds questions? If you understand them conceptually and know how to program, you should be able to implement them.

bastijn 10y ago

I read a lot of comments on bad behaviour of Amazon, which might be. Also a comment series on the lowball offer and wasting his time if there wouldn't be an offer in the 170k range. Also true. But I think it is in order to tell the author of the story as well not to waste their time. This time it's Amazon who most of us don't like, but in generic it could be any company. If your main reason for not going has nothing to do with the offer or job itself but only with something you could, and should have considered beforehand you effectively wasted the companies time, not the other way around. They gave you a free test.

ruirr 10y ago

My experience being interview by Amazon is mixed...I had a screening call + three phone interviews with Amazon, for an elite devops system/network team. They were amazing and very nice people, from the initial RH contact to the technicians evaluating me. Actually to be fair, EXTRA nice people. On the other hand, some other recruiter messed up, and put me with an interview that I only found out at the last minute it was for a system help desk position in some other occasion. That experience was horrible, and the technician who was supposed to conduct the interview missed it and passed on the interview to an indian employee which accent I barely could keep up with...I just did not abort the interview out of respect. What I would say is that they handle differently people that applies for the more important positions, and in that respect, they are not much more different from other big players in the industry. To give credit to Amazon, their hiring process seems to be saner than Google, where you get contacted by a lot of clueless 3rd party headhunters that try to coax senior people like me into lowly positions that do not match our experience.

draw_down 10y ago

I know people who have worked there and have read so many horror stories. And beyond that not even horror stories, just plain old stories about it being a shitty place to work. I'm sure it's possible to get a good job there, not everyone's life can be miserable there. But I wouldn't roll those dice, would you?