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> 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 l
by 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.
- starbeast 8y agoInterviews are a two way street and you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Should you ever have a truly terrible experience in interview, first tell them that you are going to have to call a halt so as to not waste any more time. Then inform them that you are very sorry, but unfortunately they have managed to fail the interview process and should the chance to employ you come around again, could they please not reapply. Then walk away. I have only done this once, while being told about the extra unpaid hours I would have to put in because of 'culture'. It was more than worth it though, as I got to see a shade of maroon that I was previously unaware was even within the gamut of normal human skin tones.
- ikromin 8y agoPerfect!
- starbeast 8y agoI tend to take the view that I employ employers to find me interesting or useful stuff to do and to provide any structure and organisation required for said stuff. If they aren't doing it properly, I can fire them.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoThis is the view every should have - then there would be less of the sort of treatment that leaves people feeling like shit. This is why I love consulting. I get to interview who I’m going to work with and I’m the one who gets to decide if we are going to proceed. I’ve done the interview “firing” a few times and boy are they surprised to hear it.
- Matumio 8y agoKeep in mind that there could be a very good explanation for such a no-show, like death of a family member. But if the company has no second thought about wasting time of candidates then I would stop asking myself how to "get in" and instead ask myself if they really need me. Call me spoiled, but I'm not going to jump through hoops (like more than three interviews) and accept abuse just for the honour to serve. I am not a slave, and if my skills have some value then I will eventually find a company that actually needs them.
- kromem 8y agoWow. That "what's the worst thing that ever happened to you" question should make their legal team's skin crawl. What if the answer was about being bullied for sexual orientation (and in the process disclosing information that could bias an interview) or about dealing with a medical condition? That's such a stupid question for an interview.
- andybak 8y agoI wonder what the smart way to refuse to reply would be. Is there any way you could and not negatively impact your chances?
- rdtsc 8y agoI think they want stories of overcoming adversity and how the leadership principles apply there. "Well let's see I was about to be stabbed and a good samaritan jumped in and helped me escape from the thugs. Let's see what's the don't get stabbed principle..."
- ufmace 8y agoWhat I've heard is that if you are asked an uncomfortable or illegal question in an interview, convert it to the closest legal or comfortable version in your head, and answer that. Like: "What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?" -> Auto-convert to "What's the worst situation that you had to handle at work?" -> Forget the "I got in a bar fight on the weekend" story, tell the "I had to convince the stubborn holdout on my team to go along with the rest of the team's consensus on how to solve a problem" story.
- omg_ketchup 8y agoI'm sure they mean "What's a bad work situation you were in, and how did you deal with it"
- isoskeles 8y agoI also thought this is what they meant. It sounds like someone was trying to ask something from a behavioral question bank and just didn't have the wording memorized well enough.
- beams_of_light 8y agoThis must be the norm for Amazon. I interviewed for a position a couple of years ago in their networking division, and was interviewed by an individual in Dublin (I was applying for a position in Seattle) who was not only not the hiring manager, but didn't seem to care for interviewing me at all. Obviously, it went nowhere.
- chrshawkes 8y agoI've also had the no-show no-call phone interview. They did that to me once and I never called them back or responded to their I'm sorry emails.