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My Amazon Interview Horror Story

• 0xFFFE 8y ago
  Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20181104014612/https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/11/04/my-amazon-interview-horror-story/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181104014612/https://www.igork...
  • ikromin 8y ago
    With updates: https://web.archive.org/web/20181104041749/https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/11/04/my-amazon-interview-horror-story/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181104041749/https://www.igork...
• Mononokay 8y ago
  People really need to start putting this stuff behind Cloudflare before posting to HN.
  • ikromin 8y ago
    It is, I didn't think so many people would care enough to read about it though
    • devwastaken 8y ago
      If it's through cf it shouldn't have resource exhaustion from the origin unless the html isn't set to cache. Cloudflare isn't that necessary, you can go far with just a proper static serving nginx config. But yeah cf makes like easy.
      • ikromin 8y ago
        I can see about 50/50 cached/uncached requests. It's probably the way that the HTML is being generated, will have to look into that, thanks
  • kowdermeister 8y ago
    It is not a Show HN post. You can take an unprepared blog down you found on Twitter with 11 likes.
    • Mononokay 8y ago
      The name of the poster and the name of the domain are the same. It is for all intents and purposes a Show HN post.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• sfilargi 8y ago
  For recruiters we are literally just a product they try to sell to their internal teams. Once you understand this everything else starts making sense.
  • BurningFrog 8y ago
    It helps to think of it as my work is just a product being sold. It's also a more accurate model of what's going on.
    • dymk 8y ago
      But that doens't fit in line with the model of dystopian slavery and recruiting that people _like_ to imagine happens at large companies.
    • sfilargi 8y ago
      I don’t think that’s true for our interactions with the recruiter. At least the ones I have talked to, couldn’t care less about my work. They only care about the odds of me clearing the interview. Their behavior is linearly related to that.
      • BurningFrog 8y ago
        Rereading, I realize we're talking about slightly different things. I'm talking about the labor market in general, and my point is that your value is not $X/year, your work's value is, and it's good for your mental health to make that distinction, whether X happens to be high or low. You're talking about understanding the recruiter's incentives, and you're right that, like any sales people, they've focused on making the sale and getting their commission.
  • manfredo 8y ago
    Depends on the recruiting team. For in-house recruiting teams they at lease have a stake in maintaining the company's image and reputation. The recruiters at my company go out of their way to emphasize that we want to give every candidate a good (or at least not-bad) experience, regardless of whether they get an offer. If an interviewer covers for someone who went out sick, or if otherwise goes beyond reasonable interviewing responsibilities the recruiting team tries to recognize it. I remember when I arranged for a candidate to meet a member of an ERG they expressed interest in, even though the candidate had unambiguously failed the interview. Someone on the recruiting team dropped off cookies at my desk the next day, it was sweet - pun somewhat intended.
• epx 8y ago
  I am convinced all this interview thing is to create a illusion of shortage, like Tinder.
  • BurningFrog 8y ago
    There is apparently a huge shortage of both men and women!
• 8note 8y ago
  I've been a lunch buddy before. I don't remember there being anywhere on the interview app for me to put in feedback. I see lunch buddy's responsibility being to make sure you're well fed and caffeinated, and ready for the afternoon interviews/excited about the team/org.
  • olliej 8y ago
    It’s really not - lunch is part of the interview. Maybe less technically oriented, but it’s still part of the interview. [edit: Wow, so much down votes. I have interviewed and been interviewed at multiple big tech companies. In all cases the lunch has been part of the interview process, in most I’ve even been given an explicit “this is X, they’ll be talking about Y over lunch”, or it’s been called “lunch interview”. If the company isn’t treating the lunch period as an interview you’re wasting your engineer’s (or whatever) time, and the candidates. ]
    • anapivirtua 8y ago
      Nop.
      • olliej 8y ago
        Nop.
    • closeparen 8y ago
      People who only have lunch with the candidate are not invited to submit a scorecard and not present at the debrief, at least at my large employer.
      • olliej 8y ago
        Literally every tech interview I’ve ever had treats lunch as part of the interview. Every candidate I’ve talked to at lunch was aware that it was part of the interview.
        • 8y ago
• sjroot 8y ago
  I was able to read the article before it got hugged to death by HN. That said, like many similar interview/hiring stories shared here, it reeks of single-sidedness. Specifically, there is not enough detail regarding your interactions with the interviewers to warrant calling this a horror story. The only points of interest in this piece, in my opinion, were that the interviewers were late and there was a clear communication issue (particularly when it came to scheduling the interviews). Other than that, all we know is that you tripped up during some of your interviews. In those situations, based on your post, it was never really your fault, which is not the best attitude to have. Finally, them saying that your engineering skills needed more work shouldn’t be insulting. Amazon hires tons of engineers and they are generally very technically competent. However good you think you are, there are millions who are just as good, and there are thousands who are better. Amazon can only hire so many people and this was likely their way of saying they simply had more candidates with more experience. I know it is frustrating. I can say this because I have absolutely been in your shoes. (Dream job, all the way to the last stage, then no offer.) At the end of the day, we have to acknowledge the competitiveness of our field and use that to drive us to become better.
  • jstewartmobile 8y ago
    For anyone who knows their stuff, this field is a golden ticket, and you don't need to work for some asshole like Bezos to cash it in. The whole process outlined in the post was needlessly disrespectful of the candidate and his time. I wouldn't excuse a Godless megacorp like Amazon with this awful scarcity mindset. It is poison.
    • ravenstine 8y ago
      This HN thread is a shocking reminder of how many people view corporate sadism as normal or even good. That kind of nonsense is what engineers should be shielded from, not the other way around. I prefer to keep my dignity, thanks.
      • jstewartmobile 8y ago
        Yep. Sometimes I don't know why I bother to comment on these things. Cosmic justice would probably be better served if we just kept our mouths shut, and let them make their own beds.
• simonebrunozzi 8y ago
  My story from 2008: https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com-314ee8634da9 https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-com... Not a horror story, in that case.
• jorblumesea 8y ago
  The internal recruiter usually knows very little about the actual role and exists only to sell you to other teams. They are usually contractors, and could not care less about how candidates actually do as they themselves have no job incentives that align properly. They'll line you up with positions that make no sense, they'll ignore any advice or opinions you might have, and are not technically skilled at all. If the interview goes south at any point, the candidate is to blame for not hitting the bar. Your happiness is not a factor, they have literally hundreds of resumes with your same skill set. I once had a recruiter try to line me up with a javascript position when I had java experience, not understanding the difference. You have to really police their behavior and almost babysit them, otherwise you get situations like this.
• chevman 8y ago
  I don't work at Amazon, however my experience has been similar working at a large F10. Our internal 'recruitment services' dept is all outsourced/contracted. They mask this internally through cheap tricks (don't present the staff in exactly the same manner as contractors in our internal system, etc), but do a little research and you'll figure out what's going on. I'm guessing they have hundreds, possibly thousands of contractors on the payroll running the operation. They literally don't give a shit how it all goes down. I've escalated situations up the chain multiple hops and get nothing back, just silence. No acknowledgement, nothing. Talk to other Director/VP level friends in HR and they don't even know who to talk to. I run a small to mid size department (think around 50 FTEs and some contract/consultant staff) and when we get openings posted, we run the recruiting ourselves and just instruct the internal recruitment team when we're ready to write/extend offers. They are usually still working on the initial candidate screen doing who knows what, dicking people around with video interviews and stupid phone screens. Corporate HR and recruiting is totally broken - avoid at all costs.
  • xarien 8y ago
    This rings very true from my perspective as well from both sides of the fence.
  • masonic 8y ago
    Our internal 'recruitment services' dept is all outsourced/contracted That would make me immediately rule out working for such a company.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • bsenftner 8y ago
    This. Ignore corporate HR. Speak directly to your potential manager about the specific needs and tasks to be accomplished by you. Present as the solver of those specific needs. That is all they want or need. The rest is pointless bureaucratic growth, just like any fiefdom, and is to be avoided. This manager avoids corporate HR too, because he/she is a problem solver and needs more peers. Be that peer.
• dymk 8y ago
  > Two years ago, after a rather unpleasant interview process, I asked to be put on a do-not-contact register Great! Clearly he's closed that chapter in his life and he can move on. It'd be a bummer if they contacted him again, luckily he can just say "No thank you" like a normal person. But wait! > here I am reading yet another email from an Amazon recruiter asking to talk to me about a possible opportunity. Will this horror never end? This gets the biggest eyeroll I can possibly muster. > This is a retelling of the two tedious months that Amazon put me through only to tell me that I can't code, which I now find funny, but at the time it was rather insulting and humiliating Is this guy serious? He didn't meet the bar, but instead of working on the weak areas of his skillset, he's claiming he's was insulted and degraded. --- Amazon clearly was not a fantastic company to interview with, but man this guy really milks it to the point where I don't have a lot of sympathy for him.
  • TideAd 8y ago
    I hear about companies telling candidates they "can't code" or "can't communicate" a lot. This just seems like a really rude and arrogant thing to tell someone. If you want to give a candidate feedback, give specific feedback and give it politely. The people who want to improve will get the picture. If you don't want to, just thank them for their time and interest. Other than that, I think you're right. Some of this was really pretty normal and not worth being upset about.
    • dymk 8y ago
      I can guarantee you that Amazon/the recruiter didn't tell this developer that he couldn't code - that's an inference he made
  • gbear605 8y ago
    He also noted that he was asked interview questions for a job that he wasn’t applying for and hadn’t prepared for! It’s not surprising if he didn’t do a great job at answering frontend questions when he was applying for a backend position.
  • bgeeek 8y ago
    You are being a little harsh there. I'm not sure if turnover/burnout is high at places like that or they just keep on hiring but I've experienced it whereby recruiters are repeatedly chasing you for the same job over and over again. This is probably partly due to the companies and/or recruiters also having a high turnover. So, if you fail to get the job, you can sometimes almost expect to have other people get in touch with you over and over again for the same role. It can get very, very strange.
• commandlinefan 8y ago
  Hey, at least it was Amazon. I had a similar experience interviewing for an _airline_ company a few years back. A recruiter contacted me, mentioned a job opening they had. You know how job postings list 20 different “requirements” but they don’t expect you to actually have all of them? I actually did have expert-level experience at every single item on their list. They phone-screened me, brought me onsite for three in-person back-to-back interviews (during normal working hours, so I had to take time off of my then-current job to go interview). They called back a few days later and said they wanted to bring me back onsite AGAIN for a full day of back-to-back interviews. So I took another PTO day, showed up and interviewed for 6 hours (9 different interviwers) - only to never get another call back.
  • tracker1 8y ago
    I have to agree... I feel the lot-drop approach from many large companies is FAR worse than at least some feedback. In the end, I do feel it's often more about personality and culture than anything technical, once you get past the pre-screen technical interviews.
    • pmiller2 8y ago
      Lot drop?
      • tracker1 8y ago
        Reference to a car salesman leaving you in the lot... not returning. Many companies just drop all contact at any given point.
    • arwhatever 8y ago
      I'm working on a way to track and report metrics on this "lot dropping," which I had labeled "ghosting," but I'm not sure if it'll go anywhere.
      • shshhdhs 8y ago
        How would you track that? From gathering anecdotes on HN?
• telltruth 8y ago
  Amazon recruiters are some of the least organized. There have been times when I got contacted by 3 recruiters during same week but none of them knew about others. There have also been times when Amazon recruiter calls me and I tell them I was contacted before and they have no ability to verify or look up what happened before! Many of these recruiters also look like one-off vendors working on some twisted reward scheme so they often don't care about candidate experience or long term maintenance of information. There is simply no organizational memory of some very basic things like candidate profiles, pipelines, leads etc. Compared to this Google has invested enormously in maintaining beautiful detailed profiles of anyone who ever contacted them. Perhaps one reason for this Amazon chaos is also that they really don't care about employee turnover. Attrition is the way to weed out less productive folks so you just keep hiring en-mass and keep firing en-mass. Someone might say this would create huge voids in project memory and continuity but its perhaps good because it forces to create documentation and other artifacts with assumption that others won't be around soon. This is very different than Google culture and it seems to have worked at least to some extent.
• notyourwork 8y ago
  Anyone else find this reading a bit over dramatic. I don't find any horror here though I agree its not the best candidate experience and that is sad. However, horror story is just being dramatic because OP is salty he didn't get hired when he feels he is of the calibre to be hired at Amazon. Recruiters are non-tech and Google and Facebook have had timezone problems during my recruiting and this was only in US timezone so I imagine international this is even more horrendous.
  • ikromin 8y ago
    You missed the Halloween references then
    • notyourwork 8y ago
      No I got them, I just think OP is being over dramatic because he didn't get hired. Then feels offended because some recruiter from a company with hundreds of thousands of employees reached out to him 2 years after he said to never contact him again.
      • freyir 8y ago
        And if he felt so strongly about not working for them, why not just delete the email? You’re not obligated to apply when a recruiter spams you. That said, I do think the big tech companies have abysmal hiring processes. It’s not horrifying, but it’s a bit depressing.
  • hudibras 8y ago
    It's just an interesting story. You don't have to worked up about it.
    • notyourwork 8y ago
      Sorry if my post came off as worked up, I was merely trying to reduce the narrative to what it was which isn't all that interesting or unique.
• mltony 8y ago
  I had similar experience with Uber last month. My recruiter scheduled an introductory phone call with me and then she forgot about it. The call was rescheduled and then she forgot again. On the third time she did call me but never apologized or anything. Then she scheduled a technical phone screen for me a few days later. On that day my interviewer called me two hours earlier than the scheduled time - no time zone difference, just that recruiter communicated wrong time to him. As it happened, I was in the middle of my lunch and caught off guard. The interviewer wasn't happy, so I guessed I didn't pass that phone screen, but the recruiter didn't even bother telling that to me - she just ignored my emails and she never even gave me her phone number. P.S. I was invited to 6 onsite interviews in other companies and in the end I've got all 6 very good offers. So, good riddance, Uber.
  • kposehn 8y ago
    Wow, that should not have happened. Can you let me know the name of the recruiter? You can email me at keith [dot] posehn [at] gmail Sorry you had a bad experience and I'm bummed we lost you :(
    • knodi123 8y ago
      > keith [dot] posehn [at] gmail Off-topic side question - is web robots scraping forums for parseable email addresses still a thing? I'm pretty free with my gmail address, and I haven't had a problem with spam making it to my inbox, but maybe I'm an edge case...
      • ikeboy 8y ago
        I put a unique email address in my hn profile at one point and got spam sent to it after a few months
      • ramphastidae 8y ago
        I imagine it's still a thing, but spam filters have solved most of the problem.
      • btown 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• burtonator 8y ago
  A friend suggested a position at Github for an Elasticsearch Manager. A couple weeks go by and I'm in the interview. It's all MySQL questions. And really specific questions too. I ask them flat out what the position was for and they said "MySQL Engineer" ... I replied with "I'm actually more of an Elasticsearch guy" and was told that they're ditching Elasticsearch. So not only did they decide it was a good idea to slot me into a position from ES to MySQL but they also decided to bring me down from Engineering Manager to individual contributor...
  • lstamour 8y ago
    This seems to happen quite a bit. Though not often. Over the summer I interviewed for a large bank and was told they were modernizing their apps from HTML5 PhoneGap/Cordova to native code, maybe React Native. I was told point-blank by the recruiting company exclusively contracted to fill roles for this project that my profile would be a perfect fit, and I agreed. Then I get into the interview, and it turns out I would be working on middleware to connect one set of APIs to another, entirely backend, and in a completely siloed department structure.. The interviewers were not sure how any of my front-end skills would be applicable. It was a waste of time on both sides. I have to wonder why more places, when scheduling interviews, don't email prospective candidates directly before the interview and repeat again, verbatim, what job positions they're looking for and the titles of those positions and descriptions/expectations. I mean, I might be unusual, but if I were to see a job posting before such an interview which very clearly doesn't match what I thought I was applying for, I'd reply and either cancel the interview or see if there were other positions available. After all, not only am I wasting their time, but I could have been more productively interviewing at other companies during that time! :)
  • LoSboccacc 8y ago
    > bring me down from Engineering Manager to individual contributor That happens all the time. Chances are if they aren't reaching out to you it's a bait and switch opening. Easy way to discriminate is whether you'll have your budget or not.
    • reaperducer 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• ausjke 8y ago
  I interviewed at Amazon and was rejected, main reason is that I was totally unprepared(don't even know its 10 principles or something, not to mention the freshman style algorithm stuff preparation). All I want to say is that, after the hiring experience and learned how their R&D was running afterwards a bit, I'm not going to hold its high flying stocks. The hiring process sucks, the bar raiser is a joke.
  • 01100011 8y ago
    Of course I'm negative after having been spurned by Amazon and Google, but I worry about the continued success of these companies after seeing their hiring processes. Then again, they only have to be less stupid than their competitors in order to continue being successful. I think one of the weak spots is the recruiting team. I feel like the recruiters, often contractors, get paid based on hiring rates alone. There's nothing disincentivizing them from sending unqualified recruits through the pipeline. In the end, I landed a nice position with a 'tier-2' valley company(not FANG, but close), so I can go back to not giving a shit about the broken hiring process. Hopefully the industry wises up, but I suspect that the big companies will be staffed by people who survived the modern interview process and therefore nothing will change.
• _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  I had a recent fun experience where I did a code screen for a company. It involved writing a very basic key value store API in Ruby. However, the challenge was extremely unspecified. There were no specification for persistence (database? file? none?), the precise semantics of the requests (should PUT-ing the same object multiple times overwrite it? According to the HTTP definition of PUT, yes, but who knows for sure?), or even how the code was being run (rackup? Separate script?). Note that there wasn't a clear way to ask questions either. Even better, the code was to be tested via an automated script. Yeah...automated scripts and unclear specifications are not a good combo. I wrote the code to the best of my ability, then submitted it. I got a rejection a few weeks later and when I asked the person who sent it for feedback (I will say, that the company at least had a real, very nice person contact me), they cited a policy of no response. Granted, I messed up in that I refused to use Rails, since, c'mon, it's a key value store. Instead I decided to just write it in pure Ruby with Rack and the SQLite gem. But I suppose that could have been a mistake since A. Rails is a lot more robust when it comes to input space and B. the testing harness is probably designed for Rails. Second, it's quite likely my code was just not good. But I'd at least like some feedback then, or even a printout of test failures. This is a company I hold in extremely high regard, so I sincerely hope that this is just a fluke.
  • bertjk 8y ago
    I'm thinking that in this case, knowing to ask all these questions and getting further specifications was part of the challenge..
    • _hardwaregeek 8y ago
      I’d be inclined to agree, except there was no way to contact anybody technical. I was only put in contact with HR and was sent the challenge via an automated email from an address that didn’t respond when I emailed it. Not really sure where else I could have gone to get a response. Unless this was some kind of CTF where I had to find a hidden email.
      • kaybe 8y ago
• softwaredoug 8y ago
  It’s appalling how one-sided many orgs see the interview process. Instead of treating the candidate as a partner - someone to work together in making a decision - the candidate might as well be a box of staplers to them. The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely dispose of the candidates time without any consideration beyond what the hiring team needs. An interview CAN be as much about helping the candidate find what’s best for them. Heck where I work we actively talk and promote other options where someone might be happier. We make referrals for people. When it’s not a good fit we try to give them feedback and genuinely want them to succeed. Ugh
  • gaius 8y ago
    The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely dispose of the candidates time without any consideration There is a reason companies refer to employees as “resources” these days. Well at least they’re honest.
    • jowdones 8y ago
      And for every dignified refusal to take that abuse of an interview, 100 spineless moluscs will happily suck up to it. You can't beat the corporate system because the corporations are not the cause, only the effect of the slime that gets in and raises to the top.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      They have started to call people "resources" at my company since the last one or two years. It feels so dehumanizing.
      • behringer 8y ago
        That's the entire point. My suggestion is move on.
  • mcguire 8y ago
    Any company that interviews as much as these do is going to have a process that resembles sausage making, and the candidates are the ingredients. It's all about volume, not quality.
• sxp62000 8y ago
  I can never tell whose side the recruiters are on. Are they on my side, because if I get hired, the recruiter gets a commission? Or are they on the company's side?
  • dba7dba 8y ago
    Neither. The recruiter is in it for self, for that commission. I wonder if anyone can come up with a long lasting score card of recruiters. How do the new hires do after 2 years? Or maybe even the managers should be graded in how the new hires are hired.
• nimbius 8y ago
  speaking as someone not in tech (im an engine mechanic by trade) and who has had to hire people in the past sometimes the recruiter is miles off. its an indication of serious communications problems, for example i had a job posted for a senior level (ASE type) certified mechanic with trade school completed. Because HR gets in a rush, and because newspapers cost money per character printed, half of the requirements got cut off. So imagine my surprise when I get a junior level tech walking in on monday morning and I sit down with an hour long interview that starts out with me asking her to diagram the one-thousand pound diesel engine in my office. half an hour in im throwing questions about yanbar piston rings, fluid dynamics in the compression cycle and asking for six fault conditions on a HINO engine during warmup and takeoff. I was getting stonewalled in the interview, and getting a little pissed off that this "senior" level mechanic was blowing smoke up my ass, wasting my company time, or so i thought. I asked her to "cut the bullshit." She nearly had a panic attack. She was nearly in tears, trying desparately to explain how she was working as best she could to finish school, but that she hadnt any experience with "the bigger" engines yet. Confused, I asked her more about the job offer and she conspicuously forgot half of it. Fetching the newspaper from the waiting room and checking it myself, I saw the problem. I'd spent 30 minutes roasting a trade school kid and felt awful about it. Anyhow i guess what im saying is, its not always you. Sometimes Shirley doesnt double-check the article before she goes on her margaritaville cruise off the coast of south carolina.
  • 52-6F-62 8y ago
    This gave me a big laugh, especially that ending. You sound like a decent sort, and I’m sure that woman you interviewed will do fine.
  • amptorn 8y ago
    > I asked her to "cut the bullshit." Yikes.
  • clarry 8y ago
    So where you work, requirements are actual requirements? In software, it's often the opposite. You see a fuckton of "requirements" that aren't requirements at all (or the company is looking for unicorns but inevitably end up having to hire a totally average human being), so people just apply whether they have the required skills or not.
• dudul 8y ago
  The part titled "Next 3 Weeks" is where I lost all sympathie for the author. If you're willing to put up with this shit and sacrifice 3 weeks of family time to learn useless algos you're asking to be treated like a piece of cattle.
• hooloovoo_zoo 8y ago
  Whenever I've done these big tech on-site interviews I've had to sign an NDA. Do those just not carry any weight?
  • pmiller2 8y ago
    What precisely did the author disclose that would be considered proprietary information?
    • zwischenzug 8y ago
      In my experience they cover any aspect of the interview process, down to the layout of the office.
      • Latteland 8y ago
        A lot of ndas at interview time are really just cover your ass in case your company looks like an idiot. I've also been through the amazon interview treadmill where they interviewed me for a different job than I was approached about working on. wasted time writing a stupid essay. got no questions about it. what a waste of time. never really gave me clear feedback that i wasn't being offered a job.
      • pmiller2 8y ago
        Since when is the office layout considered part of the interview process? Unless it’s some high security defense contractor, I don’t see how disclosing the office layout damages the company in any way. Unless thee are damages, there’s nothing to enforce with an NDA.
• n1231231231234 8y ago
  Sorry to hear that OP had such a bad experience. I guess as so often, it really depends on which team / division you are interacting with. I was interviewing for Amazon a while back and my experience was mostly positive. I had applied myself and they got in touch via email a few weeks later. After a brief email exchange, I got invited for a phone interview. All very straight forward - the interviewer was really friendly and professional. At the end of the interview, he also gave me some pointers about what he thinks is important in interviews. A week later or so, I got an invitation for on-site interviews. I think it was 5 interviews in total. The hiring manager and his team were all really nice. (Interesting site note: I did mention some interesting and for the interview relevant HN article at some point and the interviewer told me that I should not believe everything that is said on HN haha.) I think the "bad cop" role was given to the two off-site interviewers. They asked some tough questions, one of which was something along the line of "Tell me about a time when you were right about something but could not convince others/management." Of course, I had experienced such situations in the past, but I struggled to give a clear narrative. I didn't want to look like someone who doesn't care; nor like someone who doesn't get their point across, nor like a push-over. In the end, I left it at something like "I still think I was right, but for other, non-content-related reasons, management went for a different decision." They didn't seem happy about my answer. The last interview was a bit weird and I probably asked a stupid question that put the interviewer off. I think that was my inner obstructionist. I was living in Belgium at the time and I really love BE (but didn't like my job there). The Amazon job looked better, but I didn't really feel like moving to the UK, where the job was located. Also, the team indicated that they are doing more than 9-5. Here, too, my inner obstructionist was telling me 'meh'. You can see where this is going: I didn't get the offer. Still, I thought the process was pretty decent and fair in my case. Of course, this is also just a personal experience, but I thought I'd share a nicer one.
  • walshemj 8y ago
    Pretty much all developer jobs are salaried in the UK aka no fixed hours so presenting as some one who only wants to work 9-5 rigidly is going to not go down well.
• samfisher83 8y ago
  Sounds like most big company interviews. They have tons of candidates so they can just do stuff like that.
• Papagallo 8y ago
  I was hired by Amazon a few years ago and left recently. My initial interview experience doesn't match Mr. Kromin's account well. My experience with the Amazon interview process while at the organization doesn't match well either. The main missing detail from Kromin's account is "leadership principles." Amazon is famous for its list of leadership principles. It constantly hammers them home to all employees during performance reviews and peer reviews. It stencils them on the walls of the workplace. Most importantly, it trains interviewers to use these leadership principles as a basis for judging job candidates. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles Every person participating in an Amazon job interview is assigned one or two leadership principles on which to assess candidates. The interviewers are very open about this and their questions dealing with the principles are very clear. The recruiters explicitly tell job candidates to read the list and prepare answers that deal with each one. Since the Amazon leadership principles are non-technical, perhaps Mr. Kromin considered them too trivial to mention. But considering the obsessive emphasis these ideas were given during every Amazon job interview I saw over the past two years, I find the omission odd. I'm not questioning the facts of this account -- I'm merely suggesting that they are so vague as to make it impossible for anyone to judge the nature of the experience.
  • ikromin 8y ago
    They are mentioned twice in the blog post
• kamaal 8y ago
  >>The interviewer was one of those typical impossible to please/thinks he is smarter than everyone, long haired programmer guys. >>The questions were impossibly difficult without prior exposure >>I couldn't answer many of the coding questions during this interview because they were focused on specific algorithms that no amount of preparation would be enough These questions are just becoming very common these days. There are thousands of programmers spending hours every day on online judge sites, and other associated competitive programming contests scattered over the internets. As these things increase there is growing question bank of impossible to answer interview questions. It also turns out most people who hop jobs often are the same people putting in these efforts into competitive programming contests, and these people justify their investments in time to ask these questions and to keep it as an edge over others. The questions are just impossible to answer unless you spend hours every day on these competitive programming sites for years. It also turns out these people move companies in an year always. If your greatest skill is interviewing, working for one company for years seems like a waste of your skills.
• rdtsc 8y ago
  > Lunch break. I was given a "lunch buddy" and told this was not an interview. I am not sure whether it was taken into account or not. Ha! At least you got a lunch. Here is my experience with AWS: * They forgot to call for the 1st phone interview. I stood around like an idiot for 45 minutes waiting. Had to call them eventually. They apologized and rescheduled. Ok whatever, bigco, mistakes happen. * Rescheduled phone interview goes awesome. I was excited. Was told about the Leadership Principles and to make sure learn and parrot them back during the onsite interview. Ok, a little strange. Got the "I think might be joining a cult" thought in the back of my head. * Interview day. Show up. Turns out future manager, that is the main person I should have been talking to, wasn't even there. * Got questions like "what was the worst thing that happened to you?". They probably wanted me to parrot the leadership principles back at them. But of course, what better question to make the person feel terrible than making them remember all the bad experiences in their life. * Nobody asked much about my resume. I had successfully shipped products, could talk in detail about Linux kernel internals, distributed systems. But instead I was live-compiling "invert the binary tree" type problems at the whiteboard. * Lunch comes. I am thinking, well at least I'll get to meet some of the future team members. But nobody shows up. After 30 min I started to walk around the hallways hoping someone would stop me and ask me what am I doing there. I even had a snarky reply ready to go. * After that I did get a bit snarky and refused to parrot back the leadership principles. Was that the bar-raiser who I was talking back to? Could be. Were they the ones that failed my interview or was it the manager that never showed up that vetoed me? I'll never know. * But that's not all. There is more. The HR person I talked to before the interview was swearing they'd get back to me within 3 days. They didn't. Three weeks later I called them back, not because I was curious about the result much, I had accepted an offer by then, I just wanted to see what the excuse would be. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Then it seemed like a terrible waste of time then but now it's a story I really enjoy sharing. It's just so fun. It's incredible the amount of dysfunction and awfulness that resulted from interfacing with that company.
  • abalone 8y ago
    > Interview day. Show up. Turns out future manager, that is the main person I should have been talking to, wasn't even there. What do people recommend doing in this situation? Walk away? Reschedule? Insist on explanation? Or is it feasible they would make a decision without the manager interview.
• pjbk 8y ago
  Judging the programming performance of an engineer based on how they fare at an interview is like determining the looks of someone by how they appear in a single snapshot.
  • sidibe 8y ago
    Both seem often pretty accurate.
• mycentstoo 8y ago
  I've had an interview process that included 2 phone screens, 1 virtual coding exercise, 7 on-sites with a grand total of 4 white board interviews. There's something profoundly stupid about having that many whiteboards. The whiteboards were not testing different skills - they were literally just different problems. I always think back to this: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025?lang=en https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025?lang=en. I've gotten old enough to not want to re-learn how to put things in order.
• ubersoldat2k7 8y ago
  What I find interesting is that, on one end, there's a "developers" shortage, but on the other, all companies are funneling potentially good engineers through processes designed for the "interview" experts. Also, that AMZ or Google do open public positions is weird. I'm pretty sure they could have the best referring programs.
  • bufferoverflow 8y ago
    What other realistic option is there besides interviewing?
    • Bayart 8y ago
      The Thunderdome.
    • andybak 8y ago
      It's about good interviewing and bad interviewing. I dream of a day when the skills tested are close to those needed for a role and a willingness to parrot "Leadership Principles" is seen as a red flag rather than a badge of merit.
  • dmarucco 8y ago
    Actually there's a lot of "did three months <put language or framework here> course and now I am a ninja programmer!" candidates. So those interview processes are designed to understand if you belong to that category, but they are far from perfection. In my personal experience, referral programs are the best.
  • gaius 8y ago
    on one end, there's a "developers" shortage, but on the other, all companies are funneling potentially good engineers through processes designed for the "interview" experts. If there genuinely was a shortage could any company get away with these ridiculous practices? It only makes sense if there is both a glut of candidates and of existing employees with lots of free time on their hands. During the dotcom boom when there was a genuine shortage an interview was a phone screen, a couple of hours onsite then “when can you start?”. Companies couldn’t shovel workers in the door fast enough!
• bufferoverflow 8y ago
  This story would have been a lot more useful if you told us what the questions were, especially the ones you failed at, especially those "impossible" ones.
• inertiatic 8y ago
  Interviewing is broken beyond belief, but it's just a reflection of all the opinions people hold on interviewing. Most people's ideas on hiring are plain wrong, so of course when a company assigns these people hiring duties the process will be broken. Also, apart from people posting stories like this on Glassdoor it seems like HR isn't generally accountable for anything as there's no way for candidates to flag bad behaviour. I'm not sure how to fix the first problem, but management should force HR to collect unfiltered anonymous feedback from candidates in order to review their performance, to avoid having you company mentioned in such a conversation.
  • swayvil 8y ago
    Engineers are, as a rule, broken. We cultivate these twisted dwarves, masters of their 2-inch domain but alienated to all else. We need to keep them in insulated cells and handle them like plutonium. But instead we treat them like normal people and let their insanity corrupt everything around them.
• xte 8y ago
  IMVHO it's modern management problem: today instead of delegate responsibility there is a super-concentration at top of the hierarchy hoping that tech and "modern management model" can make that possible. As a result companies are full of byzantine bureaucracy and essentially no one can work well. And we see results every day. I think the origin is the extension of Ford-model idea of easily to find and substitute "dumb" workers that only know to turn a key. That model does not work in the long terms and because of that automotive industry switch to Toyota model. Unfortunately someone in "top positions" thought that Ford model is nice, dumb people are easy to manage, predictable, expendable etc so they push it as mass as they can at all level of our society.
• dissolved_boy 8y ago
  I interviewed with Amazon a little over a year ago and my experience was quite the opposite of what was described in the article. Amazon recruiters approached me first on LinkedIn and invited to one of their off-site hiring events in Europe. I didn't feel like interviewing with them back then as I wasn't sure I could pass but still decided to try. Communication with the recruitment team was surprisingly flawless - I didn't have any issues with timezones (I was based in Europe, they were from Seattle/Bay Area), there were some last-minute changes that didn't affect anything/caused any trouble. HR provided me with tips on how to pass the interview and shared some online/offline resources on how to get prepared - they also put a lot of stress on their company principles. After the initial tech screening and a Skype call with one of the recruiters, I was invited to the hiring event. Amazon rented the whole floor on one of the top hotels in the city, all the candidates were assigned a room and the interviewers came to you - 3 interviews for algorithms/data structures, 1 for system design. The organization was really superb, interviewers were very positive and eager to share their experience. In the end, I didn't get an offer, but I'd say I'd definitely try to interview with Amazon again. PS. From what I read here, maybe I was just plain lucky to have a positive experience interviewing with them :-)
  • zacherates 8y ago
    I had basically the same experience except it was in Toronto instead of Europe.
• rv-de 8y ago
  Looking at this account from a meta-perspective I feel reminiscent of fraternity pledgings. A certain percentage of applicants suffering through a similar experience while getting for whatever reason an offer in the end will feel by principle of cognitive dissonance especially grateful and devoted to Amazon. You want to be a part of this shiny company? Here you go - take a sip from the puke bucket! And they do it thinking that place must be awesome because why else would you endure that bullshit ceremony? Finally you're the one passing on your trauma on fresh aspirants.
• Frye9876 8y ago
  I always find it ridiculous but in my experience passing on beers is never a good idea.
• intellectronica 8y ago
  Entitled and immature. Not disputing that the author had a negative experience on this attempt to land a job he is clearly interested in, but his response to it doesn't take into account: 1. That in all likelihood nobody deliberately tried to make his experience negative - people (and companies, even very successful ones) make mistakes. 2. That the process of trying to get a job (like everything else in life) involves luck and hardship. Life isn't "fair" and nobody owes us exclusively positive experiences. 3. That interviewing for a job one wants is often stressful. We all wish to be validated and being put to a test is bound to colour our experience at least a bit negative. It's on us to discount that when judging others. Calling this experience a "horror story" sounds hysterical and out of proportion. Some people out there really experience horror stories trying to make a living and survive. A programmer being invited to apply to a slightly better job isn't one of them. If the author did manage to get an offer he would be joining a large company where there are daily opportunities to feel wronged and deprived and complain about how unfair the world is. If he couldn't handle it for one day of interviewing, it's probably for the best if he doesn't make it his daily job.
  • mcguire 8y ago
    Would your comments be different if we were discussing Amazon's shipping experiences?
  • tspike 8y ago
    Treating candidates with basic respect isn't asking for too much.
• djhworld 8y ago
  I had an off-site interview experience with Amazon a few years ago, they came over from the US/Canada to London and held a hiring event in a hotel. You got put in a room and went through 4 face to face interviews which were very gruelling, but the interviewers were nice and positive (although to my British sensibility, maybe _too_ positive!) I didn't get an offer, I don't think I have the chops to pass the interviews really, I found the preceding 2-3 weeks of interview prep very stressful and time consuming. It's not just the algorithms and data structures bit you have to revise on, you need to think up many anecdotes that align to The Leadership Principles. They're all over that stuff, you cannot be a follower you must demonstrate Leadership. All in all though I appreciated the experience, I don't think I would apply again though.
  • starbeast 8y ago
    >think up many anecdotes that align to The Leadership Principles. They're all over that stuff, you cannot be a follower you must demonstrate Leadership. If the principle they set is that you must be a leader and not a follower, then you should presumably refuse to follow any leadership principles they dictate to you, purely out of principle.
    • jdowner 8y ago
      But then you would be following their principles and not leading! Oh the paradox!
      • starbeast 8y ago
        Am now tempted to apply to Amazon, just to wind them up with this in interview. Knowing my luck though, they would offer me the job.
• tomrod 8y ago
  Wow. It's like I read my own experience here.
• lmilcin 8y ago
  ... or do what most sane people do and just ignore the messages. I also had rather bad experience interviewing for Amazon few years back. I was invited for a whole day of interviews. I already had 12 years of experience in the field, designing complicated stuff and I like to think that I am rather good at what I am doing at it is rather hard to surprise me. There was of course screening checks but Amazon representative declined to answer any of my questions about the job I would be doing so the it was rather one-sided. It is important for me to be able to get to know at least initial expectations from my new employer. I get a lot of invitations and I also must be able to screen offers that don't offer any chance to be interesting to me. The whole day interview was quite costly to me, I had to take entire day off (as a contractor it means no pay) and drive 4 hours to Amazon site (and then 4 hours back). I would normally decline continuing with the process given the unwillingness of the company to provide any details of the offered position and the costs that I was expecting. I only relented because it was Amazon. I have quite a lot of experience interviewing. I went through a lot of interviews on both sides of the table and I was also experienced interviewing successfully for large companies with very selective processes. I have very good record of being able to predict the results of any interview meaning I can tell pretty well if I will or will not get offer. All the interviews on that day at Amazon went very well except for one. On all but one interviews I was able to solve and confirm correctness of all problems posed to me without much help and I was able to answer almost every technical questions. The 2 or 3 questions I couldn't answer I just answered politely that I did not have experience and since I am not sure I would rather not answer that accidentally give an incorrect answer. The one interview that didn't go very well, I was interviewed by a guy who posed a design problem to me. I was supposed to design a system for a parking lot. That was literally the description of the problem ("Design a system for a parking lot.") I was given no directions (what kind of parking lot? requirements? what kind of aspect of the system I am looking at? what kind of system?). All my questions about what I am doing were responded with that it is my job to figure out and no answer. I tried to pose as an analyst trying to figure the requirements but this too was meant with a refusal to answer. Nevertheless, I put some assumptions and proposed 2 different solutions (one high tech with cameras, one low tech with tickets). Both solutions were refused with explanation that that's not what he wanted to hear. It is not surprising I was declined day later and of course, no feedback. Since then I got contacted at least 5 times by different Amazon representatives but I declined after representatives refused to answer my questions and stated I would have to, again, go through entire process to learn anything.
• aredirect 8y ago
  I had a similiar experience with one of the big four, they expected me to know KMP by heart, in initial coding interview (not on-site even)
• nfriedly 8y ago
  I passed the phone screen at Mozilla but the interviewer didn't show for the first actual interview. I emailed the recruiter and the interviewer to ask what's up and eventually they apologized and they said they'd reschedule. Except they didn't. I sent a few followup emails where I suggested some times that might work, asked if there was an alternate time that might work better, etc. Never heard another word from them. I think our entire industry is terrible at recruiting.
• wst_ 8y ago
  My experience with Facebook. I've been referred by a friend and got a fast response from US. Since I am not in US they told me they are going to switch to EMEA dept. for the rest of interview. Then guy emails me from EMEA saying that he got my case and if he's not in touch soon I should remind myself to him... Actually the first one said that too. WHAT? I should send him an email in case he forgot about me? Anyway, he forgot. Obviously. After some time (2 weeks or so) I send him an email. Auto-response comes back "I am on vacation, contact Alice instead." Well, so I'm emailing Alice and asking what's going on, etc. Another auto-response "I am on vacation, contact Bob instead." I got really irritated by that point. So I contact Bob, and auto-response comes back "I have too many meetings today, I can't respond today." And that was it. Now, the funny part. After couple of weeks I got an automated email asking me to participate in interview survey to share my experience. Oh, boy! I'm glad you've asked, guys! So I describe the situation, ask them did they got a bad day or they treat all their candidates like that, and was it a joke or they just disregard people on a daily basis? After I submitted, the next day email comes. "Sorry, we've already have someone else for the job, bla bla bla." Really?
  • Twirrim 8y ago
    Facebook in Seattle has an open head count. Which means lots of recruiting attempts. I finally got them to blacklist me locally, because I was getting 3-4 recruitment contacts a month, and had been for ages and was getting somewhat tired of it. I have absolutely zero interest in working at Facebook, for a number of reasons. Some of their recruiters were beyond ridiculous when it comes to persistent. My "favourite" interaction with them, only marginally paraphrased: Recruiter: "Hi, I saw your impressive work history on LinkedIn and would like to talk to you about a job opportunity at Facebook" (probably the only thing "impressive" in my work history at the time was AWS?) Me: "Thank you for contacting me, but I'm not interested in working at Facebook" Note: This was sent direct to my personal email address, not through LinkedIn. It happens to be an email address associated with both my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, presumably something Facebook recruiters could get at? Most of their recruitment attempts have come via email instead of LinkedIn, and reference my work history on LinkedIn. < a few days pass > R: "Hi, just reaching out to you again to see if you've had a chance to rethink about the role at Facebook" M: "I'm not changing my mind. I'm not interested in working at Facebook" < a few days pass > R: "Hi, we have a recruitment open day coming up on $date, there will be food and drinks and a chance to speak with people who already work at Facebook. It's an ideal chance to see if there is any work you might find interesting here" M: "I'm really, really not interested. Stop contacting me" < $day-2 > R: "Just thought I'd send a quick reminder that the open day is coming up in a couple of days. Hope to see you there" M: "No, you won't. I'm not attending. Please stop contacting me" < $day > R: "Hi, I'm looking forward to meeting you today at the open day" By this stage I'm half tempted to turn up just so I could punch the recruiter. M: "You won't. I'm not attending. STOP CONTACTING ME" < $day+1 > R: "I'm sorry, I appear to have missed you at the open day. I was wondering if maybe I could schedule a time to speak to you about engineering opportunities here at Facebook" M: "STOP CONTACTING ME" At which point I went through my email backlog, marked every email as spam, and put in an auto-junk rule for any further communication from that recruiter.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• mcguire 8y ago
  At least you didn't get an email from a recruiter immediately after the interview saying, "looks like this is going to be successful." Contract recruiters are a nightmare.
  • LoSboccacc 8y ago
    > Contract recruiters are a nightmare. One once included me by mistake in a thread with the prospect employer where the recruiter we openly racist about me
• jimnotgym 8y ago
  Annoying from another point of view. I was trying to hire someone recently with OPs skillset...(integrations, mix of languages etc) and drew a blank. I can't seem to hire anyone in the UK unless it is for php and C#.NET. It feels like there is something really broken about recruitment.
  • walshemj 8y ago
    Where you not offering enough £ or using a poor recruitment agency.
    • jimnotgym 8y ago
      It might be both! Also it might be location. A bit remote here (Welsh borders), another reason I'm relocating.
• MrsPeaches 8y ago
  Seems like this is a common experience: https://thecooperreview.com/google-amazon-facebook-secrets-hiring-best-people/ https://thecooperreview.com/google-amazon-facebook-secrets-h...
• _Donny 8y ago
  As someone who is soon to graduate in CS from an university, these seemingly reoccurring stories of terrible interviews really scare me. Is it normal for the interviewing process to take up all the candidates day? Is it always expected to spend 3 weeks brushing up on algorithms for an interview? How important are the coding interviews in the decision process? I consider myself a decent programmer, and I have passed and even enjoyed all the algorithmics courses at my university. However, asking me to implement, lets say, the Minimum Cut algorithm on a whiteboard in front of multiple interviewers, would totally break me down. From my limited professional experience, the average day of a developer is the exact opposite of what you have to display at these interviews I read about. When I code, I need my silence and time to think, I need a relaxing and comfortable environment, I need the internet, man-pages, StackOverflow, IRC. I need my own notepad on which I can doodle, and occasionally write down notes for later. I need room to make and learn from my mistakes. And last but not least, I will have bad days where I might underperform. Interviews seem to be the exact opposite of all this.
  • tested243 8y ago
    >Is it normal for the interviewing process to take up all the candidates day? Is it always expected to spend 3 weeks brushing up on algorithms for an interview? Yes and yes. If you want to work at the best companies with the best engineers and the best workplace culture with the best compensation yes. I even think it’s worth it. Unfortunately having this strict interview style doesn’t guarantee any of the above it is just a prerequisite. > How important are the coding interviews in the decision process? I consider myself a decent programmer, and I have passed and even enjoyed all the algorithmics courses at my university. However, asking me to implement, lets say, the Minimum Cut algorithm on a whiteboard in front of multiple interviewers, would totally break me down. It’s important. 90% of the problems are search problems ie bfs and dfs. Sometimes they are a little more difficult. If you are interested in preparing and studying like crazy I suggest you go to hacker rank, solve the problems in order in python. Look at the solutions when you finish and study the user submitted solutions. They typically take advantage of built in data structures that can make life interviewing very easy
  • 8y ago
• mcintyre1994 8y ago
  I interviewed recently with Citadel in London, they're one of them market maker financial companies with a bunch of tech and shiny offices. I was told we'd have a few interviews, and lunch in the middle (we started at 1pm). Apparently I didn't do well enough in the second interview (writing random Python algorithms on a laptop - in fairness, not a whiteboard), so after a while the guy doing the second interview walked out, left me alone for about 10 minutes (it's okay, their conference rooms have a nice view over the river!), and then my first interviewer came back and told me that unfortunately my next interviewer wasn't available. I asked what would happen next and they said they'd have to rearrange the whole thing and walked me out the building. It was obvious it didn't go well but I found it so pathetic that they didn't even tell me, lied about the next interviewer and then even pretended they were going to be back in touch to rearrange things. I find it a useful experience though. Next time I'm talking with a recruiter and they mention Citadel I'll know they don't do their homework on checking how candidates are treated and I won't work with them.
  • schizoidboy 8y ago
    I know nothing about Citadel, but it may be unfair to generalize from one experience. For example, that particular group may be bad but other groups may be fine and don't know about the bad group. If you're feeling particularly bold, the ideal is to report that bad group to Citadel. Then, after sufficient time for an internal review, follow up and ask if anything has been done, and if not, then conclude your generalization. With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if our bayesian priors about the morality of financial institutions are correct, but it helps to empirically validate this and publish findings so that, over time, these institutions are validly, publicly shamed.
  • raincom 8y ago
    Being dishonest is the way out of tricky situations where one's feelings get hurt. This is okay, if the interviewee doesn't have right skills. What if the interviewee is extremely good and yet can't perform in that interview? Then, one can follow your foot steps.
  • ben_jones 8y ago
    Is it common for employers to leave you sitting alone in a conference room during an interview with no explanation or instructions? This happened to me straight out of college and I didn't handle it well admittedly during a poor interview on my part, I was already incredibly anxious and frustrated from my poor performance and I just walked out and never looked back. I feel like this is an actual interview tactic in some book somewhere although I can't imagine why.
• yks 8y ago
  Amazon uses these psychological questionnaires for screening (the likes of “Rate the statement ‘I never lie’ from disagree to agree”), of course their recruitment is a joke
• kerng 8y ago
  A good takeaway, most people overestimate their own skills and competence. It's always someone else's fault. If I apply for a company and they don't get back to me, or pull some stunts as described I assume they have better candidates in the pipeline. I'm not their priority. Maybe changing your own view a bit gets you closer to reality.
  • rayvy 8y ago
    > If I apply for a company and they don't get back to me, or pull some stunts as described I assume they have better candidates in the pipeline. I'm not their priority. This! I'm reading in the thread here about people not arranging the right times, and people responding to recruiters who clearly don't care, and people jumping through all kinds of hoops, and I'm just here kind of in disbelief. A good way to think about interviewing/being recruited, is in terms of dating. If an attractive woman says she's gonna call you, never does, then when you see her on the street she gives you some "Oh my dad's aunt's cousin's dog was sick" excuse, you're pretty much an idiot for ever thinking she was into you in the first place, and continuing to want her. Another thing is that these folks have no idea that by continuing to be straddled and dragged along (and basically bullshitted), they're confirming that "Hey, I'm desperate for this job, so sure, I'll let you walk all over me". Which thus reduces their attractiveness as candidates. A recruiter misses a call with me? No reply. A company doesn't follow through on what they said they'd do or bullshits me in the slightest way? No reply. This approach is definitely a gamble, but you have to have confidence in the fact that "Hey, I'm great at what I do and anyone who gets me is lucky to have me". Again, not that different from dating.
    • yks 8y ago
      I agree 100% and don’t initiate calls myself until the phone screen is passed at least, not because I’m such a sought after dev but because doing otherwise is generally a waste of my time and mind. But some people actually are desperate, especially if they need to put a foot in the door with the big players of industry. We all desire basic decency and not being treated as nuisance.
• DarkContinent 8y ago
  With Google they decided it was a good idea to organize interviews for me (a woman) in a window-papered-over room with exactly one other person (a guy). Not exactly comforting...
  • cloakandswagger 8y ago
    What are you trying to imply with this comment? Are you uncomfortable any time you're in an elevator alone with a man? Did anything untoward happen? If not, did this at all affect your perception of men and/or men who work at Google?
  • ioctrl 8y ago
    I’m sure the man was doing everything in his power to suppress his natural male urge to leap across the table and attack. Because that’s exactly how men are. You’re incredibly brave.
  • mayankkaizen 8y ago
    How do I downvote this comment on Materialistic app for HN? I mean you are in a cabin in a company with one guy (isn't it normal) during office hours (I assume) and you are scared? What are you? A 4 year old baby?
• Twirrim 8y ago
  > Senior Software Engineer (L3) Likely because this is reminiscing, _but_ if they told you Senior Software Engineer was an L3, things were even more screwed up. Senior Engineers should be L5-L6.
• akudha 8y ago
  I have such low expectation of recruiters these days that nothing they do bothers me. The impression he gave off was that his field of IT was the only one that mattered and if you haven't heard some very specific terms from that field that you were a pathetic excuse for a human being What really annoys me are those interviewers who are hell bent on proving they are smarter than the interviewee. The point of an interview is to find what the candidate knows and where she can fit in the organization. Even if the interviewer is the god of coding, there is absolutely no need to belittle or make the interviewee nervous. They are simply wasting everyone's time when they do it, not to mention the bad publicity, like this article. The interviewers are developers themselves, I can't understand why/how they can treat fellow devs this badly.
  • ben_jones 8y ago
    Simple. It's bullying. Put others down to feel better about yourself. And thanks to the power dynamic there's no way to push back other then to never work at the company - which might even be a good company with a couple bad apples.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• rustcharm 8y ago
  People should be treated with respect, even if they're not a good fit for the job. This is disgusting behavior on Amazon's part.
• mogelbumm 8y ago
  Recently I had such a bad experience with a Google recruiter who was looking for an Engineering Manager. He set up an initial call but canceled 8 minutes before due to another meeting he had at the same time. So we rescheduled for two days later. I had the video chat link and was waiting for him to appear. As he didn't appear, of course, I sent an email asking if anything was wrong. This was 3 months ago and I never received any feedback or another reply.
  • john_moscow 8y ago
    Just a heads up that any kind of a "manager" position in FAANG that goes through a "recruiter" and not directly through your network is very likely a bait-and-switch for a regular SDE.
    • gargarplex 8y ago
      That's extremely insightful: a manager position in FAANG occurs through promotion or networking in. Would love to hear all stories of networking, people within or external to the FAANG organizations.. (getting hired vs. helping hire)
• bsenftner 8y ago
  I don't bother with any recruiting or hiring processes anymore. If I can't phone and speak directly with my candidate boss about the specifics of my hire, I tell them to go find some other manipulable smuck. I just give them bad attitude, and guess what? They want me immediately. No one talks to me unless they need a serious, problem solving developer. Recruiters that fish me get an earful. I've found being nice is a failure strategy, and having a nasty attitude turns heads; I get hired. Funny part, I am the most easy going guy around. I just can not tolerate shitheads, and the corporate recruiting process is all shitheads.
• bastawhiz 8y ago
  A bit late to the party, but a lot of things that this post mentions are very similar to my own Amazon experience. - They asked me to write a four page essay before I was allowed to have an on-site interview. Exactly four pages. - The interview process was more exhausting than any company I'd interviewed at. They make almost no accommodations to make you feel comfortable. - I asked for a Macbook. They gave me an old Dell laptop. - I remember that the VC in the room we were initially in just didn't work. The recruiter spent a good amount of time trying to make it work before giving up and getting another room. I believe they had just switched the office over to Chime, which was not reassuring. - The editor they had me code in didn't actually run my code, nor did it have syntax highlighting. A big chunk of the top of the screen was covered by a banner ad, because apparently they weren't paying for it. - The recruiter and first interviewer were both late. I sat in an empty lobby waiting for someone to show up to tell me what to do while the receptionists yelled song requests to the Echo across the room. - The position was for "special projects," aka "top secret". All of my interviewers made sure to impress upon me how important the project was, but even after I got an offer, they wouldn't tell me what it entailed. I literally wouldn't find out what the project was until I signed the offer. - The title they offered me was "better" than the other two offers I got. But the compensation (including equity) was the worst: double digit percentage less than the next best offer.
• curtis 8y ago
  There's one specific problem with tech hiring that generally doesn't get a mention and maybe should: HR hiring staff apparently has a really high rate of turnover, especially among contract sourcers and recruiters (and it seems like many of these people are contractors). One really easy way to get ghosted during the recruiting process is if your primary handler quits, gets fired, or just doesn't get their contract renewed. I don't think this is the primary problem with tech hiring, but it might be a quite significant secondary problem.
• bad_news_bears 8y ago
  I had a bad experience interviewing with Facebook’s Product Data Scientist group. I had two initial calls with a recruiter, was told to expect outreach for a third, and never heard from them again. I followed up twice – radio silence.
• aaron695 8y ago
  > Their feedback was that it was decided that I didn't show a high enough level of day-to-day coding ability and because of that I would not be given an offer. This felt like a kick in the gut, it was insulting and belittling... And this is why you never ever give feedback to possible recruits. There's nothing in it for you and occasionally they will turn on you.
• philwelch 8y ago
  So here's a series of interview-related experiences I've had with the same, large company; a combination of good, bad, and weird: 1. After a referral from a friend and former coworker, I have an informational interview with a hiring manager. We hit it off and I get into the interview process. 2. I end up interviewing for a different team than before. After lots and lots of interview prep and a stressful but seemingly okay interview loop, I meet up with aforementioned friend and former coworker for drinks. 3. I hear back that I'm not getting an offer for this particular opening, but this particular rejection cryptically asks me to "stay tuned" for...something. 4. I'm contacted out of the blue by a contracting firm working with the same company. This is apparently what I was supposed to stay tuned for. They send me a list of contract openings, I indicate which ones seem interesting to me. 5. I have a phone interview for one of the contract slots. I get hired on a 3 month contract, but I'm told that if things work out, they can extend the contract. 6. The contract gets extended, and I start asking around about converting to full time. Doing this requires yet another loop, but I can stay on the same team and everything, and they have an opening. I start prepping. I also do a mock interview with another manager in the organization, who tells my boss that "it wouldn't be a complete waste of time" to interview me (which was much higher praise than it might sound if you know the guy). 7. I do the interview loop, in a conference room not far from the desk that I'm already working at, for a job I'm already doing. After the loop, I return to my desk and try to do some actual work but shortly realize that my brain is fried, and my boss kind of laughs and says I can just go home. 8. A few days later, as I'm working, I catch my coworker coming back from my interview debrief. He makes eye contact and gives me a little thumbs up. A couple days later, I get a formal offer. It's a pretty damn good offer. I accept and schedule my first day for about a month and a half after my contract is up, so I can get some extra vacation time in between. 9. Eventually, I end up interviewing people myself. The best story from this stage is when I have a streak of 7-8 phone screens where the candidate no-shows. Like, either straight doesn't pick up the phone, or picks up the phone and when I ask, "is this still a good time?", they say something like, "no", or, "I'm still driving". Everyone I talk to agrees that this is really weird. Eventually I find out that the recruiters don't understand how time zones work, except that was only 3-4 phone screens in and I still had a bunch of no-shows after that.