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Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

• iamleppert 10y ago
  Why would anyone want to ever work for Amazon? Their culture is terrible and they are not innovative despite their claims to the contrary. They are simply a technical sweat shop that tries a lot of random things. There's more to life than working for a big tech company. Big tech companies are the worst. If you value your life and you're a creative person and good at what you do, find yourself a (good) medium size company that pays well. They're out there.
  • perryh2 10y ago
    Some people don't have the privilege of working anywhere other than big companies. They're completely fine at big companies and can overlook seemingly terrible culture because they can get immigration visas and green cards. Most startups and medium-sized software companies don't even consider applicants that aren't American. I don't have an American last name and the first question many recruiters ask me is about my citizenship.
    • flukus 10y ago
      > I don't have an American last name and the first question many recruiters ask me is about my citizenship. That's because for every job advertised they'll get a flood of applications from around the world.
    • abc_lisper 10y ago
      > Most startups and medium-sized software companies don't even consider applicants that aren't American. Not true! atleast not in bay area. I have worked for many years on H-1 here, along with others on the same visa.
  • JohnMunsch 10y ago
    Long before the working conditions became commonly known I heard it described as "a dirty cube farm." Wow. How appealing. Nothing about Amazon has ever appealed. Not their pay, certainly not their track record for hardware products (all terrible with the exception of the Echo), and not their other software with the exception of some of the stuff AWS has done.
  • algaexe 10y ago
    I think it's unfair to characterize a company with over 200,000 employees as a technical sweatshop. The organizational structure is flat to limit the reach of poor management and lacklustre engineering. I loved my job as an intern there. My manager was great. My team was great. Everyone worked between 8 and 10 hours per hours, with those on the latter end of the spectrum being intense, CS-in-your-veins types. I can respect your perspective if you've worked there and your experience left much to be desired, but it is still a bit silly to make sweeping generalizations for a company as large and expansive as Amazon.
• quantumtremor 10y ago
  Reiterating the questions posed at the end, To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work? What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)? It is true that it'd be pretty easy to circumvent the tracking, by placing paper over the webcam, running the browser in a virtual machine, spoofing data to the browser, and so on. However these are infeasible for most non-technical people, so I don't think it's a real solution. Freedom shouldn't be only for those with extremely technical knowledge.
  • walrus01 10y ago
    To an even greater extent, ethics is a serious issue in network engineering as well. What happens when you're an employee of an ISP in Turkey and you're asked to MITM all port 53/DNS traffic? Or implement something like DNS lookup redirects to an advertising page? Censorship? The UK GCHQ and snooper's charter requires you to run a transparent http proxy and keep logs of every site every residential customer visits? You work for a Thai ISP and the government orders you to block everything that insults the king and royal family? You do network enginering for a mobile phone network operator in a developing African nation and they want to redesign parts of their network to support participation in the Facebook "free basics" walled garden internet for your GSM/UMTS/HSPA+/LTE type customers? edit: there are a lot of things you can do to mess with a properly functioning internet, on the behalf of autocratic regimes or greedy corporations, just at OSI layers 2, 3 and 4... That's before you even get to the level of operating system and applications/software engineering.
  • negamax 10y ago
    I don't personally see anything wrong with these remote, screen based, assessment requirements. These are to curb any chance of cheating. If we focus on reason instead of jumping the gun to privacy violation. Coming to your question. First question is easy. In a business environment, subjected to international rules and regulations; ethics are a priority. Second one not so. Kind of similar to when does it become acceptable to rob someone if robber can't make ends meet. Depending on jurisdiction; court will decide level of leniency.
  • jellicle 10y ago
• na85 10y ago
  That is absolutely draconian.
• zeppelin101 10y ago
  Wait, I see nothing wrong with any of this. Obviously Amazon is trying to curb cheating on remote coding/compatibility tests. They don't actually care to collect any info about you beyond what you do during the test. They don't care which websites you visit before or after the test. Or how you use your clipboard - after the test. But during the test, it's not so unreasonable. People do cheat, especially if they can get away with it and when the payoff is potentially huge.
  • elizabethanera 10y ago
    habituate the populace to inspection
    • zeppelin101 10y ago
      It's a modern-day (i.e. 'digital') proctored exam. It's not the equivalent of CCTV in UK.
  • quantumtremor 10y ago
    Yes, I agree that cheating should be curbed. But not at the expense of tracking every running application on a computer, or the exact location of interviewees. Videochat and on-site interviews exist and don't have these kind of problems.
    • zeppelin101 10y ago
      Ok, but any techie should have little problem preparing an environment for such a test. Use that freshly formatted, dusted off laptop from college? Maybe even consider using a VM, like others suggested. Or how about install a portable version of Google Chrome, so no existing browser data or extensions would be a cause for concern (or worse, imagine a buggy extension crashing the browser and, thus, ending the test session)?
      • mynameisvlad 10y ago
        But the real question is: should they have to? Quantumtremor already listed several alternatives that indeed don't have the same problems. Why would you risk ruining the goodwill of your privacy-conscious applicants by making them format a laptop, create a VM, or even install another application. None of that is going to make me want to do your interview.
• minimaxir 10y ago
  ...so what is the answer to 27 : 24 :: 64 : ?
  • quantumtremor 10y ago
    My best guess is n^3:n^3-n, making the answer 60, but I have no idea what the real answer is.
  • RyanCavanaugh 10y ago
    27 is 3 * 3 * 3 and 24 is (3 - 1) * 3 * (3 + 1) 64 is 4 * 4 * 4 and _60_ is (4 - 1) * 4 * (4 + 1)
    • drvdevd 10y ago
      Thanks. I would've failed this question :)
  • powercf 10y ago
    56.8… Given that they've defined "::" differently to the usual "as" the answer could be anything. More specifically, the answer is f(64), where f(x) is wharever was in the head of the guy who made the question. The same goes for the "what is the next number in this sequence" questions: unknowable given the information provided.
    • userbinator 10y ago
      The answer is "x, such that x is an element of the set containing Everything." But personally, if asked this question suddenly, I would've gone for the simplest: 61, because 27 - 24 = 64 - 61.
    • plaguuuuuu 10y ago
      just find an f(x) where f(x) is in [a,b,c,d] and f(x) isn't so arcane that its unrealistic that the examiner would've had it in mind.
  • throwaway012304 10y ago
• 58028641 10y ago
  Running it in a VM can bypass/block most of those restrictions.
  • brianwawok 10y ago
    Or you know, having another computer? I literally have 12 computers or phones in my house. Could I not use another one if I needed to cheat that badly?
    • 58028641 10y ago
      You would have to disable the camera so they did not see you reading off of another screen.
      • brianwawok 10y ago
        My desktop does not have a webcam.
    • runarb 10y ago
      They may catch you if they replay * Your webcam video * Your head movements * Your eye movements * Your mouth movements that was all collected during the test.
      • 58028641 10y ago
        Tape over the webcam. If they ask, just say you always gave tape over your webcam for security reasons. You could also use a computer without a webcam.
        • antisthenes 10y ago
          That will probably result in an automatic fail.
      • kuschku 10y ago
        Not necessarily. You can use an HDMI splitter, and merge the videos of the two computers. As overlay. You can also program the second computer to have a mouse controlled by a single muscular activation in your cheek or tongue – for example, if you have a tongue piercing, put a magnet in, use a phone to recognize the magnetic field, tape the phone below your desk (it’ll measure the difference from movement), and connect that to the PC. No way to recognize it for them, and you circumvented it entirely. They’re trying to fight against people whose job is to circumvent weird complicated restrictions, and finding workarounds.
• iliveinseattle 10y ago
  feels like this person is overreacting. You should also not be sharing any questions that were asked.
  • kafkaesq 10y ago
    No, it feels like Amazon is over-reacting, and unduly distrustful of the bright young people who would wager their careers and reputations to come work for them.
    • pinewurst 10y ago
      And if they do, it'll probably only be for the minimum term anyway given what an awful workplace Amazon is. I live in Seattle and hear Amazon stories all the time. https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/
    • pszczurko 10y ago
      Yes and no. I think Amazon is trying to make their intern recruitment process more efficient. By eliminating cheating possibilities, people who do not meet certain criteria will not move forward and thus there will be less phone screens to schedule.
    • andrewguenther 10y ago
      Cheating in interviews is real and shockingly common. I don't think this is as much of an overreaction as you think it is.
      • kafkaesq 10y ago
        I'm not saying that there's no "benefit" to these restrictions. It's just that (1) they address problems that can be easily solved otherwise, and (2) they come with substantial negative side effects -- like turning away any candidates with a shred of self-respect and/or some notion of their true worth (even as a fresh engineering grad) on the open market.
• tn13 10y ago
  As someone who has first hand experienced cheating in interviews I think this is an extremely good move. I know some people in bay area who are making > $100k in cash (no taxes paid) just by answering screening interviews on other people's behalf. This is called "interview by proxy" and the person generally takes first month's salary as remuneration in cash.
  • sbierwagen 10y ago
    I find this hard to believe. The only hit for "interview by proxy" relevant to technical interviewing seems to be a TDWTF article.
  • pavlov 10y ago
    If an employer is so disorganized that this doesn't become obvious during the first month of working there, they probably have much greater problems than cheating on their idiotic cargo cult coding tests, and fixing the cheating would do absolutely nothing to save the company.
    • brianwawok 10y ago
      "Wow funny how you were an Asian woman on the phone screen, and the first day of work you are a white male. Oh well, must just be a mistake"
      • walrus01 10y ago
        "How dare you assume my gender! I identify as a transsexual furry otherkin dragon werewolf".
        • tn13 10y ago
          Lawsuite is coming for sexual harassment and verbal abuse say the employee now. :)
    • andrewguenther 10y ago
      "this doesn't become obvious during the first month of working there" This is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Do you know how difficult it is to fire a person? Do you know how much it costs to hire someone? You've given this person a relocation bonus, possibly put in the work to set up a visa, given the first chunk of a signing bonus....
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• kafkaesq 10y ago
  The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam: Your microphone Your webcam Your physical location Your head movements Your eye movements Your mouth movements Creepy as all get-out. By all means, lets have more leaks like this.
  • rl3 10y ago
    Not to mention: Any website you visit What a fantastic way of driving away virtually every candidate that's even remotely high-caliber.
    • andrewguenther 10y ago
      Keep in mind, this is during the test. What are you going to do, take a break and load up some porn? These conditions only apply for the 24 minutes in which you take the test. How is this different than if a person were watching you during an interview?
      • will_hughes 10y ago
        Keep in mind that if you have extensions installed, many of those extensions will make callbacks to other services. This will track the use of those, too.
      • rl3 10y ago
        It's the principle of it. Needlessly invasive. It's my hardware, and my network traffic—not theirs. Using such a system in the first place also signals their ineptitude at hiring, or at least an ignorance of quality hiring practices. >What are you going to do, take a break and load up some porn? Well, yes: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/669103856106668033/UF3cgUk4.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/669103856106668033/UF3c... [NSFW]
        • prodigal_erik 10y ago
          What's the non-inept way to stop cheating on the test? They can't ask the applicant to walk into their neighborhood Faraday cage.
• Robadob 10y ago
  They sometimes use a similar locked down browser (respondus) for in class assessments at my university. Never used it myself, so not sure how similarly fine grained any tracking is.
• bsg75 10y ago
  > You will not be able to open any tabs or windows If I had to code purely from memory, without the benefit of language or library docs, I would not be able to write anything of use. Personally when hiring, I'm not interested in a candidate's memory recall, but the ability to use resources when faced with a new challenge.
  • shorodei 10y ago
    Within these restrictions, I don't think they expect your written code to compile. They just want to ensure the integrity of the test itself. Is it worth the invasion of privacy? Personally, I don't think so.
    • Barrin92 10y ago
      Well if you participate in an on-site test which the person was willing to do you are essentially tested under the same conditions, so I'd not really consider this to be a privacy invasion.
      • khedoros1 10y ago
        You're presumably giving them a view into your home and its location. You'd potentially be required to change security settings on your computer, to re-enable things that had been explicitly disabled. You're likely to also want to close whichever browser tabs or open programs that might be deemed unprofessional. Those are all things that I'd consider invasive that I don't have to deal with during an in-person interview. And the wording is just creepy anyhow.
        • Barrin92 10y ago
          True enough, but not everybody actually lives in places where on-site testing is an option, and they'd probably prefer cleaning their room up to not having the ability to apply for a job. And given that all of this happens voluntarily, and assuming that Amazon isn't going to infect you with malware(which seems very unlikely) this kind of testing is a great opportunity for people who have the resources or time to show up in person. There's some kind of privacy chauvinism involved in these discussions that ignores the realities of people who don't live next to the Amazon HQ.
• throwbsidbdk 10y ago
  I can see why they might do this, anyone that can land a job with similar benefits somewhere else probably doesn't even apply, leaving them with the worst to choose from. Their climate gets even tougher because they "can't hire enough good engineers" and the cycle repeats.
• brudgers 10y ago
  If nothing else, the requirements screen for people likely to accept similar conditions in the workplace.
• Crito 10y ago
  >"Hopefully these should convince you that this test has absolutely nothing to do with programming skill." It's a rather blatant IQ test, though of course they would never call it that because that would open them up to disparate impact lawsuits.
• randomuser9227 10y ago
  Other companies aren't so draconian, and don't tend to treat potential talent so poorly. https://careers.mozilla.org/university/ https://careers.mozilla.org/university/
  • avarun 10y ago
    It's been a month, haven't heard anything, and ended up having to accept a different offer, so everywhere has their own problems.
• Arkaad 10y ago
  Seems like Amazon has trust issues.
• Spooky23 10y ago
  Have you ever done lots of remote interviews in a big company? The scamming is unbelievable. I've personally seen outright fraud... the guy in the video was a redhead with freckles, his name was an ethnic Vietnamese. Somehow they brought him in for an in-person interview, a Vietnamese dude shows up. - Clueless. Guy was literally reading a manual. - One guy offered me a bribe. - one guy asked if his status as an illegal and conviction for hacking a phone company back home would effect things.
  • draw_down 10y ago
    I can believe a company has their reasons for doing this. I also think they can kiss my ass if they expect me to agree to this.
  • flukus 10y ago
    So maybe we have to accept that remote interviews aren't feasible.
• drubio 10y ago
  As much as I would like to bash Amazon for their draconian and insane interview loops -- which I've been put through once. The post clearly states these clauses were part of an exam taken on https://proctorio.com/ https://proctorio.com/ for the Amazon interview. So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses. I would happily bash Amazon interview loops all day long, but in this particular case, I would also need to criticize anyone else that uses https://proctorio.com/ https://proctorio.com/ for these practices.
  • kafkaesq 10y ago
    So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses. By all accounts, Amazon is a pretty tightly-run organization. And given the scale of the hiring they do, you be pretty sure that in fact, yes they are exactly aware of what proctorio is doing -- and chose them for precisely that reason.
    • jasoncchild 10y ago
      Both of these points are conjecture
      • kafkaesq 10y ago
        "Both" as in yours and mine, agreed.
  • kstenerud 10y ago
    An HR person who signs off on this without requiring verification by a vetted software engineer would demonstrate poor judgment indeed. The whole point of having a responsible person is that the buck stops with them.
  • madeofpalk 10y ago
    Are you suggesting that Amazon is using a product that they actually don't know anything about?
• makmanalp 10y ago
  Wait, so is this kind of pre-interview multiple choice IQ test style thing common now? In general or for amazon?
• joncp 10y ago
  This is Amazon, which is known to be one of the least ethical dev shops around. I'm terribly unsurprised by this.
  • draw_down 10y ago
    The ethics are one thing, but also it just sounds like a shitty place to work generally. I hope people at least get paid well for the bullshit.
  • rtjs 10y ago
    Can you please give me some sources that explain how it is unethical? (I am aware of the NYTimes article which explains how badly they treat their employees, but that doesn't necessarily translate to unethical development.) I ask because I am about to join them, so forewarned is forearmed.
    • abc_lisper 10y ago
      > I am about to join them, so forewarned is forearmed. I didn't go there, but here's some i found on the net. https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home
      • papaf 10y ago
        That's quite shocking. I saw this in the advice section: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/don-t-accept-your-offer https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/don-t-acc... Please don't accept your offer. PLEASE don't go there. Your brains will not be wasted at Amazon, but your life will be. And no one will care.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • nimchimpsky 10y ago
      "I am aware of the NYTimes article which explains how badly they treat their employees, but that doesn't necessarily translate to unethical development." Yes it does.
• rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Anyone who has seen Adam Curtis' documentary, "The Trap," will find this familiar. Our society has become so obsessed with quantification that we have become blind to any other ways of understanding the world around us, and made us poorer in our analysis, instead of being more informed with more information. It is like saying that if something cannot be measured, then it does not exist.
• imgabe 10y ago
  Hmm could you just record a loop of you sitting motionless at your computer and feed that to the camera input? Maybe some incredibly loud high pitched noise to the audio? Not suggesting these as feasible solutions, but something like this deserves to be trolled.
  • dividuum 10y ago
    FaceRig (http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/) seems fitting.
• canacrypto 10y ago
  Though I agree these requirements are unacceptable, I'd like to point out that you've refused on grounds of privacy infringement and then leaked Amazon's private information.
  • spc476 10y ago
    Unless he signed an NDA prior to this, I don't see an issue.
• guelo 10y ago
  What's the privacy issue? If you go to an on-site interview they'll look you write in the eyes and see your eye movements. They'll know where you are, if you're browsing the web for some reason, etc. It's just a test they don't you cheat on. Are you thinking they'll sell their interview data to advertisers? Seems preposterous.
• audleman 10y ago
  > To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work? I believe you should use your personal code of ethics as a compass to guide you in your life, including where you work. > What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)? You're describing a clash of personal ethics and social ethics. Social ethics are saying this kind of tracking is alright, your personal ethics no. So, how strongly do you believe in your conviction? Would it be worth going hungry to stand up for what you believe? Sort of a sliding scale, huh? The more you are pushed towards survival, the less options you have to exercise your personal ethics. On the other hand, maybe this point isn't as important as it seemed at first thought and you'll decide you're willing to be subjected to monitoring for the duration of the test (but not before or after of course)
  • hermitdev 10y ago
    > "I believe you should use your personal code of ethics as a compass to guide you in your life, including where you work." My first full-time job, I encountered this. I was less than a week away from quitting because of ethical concerns, and my boss got fired first. After that, I decided to give the company a chance, and I ended up being there for +9 years (was at a hedge fund). I guess my advice is: are the ethics violations due to the company or your manager. If company, leave. If manager, report the violation. If no response, or retribution, leave. I held my manager's ethics violations in for ~6 months and it took an emotional toll. Not worth it. What he'd asked me to do was illegal and if I'd done it and been caught, I would have gone to jail. Fuck that, turn them in immediately.
• downandout 10y ago
  I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone & webcam. I realize this doesn't address the principle of the issue, but it does address the practical issue of applying for the job without giving into much of the creepiness here. That said, with employees literally throwing themselves off of buildings to get away from Amazon [1], I'm not sure how much nonsense I'd put up with to get a job there anyway. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-wo...
  • Skuzzzy 10y ago
    >I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone & webcam It's required that you take the test with these enabled.
    • downandout 10y ago
      What if you don't have a webcam? Also, you could use one of the many webcam emulators that let you use prerecorded video, such as ManyCam.
• sliken 10y ago
  Looks like there's a market for software that contains the browser/OS in a VM and allows feeding in your own audio/video feed.
• mabbo 10y ago
  As a developer at Amazon who does interviews, what the fuck? I imagine part of this is a response to the very, very large amount of time we spend interviewing interns every winter (I know I typically do 2 or 3 sessions of 3 1-hour interviews in a row). There's just too many interviews to do. Someone wants to innovate and find ways to sort the good from the bad without SDE time spent, I would guess. I hope this isn't the new system for everyone. Then again, if it saves me hours and hours of phone screens...
  • nxc18 10y ago
    Coming from the candidates perspective, I loved it. The whole process was efficient and flexible. The coding questions were realistic. The workday simulation was really cool. I get that the author cares about privacy, but without doing what they do there should be no way to make the process as smooth as it is without getting tons of cheating. (It sounds crazy, but being in uni, I've seen crazy amounts of people cheat, often on the order of >50% of the graduate cs program.)
    • SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
      It's almost unbelievable - and perhaps the perspective of people who interview for one of these in-demand companies can offer the better perspective on why go to these lengths . I work for one of the big 5 in demand software companies to work for - originally I would do a live-programming question on Coderpad as part of a first round pass with candidates. I used a pretty basic question as sort of a fizzbuzz - build a Pascal's triangle. The amount of people who took the exact top sample direct from StackOverflow without even attempting to change anything or mask their cheating was astounding. We've since adopted a better heuristic approach that more accurately reflects the day-to-day work and abandoned the smoke test, but as everyone knows, the most valuable resource any interviewer has is time - the more of that you can save, the better off you are.
      • flukus 10y ago
        Did you call it fizzbuzz or pascals triangle and is that how they were able to google it? If you change the parameters to ducky-fuzz (the drinking game variant) and describe the requirements they shouldn't be able to google an answer, at least not a 100% one.
• ledriveby 10y ago
  How the hell can it record other websites and the entire screen? Neither of those things are accessible to standard Web technologies.
  • kardos 10y ago
    It doesn't have to, you just have to believe it does...
• golergka 10y ago
  Unrelated to the main point of the post, but claims that math and logic questions "have nothing to do with programming ability" are a little strange.
• gwbas1c 10y ago
  Interviews and recruiting is a two-way street. Legal / ethical or not, this kind of lock down sends a "we don't trust you" message. Why would you interview someone you don't trust?
• rajacombinator 10y ago
  Pretty cringeworthy, yet no surprise for a shop that's known to be a gulag.
• scantronz 10y ago
  It's official. We now need burner laptops, TOR routing, secure enclaves, faraday cages, and EM spectrum analyzers just to apply for jobs. But serious question: Who's the fucked up creep that decided to sell this idea? And who are the fucked up creeps that went along with it? Why is this okay? Have people lost their minds? Whatever happened to Scantrons and a #2HB pencil?
• manacit 10y ago
  By all means, this is not unique to Amazon - not that it makes it any better. I did a post-grad interview for Epic (epic.com - healthcare software) in a similar fashion, that was at least as draconian. After passing a 15 minute phone screen, they sent me a link to a service that: * Installed their proprietary software on my Mac * Connected me to a real person who verified my DL against who they were expecting * Had me swing my laptop 360 degrees around the room I was taking the test in, to make sure there were no notes or people assisting me on the quiz * Took remote control of my computer and force quit any programs in Activity Monitor that were on their 'blacklist' (including Dropbox, etc) * Gave me what I imagine amounted to a three-hour SAT style test with English proficiency, math, logic, etc. * The whole time, had that same person watching me through my webcam and watching my screen, to make sure that I was not cheating. I passed, and during my in-person full-day interview in Wisconsin, they had me do a few more of these tests (that were slightly harder and more about communication skills), as well as some interviews with people in person. It was an interesting experience for sure - definitely a different side of the coin compared to what a lot of HN is probably used to. I ended up getting an offer that was very good considering they are based outside of Madison, but ultimately decided to go somewhere else.
  • hermitdev 10y ago
    I wonder how such a company would respond if you have neither a webcam or microphone. I certainly don't, at least not on my desktop. Well, that's a lie, I have a microphone, but it has a physical kill switch that is usually off, unless I'm playing a game where I want to communicate verbally.
    • manacit 10y ago
      Fortunately, I still have the e-mail that they originally sent me. They list the requirements as: In order to take the assessments from your home, you will need: * a webcam (either internal or external is fine) * a microphone * a computer that meets the technical requirements and equipment test (most Macs and PCs meet these requirements – Linux and Unix are not compatible) * a basic calculator (please do not plan to use your phone, computer, or graphing calculator) * a government-issued photo ID However, later in the e-mail: > If you do not have a webcam, your computer doesn’t meet the technical requirements, or for any reason you'd prefer to take the exam at a proctored location near you, please let me know. I’ll need you to provide your full legal name and current address, and I’ll be able to make alternate arrangements. I think the company they do this through has testing locations around the USA to accommodate.
• draw_down 10y ago
  I guess they have interesting problems to work on but I can't believe people work there. Hell no. (Not just this, I also know people who have worked there)
• rdtsc 10y ago
  Just a few days ago I did a fun and completely ridiculous exercise and compared Amazon to a country, and then wanted to see how it would look like. I ended up with Stalinism. (I'll just paste it here and add some more to it): * Personality cult: Bezos = Stalin * You sing praises to the great leader: the 14 leadership principles. * Officially they have a zero-tolerance policy for harshness. But I bet if anyone complains to HR they get sent to Siberia (i.e. put on performance improvement plan) or shot (terminated). https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-contacting-jeff https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for... * The top management is the Central Committee. They wield massive power. Officially it is a meritocracy but it is all about gaining favors with the ruling party. * In the warehouses I hear they do these group exercises: Stalin loved public performances * They like to monitor your microphone, eye, head, and mouth movements : NKVD (the secret police is watching you) Who wants to add more?
  • tossaway1 10y ago
    Why Stalin? Might as well just go straight to Godwin's law if you want to attack Amazon...
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      > Godwin's law if you want to attack Amazon... Oh poor Amazon. I think it will survive a satirical comment on the internet here there. But sounds like you do have some inside info if you're talking Godwin's law...
  • CamperBob2 10y ago
    I wouldn't paint Amazon with that kind of brush, but you could make a good case that old-school IBM worked that way. They even had a corporate anthem.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      I think IBM would be more like GDR or the Brejnev era of Soviet Union. Stalin was ruthless and the system also had this strong cult of personality. Also loved slogans which have to be repeated and paid respect in public. But also under him there was heavy industrialization so that is you know the revenue generated if you wish.
• ndesaulniers 10y ago
  You don't want to work at Amazon anyway
• Skuzzzy 10y ago
  Test
• mbfg 10y ago
  Ok so lets say i get this job at Big Brother Amazon. They give me my first assignment. I find a way to 'cheat' such that i finish the project in record time and it is perfect. You don't want that? What the hell does cheating mean in software development.
  • kardos 10y ago
    You'll probably have a hard time getting your genius cousin to show up and do your work for you on a consistent basis while you collect the paycheck
  • amzn-336495 10y ago
    > What the hell does cheating mean in software development. Management. At Amazon there are literally thousands of managers that don't know what the hell they are doing just waiting for you to code up something they can take credit for and keep their jobs. They hired YOU to do a real project that they can't cheat. If there was a cheat they would have already done it or gotten one of Amazons 15,000 other devs to do it. If they hire you its some combination of no one else can do it or no one better wants to expend the effort in a long drawn out assignment with low payoff. Lets say you are smarter than 15,000 other people and actually found a cheat. Congratulations, that cheat is now the baseline expectations. You better have more tricks up your sleeve.
• bobbybidon 10y ago
  You should have done the test in a virtual machine and disabled some features (cam, microphone) and record the screen (outside the virtual machine obiviously).
• fosco 10y ago
  I think I would be okay with this, if it was on their premises with their computer. that being said, I find these practices repulsive. but I feel like the SNL/west world skit. [0] [0]https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-cooper-360/3428579 https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-coope...
• gengkev 10y ago
  How is a Chrome extension able to detect what external monitors or running applications there are on the system?
• AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
  This may not be legal. See this very famous case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. If tests aren't directly relevant, they may be breaking the law.
• reacharavindh 10y ago
  I find this funny, stupid and creepy at the same time. Creepy - recording a dude's facial reactions, eye movements, mouth movements.. All this for a remote interview screening? Stupid - I believe quickly Googling for some documentation, or even better solutions can save loads of a developer time in this day and age with StackOverflow. I would instead consider a person that was smart enough to cheat in a code test like this as a great choice. This reminds me so much of schooling system in India where the kid who memorizes essays verbatim scores higher than the kid who actually understood it and reproduced in own words. Funny - Did they really think no one would object to this and post this on social media or HN? My current manager who hired me right out of Grad school tells me, "Interview is a two-way process. A candidate need to be tested whether is talented and is a good fit for the team. Equally importantly, the candidate should be sold on the idea of working for us(company)." On that case, Amazon has even tougher job of convincing a candidate. Not all sane people would want to work for above average pay while putting up with ridiculous work pressure [thinking about that guy who jumped off of Amazon work place]. [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-wo...
  • reacharavindh 10y ago
    On the other hand, if they were really looking for compliant, obedient, and desperate candidate who are "good enough", then I think this screening is a job well done!
• daodedickinson 10y ago
  If I ever decide to stop being a human being and start being a lab rat I know I have plenty of options.
• la6470 10y ago
  Hey you don't want the job then go Fuck your self .. this is a test for Gods sake not some place to show your youthful in patience.
• c3534l 10y ago
  I don't really care much about amazon because I hear they monopolize your life and have an aggressive culture. However, I do like me some puzzles: 1. The passage is about the good and bad of fanfiction which is posted on the internet. I pedantically disagree with the exact reading of response 2, but it's the correct one, I believe. 2. Only conclusion 1 is necessarily true, because of the transitive property of inequalities; X ? Y and Z/Y can be rewritten as X < Y <= Z. However, we cannot relate any magnitude information to V and it is not necessarily true that a number becomes larger when multiplied by another number (if we assume X is zero and V is positive, for instance). 3. These kinds of spot-the-pattern questions are incredibly arbitrary. However, the most obvious thing to associate with the alphabet is a numerical association with the letters based on it's placement in the common (but not universal) ordering of the Latin alphabet. When you do that, you see that UVS is the only sequence of letters that aren't "descending" even though letters can't truly be ordered. 4. The No Free Lunch Theorem says that no statistical method can find a pattern on the set of all possible inputs, which is why these questions are all bullshit, mathematically speaking. The only thing that makes 4 a better next step for the sequence 1, 2, 3, is that our own personal experience tells us that counting is fairly common, but enumerating the squarefree numbers isn't. You could also make the case that 27:24 has the pattern of 3^3:3^3-3, so maybe 64:x is 4^3:4^3-4 making it 60, but this doesn't feel in any way obvious to me, so I have no idea what they're thinking.
  • uiri 10y ago
    > 2. Only conclusion 1 is necessarily true, because of the transitive property of inequalities; X ? Y and Z/Y can be rewritten as X < Y <= Z. However, we cannot relate any magnitude information to V and it is not necessarily true that a number becomes larger when multiplied by another number (if we assume X is zero and V is positive, for instance). It says that the product of X and V is greater than or equal to the sum of X and V. Conclusion 2 is that the sum of X and V is less than the product of X and V. How could the latter claim be false if the former premise is true? I agree with you on 4 and came to it another way: 3^3 : 3 * (3-1) * (3+1) :: 4^3 : 4 * (4-1) * (4+1) 4 * 3 = 12 * 5 = 60
    • c3534l 10y ago
• 77pt77 10y ago
  What's stopping someone from running this inside a VirtualBox for example?
• debt 10y ago
  i was wondering why facebook and google acquired eye tracking companies. http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-tracking-startup-gazehawk/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-tracking-... https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye-tracking-startup/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye...
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• pricj004 10y ago
  For anyone else curious, I got the following answers: 1) Fan fiction websites have pros and cons for the authors 2) Both the conclusions are true 3) UVS (the only one not in reverse alphabetical order) 4) 60 (because 3^3=27, 3^3-3=24, 4^4=64, 4^4-4=60)
  • throwaway012304 10y ago
    Here are my answers: 1) Some authors feel that they created a good story, but it is not appreciated as much as the fan fiction versions. 2) Only conclusion 1 is true (assume X = 0, then conclusion 2 is false). 3) POM, the only one that doesn't have two consonants in a row. 4) 63, because it's always an even number and an odd number.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  Let's say if this would not be just for interns but for everyone. Then there would be this second order effect where they filter candidates who don't mind this happening to them. If they keep at it long enough, they'll end up shaping the culture of the company in a certain way. Which may not be the way they'd want.
  • random_coder 10y ago
    Or Which may be exactly what they want.
• wutf 10y ago
  It's an IQ test.
• wheelerwj 10y ago
  just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/amazon-interview-experience/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/a...
• eykanal 10y ago
  Amazon - just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do something. Not to mention... this is just the interview. Imagine what it must be like for the people who actually work there.
• wcummings 10y ago
  This is fucking psychotic, I will never work for Amazon.
• frakkingcylons 10y ago
  I went through Amazon's two online tests in October 2016 while interviewing for a full-time position. I took the first test just like the OP, the logical reasoning part seemed kind of irrelevant and a waste of time for me. That was nothing compared to the second online test. The environment of the second test was like a scenario out of Black Mirror. Not only did they want to have the webcam and microphone on the entire time, I also had to install their custom software so the proctors could monitor my screen and control my computer. They opened up the macOS system preferences so they could disable all shortcuts to take screenshots, and they also manually closed all the background services I had running (even f.lux!). Then they asked me to pick up my laptop and show them around my room with the webcam. They specifically asked to see the contents of my desk and the walls and ceiling of my room. I had some pencil and paper on my desk to use as scratch paper for the obvious reasons and they told me that wasn't allowed. Obviously that made me a little upset because I use it to sketch out examples and concepts. They also saw my phone on the desk and asked me to put it out of arm's reach. After that they told me I couldn't leave the room until the 5 minute bathroom break allowed half-way through the test. I had forgotten to tell my roommate I was taking this test and he was making a bit of a ruckus playing L4D2 online (obviously a bit distracting). I asked the proctor if I could briefly leave the room to ask him to quiet down. They said I couldn't leave until the bathroom break so there was nothing I could do. Later on, I was busy thinking about a problem and had adjusted how I was sitting in my chair and moved my face slightly out of the camera's view. The proctor messaged me again telling me to move so they could see my entire face. The whole experience was degrading. If you're wondering why I did it, well, I've been using various AWS services for five years and I admired the work that the AWS team had done. Furthermore, I need the income to support my parents and Amazon was the best chance I had at the time. I got invited to do an on-site interview but I declined once I had another offer, and I'm glad I did. EDIT: Small detail I forgot to mention. When I was showing them my desk, I had the monitor for my desktop (I was using my laptop for the test) and they asked me to turn the monitor so it was facing backwards.
  • 0xCAFEFARE 10y ago
    Creepy. Not a company I would want to work for.
  • 10y ago
• jghn 10y ago
  Will they be tracking my middle finger?
• wheelerwj 10y ago
  ahahahahahah says the guy who works at amazon. Of course you're going to try and justify it.
  • dang 10y ago
    Please don't do this here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076359 and marked it off-topic.
• sintaxi 10y ago
  I would have assumed this is to test which applicants will stand up to authority and anyone who goes along with it would be disqualified.
• mightybyte 10y ago
  I can somewhat understand this kind of crazy monitoring if the stakes are high and the score on the test is the only or finally-deciding factor. But online tests for interviewing candidates are never that. So in this case I don't think this level of invasiveness is justifiable in the slightest. It's just a screen. Cheaters will get filtered out at the next stage in the hiring process.
• monksy 10y ago
  That's tempting to apply just to take the test without any pants on and automate a porn browsing script in the background.
• known 10y ago
  Amazon hires highly skilled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slaves
• chucksmash 10y ago
  > (I'm not sure how this [accessing other tabs] works with Chrome's sandbox, though). Just fine. The "tabs" permission is a blanket perm across all tabs in all windows. Extensions run at a higher level of trust than Joe Random Blog's JS and accordingly have access to more powerful APIs.
• arh68 10y ago
  A firm similar to Proctorio, HireSuccess, says this on their website: > Hire Success does not offer nor provide any option where an Applicant is required to submit a photograph or video response to questions because we believe it violates EEOC Guidelines. I wonder how Proctorio + Amazon reconcile that viewpoint. Furthermore, if you read the EEOC, some of Proctorio's questions seem to really push the rule: If an employer requires job applicants to take a test, the test must be necessary and related to the job. How is 27:24::64:X related to the job, again? [0] http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal/ http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal/ [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm
  • kevingranade 10y ago
    On one hand, I would LOVE for all interview processes to be annonymized, as I think this is the only way for them to be truly gender/ethnicity/religion/age/etc neutral. On the other hand, if submitting a photograph or video of the applicant violated EEOC Guidelines, in-house interviews, which are the vast majority of interviews, would also be in violation, so this is an untenable position relative to the status quo. Setting aside their predictive power, questions related to logical reasoning are most definitely job-related in an interview process for a technical position that explicitly requires logical and deductive reasoning skills.
• YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  >> Your eye movements 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/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9.pdf http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/u... (...allegedly)
• orange_county 10y ago
  People who are saying the webcam monitoring is a equivalent to spyware are over-reacting. This is no different than an in-person interview. 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.
  • frakkingcylons 10y ago
    I took their online assessment. They also require you to use your webcam to show them your desk and your entire room. Also, they required that I download software so they could remotely control my laptop (via a remote desktop application) and modify system settings and turn off background services.
• pfarnsworth 10y ago
  When I interview people, I give them a question and tell them to google whatever they want and use whatever libraries they want that will make their lives easier: I'm not asking a trick question. 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.
• skynetv2 10y ago
  Most online exams require these permissions to make sure you're not cheating. No big deal. It's not as sensational as author made it to be.
• Jach 10y ago
  > To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work? 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.)
• lambda_func 10y ago
  Absolute bullshit. All these tech companies are totally crazy about their interview processes as if they are really working on ground breaking stuff.
• Cozumel 10y ago
  'However these are infeasible for most non-technical people' Most non-technical people wouldn't be applying for a software internship at Amazon!
• ytwwaarmozhanoa 10y ago
  I recently accepted a position at Amazon (have not started working there yet) and I have a similar experience. The first part of the interview was exactly like the linked experience. No coding questions just reasoning. The second part I had to use ProctorU instead of Proctorio. Personally I thought the experience was super weird but understandable, I'll get to that later, somebody watched me through my webcam the entire time with my microphone on. They needed to check my ID before the test. They needed me to show them the entire room I was in (which was my bedroom). My desktop computer was on behind my laptop so I turned off my computer (I don't remember if I offered to or if they asked me to) but they also asked me to cover my monitors up with something which I thought was silly after I turned them off so I covered them with a towel. They then used LogMeIn to remote into my machine so they could check running programs. I quit all my personal chat programs and pretty much only had the Chrome window running. The proctored section involved a work simulation and coding questions. Before the coding section started they opened up the Java 7 and 8 docs, C++ docs, and an online calculator in my browser so I could use those for reference. I could take a break in between the two parts but I didn't need to. In total it took about 3 hours for me to finish everything but they said to block out 4 hours. After that I got an offer. I didn't talk a real person who actually worked at Amazon (by email or through webcam) until I received an offer. I can understand why people would be bothered or disturbed by these practices but I just thought that Amazon has a ton of applicants and it would take more time for engineers to talk to applicants. In total it took about a month from when I first applied to when I got an offer. I was then flown out to visit Amazon (not for more interviews because I already had an offer) and I actually got a chance to talk to people and learn about teams and ask questions. Yes, I asked multiple different people about Amazon's problems and they all said that their personal experience has been fine but a few said that they know of people who have had bad experiences. Seems like it's dependent on your manager. I know somebody who works there now (not in engineering but works in Seattle) and they love it. I found a team I liked, I talked to people who worked on the team and they all greatly enjoyed it so I accepted after my visit. Everyone who I talked to seemed very passionate about what they do and all take ownership over their projects. I also applied to other large companies at the same time as Amazon (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter). Microsoft and Facebook haven't sent me anything. There was a mixup with Google's emails so that delayed my interview process but by the time I started talking to them I had already pretty much made my mind up about Amazon. I didn't go through any real interview rounds with Google, just preliminary screening questions. Twitter sent me a coding challenge but their email also said that they wouldn't get back to people until mid December.
• freyir 10y ago
  I wouldn't say these tactics are good, but they're understandable. The issue is cultural differences, where the pressure to succeed and a different value system leads to people to gaming the system to succeed. The alternative is hiring people who have used deceptive methods, rather than competence, to succeed up to that point. If companies hadn't been burned many times, they wouldn't resort to such drastic measures.
• ryandrake 10y ago
  Wow, can't believe I'm seeing people justifying/defending this--on HN of all places! This is unacceptably invasive, and if this is a glimpse of the future of getting a job, we're all in for a lot of trouble. If you think this kind of information is acceptable to monitor/record during an interview, what on earth do you think is off-limits?? Justifying this as "just to make sure people aren't cheating" is like justifying the police putting a camera in everyone's living room "just to make sure people aren't criminals" or putting a GPS collar on your spouse "just to make sure she's not having an affair". Totally unacceptable.
  • jaredklewis 10y ago
    Your comparison isn't fair at all. The interview monitoring is: invasive, but voluntary, only for a short period of time, and for a specific, articulated purpose. The police example is: invasive, as well as involuntary, permanent, and completely unlimited in its scope. To make a comparison like your comparison: Apple stole $500 from me when I bought my iPhone! Thieves! Giving something up of your own free will (in exchange for something else), is very different than having it taken from you. If you disagree, argue with the actual facts of situation.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      From the article, the monitoring is presumably only voluntary insofar as if you don't consent you are guaranteed an unfavorable outcome (you don't get the job). The hypothetical living room camera could be voluntary as well: If you don't consent it's because you're hiding something.
      • jaredklewis 10y ago
        Doing something in exchange for a chance to get a job is 100%, completely, in every sense of the term voluntary. If I don't pay Apple, they won't give me an iPhone. Am I involuntarily paying Apple for my iPhone? As for the camera, a mafia-esque threat of "if you don't have a camera, we get very suspicious" by a government which has the power to prosecute and put people in jail, is incredibly coercive and horrifying. Amazon is making you an offer, which if you refuse, leaves you no worse off than the status quo. If you accept their offer, there is potentially a job which you are apparently interested in, since you are applying.
• thr0waway1239 10y ago
  I would love if someone built a Chrome extension which highlights comments from folks self-identifying as working at the companies mentioned in the story. For one, the general radio silence around ethical issues from the same folks who jump in with gusto on technical issues is both the most fascinating and the most creepy thing I have seen recently, and I am guessing the signal (people debating ethics) over noise (people debating technicals) ratio is low when you consider the implications of people taking these things for granted. I guess someone will be asking if the signal and noise should be the other way around, given that HN is mainly for discussing technical issues. Maybe, but it emboldens the general attitude from these folks, which I will sum up thus: "We have more insight into this issue than you because we are on the inside. We are probably smart enough to know what we are doing because we are working at these companies in the first place. And no one really knows the answer to these questions anyway, so what is the use discussing them endlessly?" Another way to rephrase the above is: "We know what is best for you, and if you are questioning this assumption, you are just hating". This reminds me of Eric Schmidt's comment on privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew
• Tempest1981 10y ago
  Does Proctorio have some automated way to analyze the user's hand/mouth/eye movements, and spot unusual activity?
• dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Big company interview processes are great and by great I mean just terrible and dehumanizing experiences. I applied to Amazon at some point and then completely forgot about it. I hear back from them like 6 months later and in that time I had interviewed at more than a dozen companies in the bay area with much more pleasant interview processes. The cycle times make no sense to me when it comes to big companies. I don't know how Amazon hires and retains programmers.
• throwaway_amz 10y ago
  I took this test last month. Nobody is pointing this out but this is test is here because Amazon is either lazy or don't care enough to create tests. They reuse every single programming question in their interviews, online tests and group assessments. This leads to high chances of people simply copying readymade solution. The solution, it looks like, is to spy on everything you do. It was pretty intrusive. The proctor closed all my tabs on all windows, all the notepad/sticky notes, all windows, and background processes. (of course people can just 'remember' solutions, but then they are also getting fired is not too hard. )
• grogenaut 10y ago
  I've stated this nested in the comments but I'll leave it at the top too. THE INTERNSHIP IS THE INTERVIEW. These are just screenings.
• Insanity 10y ago
  This is one of those cases where I am slightly appalled by the violations of privacy, yet do kind of understand why they'd want to do this. But as other's have pointed out, these are not restrictions from Amazon, rather from the third-party they have decided to hire. I guess there might be alternatives that could restrict some of the access that is not needed. Either way, you need a way to determine who is playing fair and who is not. Flying someone out for an on-campus interview will be significantly more expensive (considering as well how many people apply), and there is only so much you can achieve with a skype interview.
• woodcut 10y ago
  I think the irony is 'proctology' is the branch of medicine concerned with inspecting the anus.
• estomagordo 10y ago
  Sounds like sour grapes to me.
• ceejay 10y ago
  I think stuff like this is only acceptable, morally and perhaps legally, if they tell you what they uncover / discover about you with this. That way we can verify it's all above board. Imagine they put the "eye movements / mouth movements / head movements" through a machine learning system and discover that certain head movements lead to poorer results (or maybe not poorer results, but slightly slower results). Only it turns out these particular head movements, etc. are due to a disability protected by the americans with disabilities act. They may not have fed this into the system directly, but if the decision was made based solely (or primarily) on these things, are they not breaking the law? And how could it even be traced in this case if the person doesn't yet know they are going to have said disability, but the ML algorithm somehow learned that the person is likely to (for example) become deaf within the next few years.
• alon7 10y ago
  Why not agree with the terms and boot up an Ubuntu live CD, install chromium and do the tests That way they only get the microphone, webcam and physical location which is annoying but not as worst If you cancel the microphone and the webcam, will they still let you do the test? What if I have a desktop computer with no webcam?
• throwawayosiu1 10y ago
  I did go through the entire process (3 tests in total, the first 2 were as he mentioned and the final test was a couple of coding questions - pretty basic stuff tbh) However, I was disqualified for being out of the frame for less than a second (I grabbed a bottle of water and it was a bit further from my laptop) I don't mind getting disqualified but I'd have appreciated either of the following: 1. mentioning that you should be in the frame at all times (this was not mentioned what so ever) 2. displaying the frame so you knew you were going out Either one complements the other but there is no way to know what's being seen from the camera apart from the fact that it's recording (based on the camera light) oh also, I think the author will have issues getting hired by Amazon again (when I took the test, they made me accept an agreement that basically stated that I could not share the questions with anyone - online or otherwise)
• citysurrounded 10y ago
  I'm a a new college grad who just recently went through this exact same process, but was turned down after the first stage. The test required webcam, browsing monitoring and location access. It also said it would periodically capture my webcam and exit the test (with no way of finishing) if it detected any loss in webcam connectivity. I didn't have any webcam available for my use so I rigged up my DSLR to upload to an ip cam which I then streamed as my webcam capture. It all worked splendidly except for the fact that my DSLR shuts off automatically after an arbitrary amount of time (something to do with it's idle timer I couldn't fix). Since it was the only webcam I had on hand I went ahead and took my chances with the test. 30 minutes later I had finished the programming portion rather easily, although because it was timed I had to rush on the last problem (write an implementation of insertion sort), copy/pasting code I had written earlier in the test. My webcam was still capturing and I even reset it here in between portions. I then began on the logic portion of the test, basically a glorified IQ test. Now, I work methodically and consider questions from all perspectives - the questions posed were all relatively easy IMO however could sometimes be answered a couple different ways depending upon your logic. I'm not saying the questions were flawed, it just made for a white knuckle situation. I ended up rushing through most of the questions and left 6 or so unanswered. Oh, and my webcam went out halfway through so I spent a couple minutes resetting it (it didn't exit the test like it said it would). A week later I got an email saying they would not be following up with me. No harm no foul, seems like what I'd been hearing was true; I didn't want to work with a company that interviewed like this anyways. I just want to say that I was terribly disappointed in this particular interview process; I felt like it caricatured the state of the modern technical interview in all its glory. Not as a whole, but in general. It sifts for people, not necessarily coders, who work well under pressure of a timer. They miss out on candidates, like me, who think critically about each question and take a creative approach to problem solving. But then again, perhaps Amazon is simply being selective on this basis. This process completely cut out the middle man, in fact I never once emailed with a real person about this interview. I was never given an opportunity to demonstrate who I was and how I think. But like I said, perhaps Amazon wasn't interested in that.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ausjke 10y ago
  I recently interviewed at amazon and was rejected, the reason I think is that as a senior developer I should have picked up the coding books and do some practices before the interview, for 5 coding questions I only made 4, I misunderstood one of the requirements and failed that, still it's my fault. What surprised me are two things: 1. the hiring personnel emailed me a few times saying she will call me on the results, it is a 1~2 minute call actually but it took her a few days calling me back saying I was not selected, not sure why this practice is preferred and I would appreciate a simple email or a quick call after the decision was made. 2. more importantly, during the interview, I feel all of them(6 of them in total) are reciting the amazon principles all the time, it made me feel the employees are totally brain-washed, yes I understand company cultures and such, but Amazon just made me feel weird, I somehow sense I'm talking with a group of robots who all repeat the same "principles" with no soul, and they're proud of that. The second item made me concerned, honestly if I got an offer, I won't go anyways.
• taesu 10y ago
  I'd be concerned about OP if he/she signed an NDA, but I guess he/she is smarter than that. I participated in the interview as well. 5 hour long face to face interview. Hour each with 5 different engineers Did not get an offer.
• geebee 10y ago
  I suppose this explains why some companies simply use universities to do their filtering for them. It's been a while since I took the GRE and LSAT, which I tutored for a while, but they have questions much like the ones listed here. Some of these tests take place on a computer now, others are still large proctored exams. I'm pretty sure I was fingerprinted before taking them. I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. I'm not so cynical as to believe that universities don't impart valuable knowledge and critical thinking to some of their student. However, the quality of education doesn't vary nearly as much as people claim between a very very elite university and a strong state school. The real value is largely in the filter, high standardized testing scores, along with (at elite privates) a number of students admitted because they come from powerful and wealthy families. Supposedly research shows that people who post these kinds of numbers but attend less prestigious universities do about as well as the people who post these numbers and attend a prestigious university (I'm figuring this is because they almost always attend a reasonably good university, and the quality of teaching doesn't really drop off much). Anyway, I think that companies can't ask for SAT scores, but maybe they can just administer their own SAT? Having an outside company do this is probably valuable from a liability point of view. My guess is that some kind of end-run is going on here...
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. Any place where it would be illegal to use this kind of question (at least, for anti-discrimination reasons) it would be illegal, on the same basis, to use university background (or anything else) that acted as a proxy for the same type of questions.
    • geebee 10y ago
      Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right? I don't think it even needs to be quite that insidious, it can have that effect even if the employers aren't consciously aware that this is what they're doing.
• ssarker 10y ago
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• ssarker 10y ago
  I wanted to try the assessment, but when I got to install proctorio app, I see that "This extension needs access to: All data on your computer and websites you visit" I didn't wnt to have a extension knowing it supposedly needs access to "All data on my computer". But did it anyway, as I wanted to try to get this job. I hand issues and called. They took control of my machine and restarted it with me doing anything. Not go to apply for this position or ever take test using this proctor.io app.
• _audakel 10y ago
  So I know this was posted a bit ago, but I feel like this would be kinda funny to mess with. 1 - Can it detect covering the camera? If so does different color coverings allow it to procede? If not I would put a funny video on my phone and hook that in front of the video. You could always just see how it is contacting your webcam and then just change the stream of data to some other source that is not hte webcam Mic -> maybe mess around with how it is contacting your mic and (ports? idk) and load some really annoying music to pipe through to it. Physical Locaiton -> do laptops have built in GPS or is it just off your ip address? if so could you just use VPN? Have it come from like some random place.