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Amazon SDE here. The SDES internally are PISSED about all of this, and I assure you many people are escalating with HR to have this new ProctorU-based interview

Amazon SDE here. The SDES internally are PISSED about all of this, and I assure you many people are escalating with HR to have this new ProctorU-based interviewing process changed ASAP. edit: I don't know if there'll be an official announcement, but as of right now we're pulling usage of ProctorU for intern loops. For those asking how this happened, you simply do not understand the THOUSANDS of interns Amazon needs to interview every year over a couple of week period. It's a nightmare to scale. So, someone in HR thought they'd show some bias for action. Oops.

nameless912 10y ago
I'm glad you guys are pissed, it's insane! I just hope you have enough influence to actually change something about it; as it stands this process is horrifying.
skaul 10y ago
Thank you.
draw_down 10y ago
The question is how it got to this point in the first place. I think it says a lot about the organization and how it thinks of its employees.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Lets at least pretend to apply Occam's Razor to things first before jumping on a company. It's much more likely those responsible for choosing the ProctorU solution didn't realise everything around what the approach entailed, or necessarily the ramifications. That's especially true if it came out of HR/Recruiting who aren't necessarily the most technical people. They have a very real problem, with thousands of people in the recruitment pipeline (especially during intern interview season), and they saw a way to significantly filter them out, without having to turn half the business over to more of a recruiting pipeline than it already is.
  - draw_down 10y ago
    > It's much more likely those responsible for choosing the ProctorU solution didn't realise everything around what the approach entailed, or necessarily the ramifications. That's especially true if it came out of HR/Recruiting who aren't necessarily the most technical people. OK, sure. My reasoning there would be that ultimately they don't really care. All due respect to Friar Ockham.
- gschrader 10y ago
  For some reason (in my experience) HR has a lot of power in companies. They can institute painful processes that nobody likes even director/executives and nobody seems to question it or if they do they are powerless to change it. The company I currently work for I wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing through all the hoops the interview process inflicts.
oncallthrowaway 10y ago
Someone was probably promoted for the adoption of this "frugal" hiring practice. This is a culture problem that permeates all of Amazon and goes all the way to the top. Find a new job. The reputation of your company is going down the drain.
- amzn-throw 10y ago
  With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about :) I, and most people I know have mostly positive Amazon experiences. We are proud of the work we do, and the innovations of the company. I interview a LOT, and I make sure that 100% of my candidates come out with a positive experience, even if they do not get hired. There are problems at every company, but right now it's fashionable to shit on Amazon, ever since the NYT hit-piece that got a TON of facts straight up wrong, and ever since then every negative Amazon story gets upvoted to the stratosphere. Every company makes mistakes, it's how you deal with them that counts. Oh and in this case it wasn't a question of frugality, but scaling. Too many interns to interview, not enough time. It was still a bad decision, but it wasn't about being cheap.
  - dpark 10y ago
    The only people who I've met in real life who say that Amazon is a good place to work are people trying to hire me (with one exception). Everyone else tells me that either that they hated it and quit, or that they hate it and will quit soon. I work for a competitor so there's absolutely some bias in the people I'm exposed to, but the complete lack of positive experiences related to me by humans in real life is surprising and compelling. The one exception is a friend who started working at Amazon a few months ago. She loves it. But she's also been handed a pile of money and told to basically do what she wants. They hired her to create a new product line (not tech related) and the execs apparently don't know enough to get involved so she's basically got signoff to just do what she thinks is appropriate. So she loves it. Her husband also works for Amazon and hates it. I'm sure there are other people at Amazon who like their jobs. I just haven't met any and I'm not sure they constitute a majority.
    - 10y ago
leeter 10y ago
I'm glad you're fixing it, but having been through a second round interview where I was flown out to Amazon in Seattle. I will still never interview with Amazon again. It was the second most frustrating interview I've ever been in. It was clear to me that 4 of my interviewers had no intention of even considering me. Side note: The most frustrating interview I've ever had was with Microsoft Boulder: they just flat out insulted me in the interview and questioned why anyone would hire me based on not getting their trick question. That said my interviews with Microsoft Redmond were lovely.
- amzn-throw 10y ago
  Can you share some details about why you found it so frustrating? Believe it or not, most software devs at Amazon REALLY CARE about interviewing, are happy here, and want to find others too. We are taught in an internal interviewing class (which is not mandatory unfortunately) that making sure the candidate has a great experience is just as important as getting good data on the candidate.
  - tubasaur 10y ago
    Not mandatory? In my time at Lab126 (a couple of years ago now), you had to take Making Great Hiring Decisions before you were ever included on an interview loop.
    - amzn-throw 10y ago
      Some orgs make it mandatory. Some don't. There's no global policy
      - ncallaway 10y ago
        Huh. I had no idea. When I was there, it was mandatory in each org I was in. I had just assumed it was a company-wide policy.
    - foota 10y ago
      I just had to chuckle at the name of the interview prep course name, of course it would be that.
tushar-r 10y ago
But will HR change anything about this process due to this escalation?
ConAntonakos 10y ago
There have to be automated ways of scaling intern hiring that do not involve this ProctorU-based approach. If you have thousands of data points, what makes a successful candidate, and possibly, build a model around that?
nikon 10y ago
I would never consider Amazon based on what has been posted in the past, but I would also walk away from any interview process that began like this. Stupid.
Bedon292 10y ago
So was this an interview for an Intern position? Is this ProtorU thing used for anything else? Should anyone be worried about an interview for a full time non intern position? There seems to be some confusion about this in the comments.
- logandavis 10y ago
  Yes, ProctorU is also used for full-time interviews. Source: a friend applied, and they made her use it - except it didn't work, so she ended up not even having a second round screen before getting her onsite invitation.
  - bsg75 10y ago
    Blocking ProctorU shortens the process? ;)
    - Bedon292 10y ago
      Figure out what ports they work on and block them at the router? Sounds like a good idea...
- skaul 10y ago
  My interview was for a full time SDE role.
  - Bedon292 10y ago
    OK, so then I guess my question for amzn-throw is, how does removing it from the 'intern loops' help when this wasn't an intern interview?
    - vanderreeah 10y ago
      At the risk of making a redundant post, this is surely one of the most pertinent questions in the thread.
20years 10y ago
Glad that SDES internally are upset but the damage has already been done. Amazon is becoming a place where serious tech talent will not work. No senior or serious talent in their right mind would go through this, so you are going to end up with just junior or desperate devs applying. Not to mention the turn over. What is that like in most tech depts? I suppose however, Amazon can simply use the excuse of: we can't find qualified devs so we need more H-1B workers. Heck I am starting to think that this is the plan all along. I apologize if I am coming off as negative but this kind of stuff really has to stop. I don't understand how it got to this point and how anyone would be willing to give up their privacy or self-respect like this. How did we get here?
- user5994461 10y ago
  > Amazon is becoming a place where serious tech talent will not work. It's not becoming it. It already is. Doesn't everyone have conversations with their tech friends about how everyone who's been there is trying to go away and interviewing at Amazon was terrible? I'm not even kidding. That "never work for amazon" is the image we have from amazon, it's to the point it could be a meme.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  I really home recruiting at Amazon takes this comment to heart. They won't, because they're too busy milking the college newgrad pipieline and that looks fat and happy, but experienced engineers in general won't work or even interview for Amazon. You get the naive people, everyone who knows better stays far away.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  > Amazon is becoming It very much already is a place no serious tech talent will work. At my last place of employment, we used to crack jokes about working at Amazon.
joeax 10y ago
I get contacted by Amazon recruiters every couple months or so. They can be a bit aggressive and will sometimes try to get me to attend one of their hiring events in my city. I would possibly consider a SDE opportunity but they want me to relocate to Seattle. I just feel that if you are going to spend all this time and resources trying to poach devs from other cities, you'd at least open a local office or let them work remotely.
- cheeze 10y ago
  Does MSFT/GOOG/AAPL/ETC do this or is it Amazon-specific?
  - joeax 10y ago
    I can't speak for the others, but I'll get contacted by a Microsoft hiring manager (not a recruiter) about once a year. Microsoft's recruiting process seems very decentralized; one group may have a totally different culture than another group. Some allow you to work remote, others don't. And they have offices spread around Seattle. (disclaimer: I used to work there as a consultant about 10 years ago) Amazon is the total opposite. Like this dev said, HR has totally taken over the process. To work there you need to go through their meat grinder.
kafkaesq 10y ago
So, someone in HR thought they'd show some bias for action. The thing is, one suspects it wasn't "someone in HR" who thought up the idea of using draconian new system that's pissing everyone off, and driving candidates away in droves. But rather, Bezos himself, personally. In fact it seems to represent the very essence of his "everything will be automated" philosophy, to the letter.
gr3yh47 10y ago
> So, someone in HR thought [...] reads like the first sentence in most horror stories programmers go through
johan_larson 10y ago
I appreciate the problem. It's not easy. That said, I have to wonder whether the interviews are really necessary in most cases. For institutions that it is familiar with, I suspect Amazon could do just as well hiring interns purely based on their grades in relevant courses. If you reliably take 100 interns from Berkeley or Waterloo, say, it shouldn't be hard to figure out which courses count. At worst, doing things this way would be much easier. Who knows, maybe it would work even better, by eliminating unconscious bias or something. By all means keep the interview path for special cases with odd backgrounds.
- serge2k 10y ago
  I agree, fuck everyone who doesn't go to a top school.
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    Read that last line again.
bitwize 10y ago
Good luck. It's pretty much standing policy that to be hired at Amazon you must be able to write correct code with no aid whatsoever, no documentation, not even a compiler to check your work. If they don't use proctors, they will go back to what they were doing before: having people write code on a piece of paper and then read it back to them over the phone.
- serge2k 10y ago
  or they could use the online editors like they were for years.

nameless912 10y ago

I'm glad you guys are pissed, it's insane! I just hope you have enough influence to actually change something about it; as it stands this process is horrifying.

skaul 10y ago

Thank you.

draw_down 10y ago

The question is how it got to this point in the first place. I think it says a lot about the organization and how it thinks of its employees.

Twirrim 10y ago
Lets at least pretend to apply Occam's Razor to things first before jumping on a company. It's much more likely those responsible for choosing the ProctorU solution didn't realise everything around what the approach entailed, or necessarily the ramifications. That's especially true if it came out of HR/Recruiting who aren't necessarily the most technical people. They have a very real problem, with thousands of people in the recruitment pipeline (especially during intern interview season), and they saw a way to significantly filter them out, without having to turn half the business over to more of a recruiting pipeline than it already is.
- draw_down 10y ago
  > It's much more likely those responsible for choosing the ProctorU solution didn't realise everything around what the approach entailed, or necessarily the ramifications. That's especially true if it came out of HR/Recruiting who aren't necessarily the most technical people. OK, sure. My reasoning there would be that ultimately they don't really care. All due respect to Friar Ockham.
gschrader 10y ago
For some reason (in my experience) HR has a lot of power in companies. They can institute painful processes that nobody likes even director/executives and nobody seems to question it or if they do they are powerless to change it. The company I currently work for I wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing through all the hoops the interview process inflicts.

oncallthrowaway 10y ago

Someone was probably promoted for the adoption of this "frugal" hiring practice. This is a culture problem that permeates all of Amazon and goes all the way to the top. Find a new job. The reputation of your company is going down the drain.

amzn-throw 10y ago
With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about :) I, and most people I know have mostly positive Amazon experiences. We are proud of the work we do, and the innovations of the company. I interview a LOT, and I make sure that 100% of my candidates come out with a positive experience, even if they do not get hired. There are problems at every company, but right now it's fashionable to shit on Amazon, ever since the NYT hit-piece that got a TON of facts straight up wrong, and ever since then every negative Amazon story gets upvoted to the stratosphere. Every company makes mistakes, it's how you deal with them that counts. Oh and in this case it wasn't a question of frugality, but scaling. Too many interns to interview, not enough time. It was still a bad decision, but it wasn't about being cheap.
- dpark 10y ago
  The only people who I've met in real life who say that Amazon is a good place to work are people trying to hire me (with one exception). Everyone else tells me that either that they hated it and quit, or that they hate it and will quit soon. I work for a competitor so there's absolutely some bias in the people I'm exposed to, but the complete lack of positive experiences related to me by humans in real life is surprising and compelling. The one exception is a friend who started working at Amazon a few months ago. She loves it. But she's also been handed a pile of money and told to basically do what she wants. They hired her to create a new product line (not tech related) and the execs apparently don't know enough to get involved so she's basically got signoff to just do what she thinks is appropriate. So she loves it. Her husband also works for Amazon and hates it. I'm sure there are other people at Amazon who like their jobs. I just haven't met any and I'm not sure they constitute a majority.
  - 10y ago

leeter 10y ago

I'm glad you're fixing it, but having been through a second round interview where I was flown out to Amazon in Seattle. I will still never interview with Amazon again. It was the second most frustrating interview I've ever been in. It was clear to me that 4 of my interviewers had no intention of even considering me. Side note: The most frustrating interview I've ever had was with Microsoft Boulder: they just flat out insulted me in the interview and questioned why anyone would hire me based on not getting their trick question. That said my interviews with Microsoft Redmond were lovely.

amzn-throw 10y ago
Can you share some details about why you found it so frustrating? Believe it or not, most software devs at Amazon REALLY CARE about interviewing, are happy here, and want to find others too. We are taught in an internal interviewing class (which is not mandatory unfortunately) that making sure the candidate has a great experience is just as important as getting good data on the candidate.
- tubasaur 10y ago
  Not mandatory? In my time at Lab126 (a couple of years ago now), you had to take Making Great Hiring Decisions before you were ever included on an interview loop.
  - amzn-throw 10y ago
    Some orgs make it mandatory. Some don't. There's no global policy
    - ncallaway 10y ago
      Huh. I had no idea. When I was there, it was mandatory in each org I was in. I had just assumed it was a company-wide policy.
  - foota 10y ago
    I just had to chuckle at the name of the interview prep course name, of course it would be that.

tushar-r 10y ago

But will HR change anything about this process due to this escalation?

ConAntonakos 10y ago

There have to be automated ways of scaling intern hiring that do not involve this ProctorU-based approach. If you have thousands of data points, what makes a successful candidate, and possibly, build a model around that?

nikon 10y ago

I would never consider Amazon based on what has been posted in the past, but I would also walk away from any interview process that began like this. Stupid.

Bedon292 10y ago

So was this an interview for an Intern position? Is this ProtorU thing used for anything else? Should anyone be worried about an interview for a full time non intern position? There seems to be some confusion about this in the comments.

logandavis 10y ago
Yes, ProctorU is also used for full-time interviews. Source: a friend applied, and they made her use it - except it didn't work, so she ended up not even having a second round screen before getting her onsite invitation.
- bsg75 10y ago
  Blocking ProctorU shortens the process? ;)
  - Bedon292 10y ago
    Figure out what ports they work on and block them at the router? Sounds like a good idea...
skaul 10y ago
My interview was for a full time SDE role.
- Bedon292 10y ago
  OK, so then I guess my question for amzn-throw is, how does removing it from the 'intern loops' help when this wasn't an intern interview?
  - vanderreeah 10y ago
    At the risk of making a redundant post, this is surely one of the most pertinent questions in the thread.

20years 10y ago

Glad that SDES internally are upset but the damage has already been done. Amazon is becoming a place where serious tech talent will not work. No senior or serious talent in their right mind would go through this, so you are going to end up with just junior or desperate devs applying. Not to mention the turn over. What is that like in most tech depts? I suppose however, Amazon can simply use the excuse of: we can't find qualified devs so we need more H-1B workers. Heck I am starting to think that this is the plan all along. I apologize if I am coming off as negative but this kind of stuff really has to stop. I don't understand how it got to this point and how anyone would be willing to give up their privacy or self-respect like this. How did we get here?

user5994461 10y ago
> Amazon is becoming a place where serious tech talent will not work. It's not becoming it. It already is. Doesn't everyone have conversations with their tech friends about how everyone who's been there is trying to go away and interviewing at Amazon was terrible? I'm not even kidding. That "never work for amazon" is the image we have from amazon, it's to the point it could be a meme.
1_2__3 10y ago
I really home recruiting at Amazon takes this comment to heart. They won't, because they're too busy milking the college newgrad pipieline and that looks fat and happy, but experienced engineers in general won't work or even interview for Amazon. You get the naive people, everyone who knows better stays far away.
fapjacks 10y ago
> Amazon is becoming It very much already is a place no serious tech talent will work. At my last place of employment, we used to crack jokes about working at Amazon.

joeax 10y ago

I get contacted by Amazon recruiters every couple months or so. They can be a bit aggressive and will sometimes try to get me to attend one of their hiring events in my city. I would possibly consider a SDE opportunity but they want me to relocate to Seattle. I just feel that if you are going to spend all this time and resources trying to poach devs from other cities, you'd at least open a local office or let them work remotely.

cheeze 10y ago
Does MSFT/GOOG/AAPL/ETC do this or is it Amazon-specific?
- joeax 10y ago
  I can't speak for the others, but I'll get contacted by a Microsoft hiring manager (not a recruiter) about once a year. Microsoft's recruiting process seems very decentralized; one group may have a totally different culture than another group. Some allow you to work remote, others don't. And they have offices spread around Seattle. (disclaimer: I used to work there as a consultant about 10 years ago) Amazon is the total opposite. Like this dev said, HR has totally taken over the process. To work there you need to go through their meat grinder.

kafkaesq 10y ago

So, someone in HR thought they'd show some bias for action. The thing is, one suspects it wasn't "someone in HR" who thought up the idea of using draconian new system that's pissing everyone off, and driving candidates away in droves. But rather, Bezos himself, personally. In fact it seems to represent the very essence of his "everything will be automated" philosophy, to the letter.

gr3yh47 10y ago

> So, someone in HR thought [...] reads like the first sentence in most horror stories programmers go through

johan_larson 10y ago

I appreciate the problem. It's not easy. That said, I have to wonder whether the interviews are really necessary in most cases. For institutions that it is familiar with, I suspect Amazon could do just as well hiring interns purely based on their grades in relevant courses. If you reliably take 100 interns from Berkeley or Waterloo, say, it shouldn't be hard to figure out which courses count. At worst, doing things this way would be much easier. Who knows, maybe it would work even better, by eliminating unconscious bias or something. By all means keep the interview path for special cases with odd backgrounds.

serge2k 10y ago
I agree, fuck everyone who doesn't go to a top school.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Read that last line again.

bitwize 10y ago

Good luck. It's pretty much standing policy that to be hired at Amazon you must be able to write correct code with no aid whatsoever, no documentation, not even a compiler to check your work. If they don't use proctors, they will go back to what they were doing before: having people write code on a piece of paper and then read it back to them over the phone.

serge2k 10y ago
or they could use the online editors like they were for years.