5 ms·

I mentioned this in the last post about this process, but this is not exclusive to Amazon. I did a ProctorU test for Epic a few years ago that followed the same

by manacit 10y ago

I mentioned this in the last post about this process, but this is not exclusive to Amazon. I did a ProctorU test for Epic a few years ago that followed the same requirements. I installed LogMeIn, let them poke around my laptop, showed some ID and did a sweep of my room with my webcam. I did not quit however, and ended up taking a ~3 hour SAT-like test. I don't dislike the idea of setting up a standard environment for a candidate to take an assessment, but this process feels a bit inhumane and intrusive, imho.

pjc50 10y ago
> inhumane and intrusive I guess they feel that if they can be inhumane and intrusive towards their minimum wage employees in the warehouses, they might as well treat everyone that way.
- manacit 10y ago
  I completely agree, and I think this is the natural evolution of Amazon (and, to an extent, corporate America). Amazon gets to treat their min wage warehouse employees as fungible, and their process around hiring and firing shows that. Have they gotten to the point where a certain amount of their engineering resources are the same? It's looking like they are trying to get there. It's a demonstration of our privilege on HN that we rally against these interviewing practices, yet they are a mainstay for a huge percentage of the USA. I'm not sure I'm getting my point across well, but I think there's going to be a point where this becomes more and more normal across more and more companies. They'll hire people to abstract the very difficult parts of computers away, and bring people in en-masse to fill in the blanks.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I'd suggest getting organised as a preventative measure against this kind of thing, but that's likely to go down like a lead balloon here. As long as there's a shortage of developers, we're somewhat safe, but that position is very precarious.
    - jcadam 10y ago
      There is not a shortage of developers. And no, there isn't even a shortage of good developers.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        There will always be a shortage of any type of worker... ...willing to commute from their home to your premises ...and work with your crazy cargo-cult process ...on your badly-architected, tech-debt-riddled legacy system ...for the crap salary you are offering.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - acbabis 10y ago
        Then why is it that most of the people I interview can barely write a for-loop?
        tene 10y ago
        My best guess has been that there's an oversupply of incompetent "developers" trying to play the numbers game, doing enormous numbers of interviews hoping they'll find a company that will hire them anyway. If incompetent developers do 100 interviews per job, and only last at jobs for 6 months before being fired, and competent developers do single-digit interviews (or 0, getting hired through networking) and stay employed for years at a time, a very small proportion of bad actors can be severely over-represented in interviews.
        acbabis 10y ago
        I think this is correct, however, it doesn't completely explain why I'll go months without meeting a better applicant. If there were a surplus of capable mid-level engineers then wouldn't I see them too?
        10y ago
  - holydude 10y ago
    rofl. And you guys thought otherwise ? I am so shocked that many IT people believe they are some kind of special snowflakes. The moment when your employer finds out that your job can be done by some dude in Vietnam, Ukraine or China for 1/10 of your cost you are out. This is what they do. They kick you out and uplift other people to the middle-class for a fraction of what would they pay in the US. And they own you that way. You can't leave because you do not want to leave. Because Amazon pays the best in your City and there are only other 2 companies that pay similarly high wages. You will obey all of the absurdities they ask you to do. Guys wake up.
  - gdulli 10y ago
    If it was the natural evolution of "corporate America" then Amazon's behavior would be the norm, not the exception. Amazon has a reputation for being terrible in this regard, so that's actually a good thing. It means this kind of behavior hasn't been normalized. Surely, Amazon isn't the only bad company and there are many workers elsewhere who should be treated better. But if there's an overall equilibrium, Amazon is one of the companies on the wrong side of it.
Kephael 10y ago
When I did a ProctorU test for Epic earlier this year I was instructed to tear my scrap paper up and to then throw the scraps into the air. It wasn't until after I did that was I told by the proctor that they were "just kidding" about throwing the scraps.
bduerst 10y ago
That's disappointing. When I interviewed and worked for Epic some years ago they just flew you onsite and gave you a machine to take the tests on. They also made you do some strange IQ test, but I think they stopped that.
- manacit 10y ago
  After passing the ProctorU portion of the test, I was flown in and did more computer exams, as well as interviewing with some people in person. In chatting with people while I was there, it sounded like it was very expensive to fly everyone in for the entirety of the computer interviews, so they started outsourcing the first part to weed people out. For what it's worth, I did have to do a "logic" assessment that felt very IQ test like, though I have never actually taken an IQ test
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Makes sense, since I was there when it was smaller than it was today. Let me guess, the logic questions were along the lines of "You have two coins that equal $0.55, and one is not a nickle"?

by manacit 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

> inhumane and intrusive I guess they feel that if they can be inhumane and intrusive towards their minimum wage employees in the warehouses, they might as well treat everyone that way.

manacit 10y ago
I completely agree, and I think this is the natural evolution of Amazon (and, to an extent, corporate America). Amazon gets to treat their min wage warehouse employees as fungible, and their process around hiring and firing shows that. Have they gotten to the point where a certain amount of their engineering resources are the same? It's looking like they are trying to get there. It's a demonstration of our privilege on HN that we rally against these interviewing practices, yet they are a mainstay for a huge percentage of the USA. I'm not sure I'm getting my point across well, but I think there's going to be a point where this becomes more and more normal across more and more companies. They'll hire people to abstract the very difficult parts of computers away, and bring people in en-masse to fill in the blanks.
- pjc50 10y ago
  I'd suggest getting organised as a preventative measure against this kind of thing, but that's likely to go down like a lead balloon here. As long as there's a shortage of developers, we're somewhat safe, but that position is very precarious.
  - jcadam 10y ago
    There is not a shortage of developers. And no, there isn't even a shortage of good developers.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      There will always be a shortage of any type of worker... ...willing to commute from their home to your premises ...and work with your crazy cargo-cult process ...on your badly-architected, tech-debt-riddled legacy system ...for the crap salary you are offering.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - acbabis 10y ago
      Then why is it that most of the people I interview can barely write a for-loop?
      - tene 10y ago
        My best guess has been that there's an oversupply of incompetent "developers" trying to play the numbers game, doing enormous numbers of interviews hoping they'll find a company that will hire them anyway. If incompetent developers do 100 interviews per job, and only last at jobs for 6 months before being fired, and competent developers do single-digit interviews (or 0, getting hired through networking) and stay employed for years at a time, a very small proportion of bad actors can be severely over-represented in interviews.
        acbabis 10y ago
        I think this is correct, however, it doesn't completely explain why I'll go months without meeting a better applicant. If there were a surplus of capable mid-level engineers then wouldn't I see them too?
        10y ago
- holydude 10y ago
  rofl. And you guys thought otherwise ? I am so shocked that many IT people believe they are some kind of special snowflakes. The moment when your employer finds out that your job can be done by some dude in Vietnam, Ukraine or China for 1/10 of your cost you are out. This is what they do. They kick you out and uplift other people to the middle-class for a fraction of what would they pay in the US. And they own you that way. You can't leave because you do not want to leave. Because Amazon pays the best in your City and there are only other 2 companies that pay similarly high wages. You will obey all of the absurdities they ask you to do. Guys wake up.
- gdulli 10y ago
  If it was the natural evolution of "corporate America" then Amazon's behavior would be the norm, not the exception. Amazon has a reputation for being terrible in this regard, so that's actually a good thing. It means this kind of behavior hasn't been normalized. Surely, Amazon isn't the only bad company and there are many workers elsewhere who should be treated better. But if there's an overall equilibrium, Amazon is one of the companies on the wrong side of it.

Kephael 10y ago

When I did a ProctorU test for Epic earlier this year I was instructed to tear my scrap paper up and to then throw the scraps into the air. It wasn't until after I did that was I told by the proctor that they were "just kidding" about throwing the scraps.

bduerst 10y ago

That's disappointing. When I interviewed and worked for Epic some years ago they just flew you onsite and gave you a machine to take the tests on. They also made you do some strange IQ test, but I think they stopped that.

manacit 10y ago
After passing the ProctorU portion of the test, I was flown in and did more computer exams, as well as interviewing with some people in person. In chatting with people while I was there, it sounded like it was very expensive to fly everyone in for the entirety of the computer interviews, so they started outsourcing the first part to weed people out. For what it's worth, I did have to do a "logic" assessment that felt very IQ test like, though I have never actually taken an IQ test
- bduerst 10y ago
  Makes sense, since I was there when it was smaller than it was today. Let me guess, the logic questions were along the lines of "You have two coins that equal $0.55, and one is not a nickle"?