6 ms·

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

by 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.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      Unless people already know the problem and its original name.
      - OJFord 10y ago
        I'd have thought that's a more valuable '+1' than a correct fizzbuzz answer - shows the candidate can recognise a common pattern in a problem, and know the name from being interested enough to hang out on HN, SO, or whatever.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      Similarly, people search questions in live phone interviews all the time. If you ask "tell me about UDP", they'll read you the Wiki page. If you ask "tell me about the best known connectionless networking protocol", they're not likely to turn that up in a convincing amount of time.
peterwwillis 10y ago
Years ago I was flown out to Amazon to interview for them. I had like five interviews that day, all from different teams who were all asking questions that had nothing to do with the job I was applying for, never asking about my relevant experience. They were asking me CS questions and I had never gone to college. They asked about computer design - like, draw a diagram of a computer (I had never made a diagram before) and explain how the northbridge on the motherboard works (this was a while ago). Granted, I could have taught myself a lot of that, and I had a general idea about most of it, but they also just could have said "We are looking for someone who has the same skills and knowledge of a Computer Science graduate", and I probably wouldn't have gotten on the plane. So perhaps a big part of the problem is figuring out what candidates you want to interview first. A lot of these questions are designed just to rule out people who aren't very logical or won't take the time to do it properly, and I understand that. A manager once told me about a hire they had to fire on the first day. They did a lot of interviews remotely as he was in India. When they finally flew the guy in and put him in the chair, he was a different person. Literally. He had someone else do all the interviews for him so he could get in the door. Pretty weird that he thought they wouldn't notice, but people are that weird sometimes. If you have too many hires to do, it sounds like you either need to outsource hiring, or build an internal hiring team that can do the technical interviews. This could be a semi-global or traveling team if you're often looking at non-local talent. Or they could do a lot of interviewing via webcam, perhaps with a second webcam shipped by Amazon (it's not like you don't have cheap shipping already) the user could point at their own screen for extra security.
- mabbo 10y ago
  The reason for the very generic interview is that you won't be on the same team in two years. People move around a lot. If they hire you because you know Angular but fuck all otherwise, they're screwing over the team you're going to be on in two years who need someone that can learn C socket programming ASAP. It's about finding someone who can see things more generally, but then implement solutions with the tools on hand. It's really hard to do, but it means I get to work with incredible people. (Also, I did a webcam interview this week. It's not a great format.)
  - 10y ago
wheelerwj 10y ago
> Then again, if it saves me hours and hours of phone screens... aka "I wasn't the one being violated, so I don't care."
- mabbo 10y ago
  It was a joke. I do care. I don't want anyone, especially not people considering joining my team, to feel violated.
Achshar 10y ago
Off topic here. I am a grad student looking for an internship in India, I tried as many good companies I could but sending emails somehow doesn't feel right. I would like to try amazon India. Can you point me in the right direction? I am kinda lost.
- mabbo 10y ago
  http://www.amazon.jobs http://www.amazon.jobs
  - Achshar 10y ago
    They don't have any internships in Delhi or banglore apparently.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I and two good friends of mine all had experiences like this interviewing for Amazon internships. I got this prompt, one of my friends made it as far as the on-site. All of us bailed because things got too Byzantine to look worth engaging with, and other options were pretty available. I didn't take up SDE time, but my friend did. I'd be curious whether it's costing you more time because you need more candidates to fill a slot...

by mabbo 10y ago

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.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    Unless people already know the problem and its original name.
    - OJFord 10y ago
      I'd have thought that's a more valuable '+1' than a correct fizzbuzz answer - shows the candidate can recognise a common pattern in a problem, and know the name from being interested enough to hang out on HN, SO, or whatever.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Similarly, people search questions in live phone interviews all the time. If you ask "tell me about UDP", they'll read you the Wiki page. If you ask "tell me about the best known connectionless networking protocol", they're not likely to turn that up in a convincing amount of time.

peterwwillis 10y ago

Years ago I was flown out to Amazon to interview for them. I had like five interviews that day, all from different teams who were all asking questions that had nothing to do with the job I was applying for, never asking about my relevant experience. They were asking me CS questions and I had never gone to college. They asked about computer design - like, draw a diagram of a computer (I had never made a diagram before) and explain how the northbridge on the motherboard works (this was a while ago). Granted, I could have taught myself a lot of that, and I had a general idea about most of it, but they also just could have said "We are looking for someone who has the same skills and knowledge of a Computer Science graduate", and I probably wouldn't have gotten on the plane. So perhaps a big part of the problem is figuring out what candidates you want to interview first. A lot of these questions are designed just to rule out people who aren't very logical or won't take the time to do it properly, and I understand that. A manager once told me about a hire they had to fire on the first day. They did a lot of interviews remotely as he was in India. When they finally flew the guy in and put him in the chair, he was a different person. Literally. He had someone else do all the interviews for him so he could get in the door. Pretty weird that he thought they wouldn't notice, but people are that weird sometimes. If you have too many hires to do, it sounds like you either need to outsource hiring, or build an internal hiring team that can do the technical interviews. This could be a semi-global or traveling team if you're often looking at non-local talent. Or they could do a lot of interviewing via webcam, perhaps with a second webcam shipped by Amazon (it's not like you don't have cheap shipping already) the user could point at their own screen for extra security.

mabbo 10y ago
The reason for the very generic interview is that you won't be on the same team in two years. People move around a lot. If they hire you because you know Angular but fuck all otherwise, they're screwing over the team you're going to be on in two years who need someone that can learn C socket programming ASAP. It's about finding someone who can see things more generally, but then implement solutions with the tools on hand. It's really hard to do, but it means I get to work with incredible people. (Also, I did a webcam interview this week. It's not a great format.)
- 10y ago

wheelerwj 10y ago

> Then again, if it saves me hours and hours of phone screens... aka "I wasn't the one being violated, so I don't care."

mabbo 10y ago
It was a joke. I do care. I don't want anyone, especially not people considering joining my team, to feel violated.

Achshar 10y ago

Off topic here. I am a grad student looking for an internship in India, I tried as many good companies I could but sending emails somehow doesn't feel right. I would like to try amazon India. Can you point me in the right direction? I am kinda lost.

mabbo 10y ago
http://www.amazon.jobs http://www.amazon.jobs
- Achshar 10y ago
  They don't have any internships in Delhi or banglore apparently.

Bartweiss 10y ago

I and two good friends of mine all had experiences like this interviewing for Amazon internships. I got this prompt, one of my friends made it as far as the on-site. All of us bailed because things got too Byzantine to look worth engaging with, and other options were pretty available. I didn't take up SDE time, but my friend did. I'd be curious whether it's costing you more time because you need more candidates to fill a slot...