5 ms·

How I got hired by Amazon.com

39 points by acangiano 18y ago

ojbyrne 18y ago
I'm guessing that's not going to be the best job ever. Maybe it's Second Life stigma, but I don't think so.
- jeffbarr 18y ago
  Actually, it will be the best job ever. Technical Evangelism is impactful, fun, and all-consuming and I would be happy to tell you more off-line. As Simone's new manager I am happy that we were able to find such a talented person using Second Life as our first point of contact.I am also happy to know that he has experience and interest in leading-edge technologies. Hiring great people is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. You have to find them, screen the resumes, conduct phone screens, and ultimately meet them in person. If there's a way to use an advanced technology to optimize and reduce the time and expense involved, then what's the problem?
  - edw519 18y ago
    "I would be happy to tell you more off-line" I would be happy to hear more off-line. My email address in is my profile.
brooksbp 18y ago
To be completely honest... that lost a ton of integrity as soon as I read "I showed up at the Amazon.com’s booth, with my well-dressed and custom-skinned avatar which, as a bonus, has my same name, Simone Brunozzi (don’t ask me how I got it because it’s a secret)." Cmon now... what is this virtual ^&*#$@! coming to? Really Amazon.com? Really?? Edit: Not only that... but look at the view from his office... I'm practically speachless at how BS not only that job position and article, but Amazon.com's participation and movement in that direction is...
- tdavis 18y ago
  I do a lot of, for lack of a better term, "geeky" things, but I would never write about anything involving Second Life. Perhaps it's unfair discrimination and perhaps I am just ignorant to SL's real worth/usefulness, but... I can live with that. I disagree with you on your edit, however; "evangelists" can be very important to an organization.
- acangiano 18y ago
  Does it really matter if they find the right candidate through Monster.com, on SL or while they're shopping at Costco?
  - brooksbp 18y ago
    Nope, not at all. The reason why I am slightly offended is that people are treating "virtual interviews" with the same seriousness as traditional, face-to-face interviews. There will be no substitute for real human, spoken, face-to-face interviews; more to take out of a person like body language and emotion. Human collaboration within a close environment is crucial to most aspects of business and production. It is nothing more than silly for an individual to feel accomplishment from a job interview via SecondLife; feeling successful, bypassing face-to-face interaction. Though, I feel this position might seem too harsh.
    - whatusername 18y ago
      Where does it treat them with the same seriousness? To me the initial SL component was just a screening / outreach process - finding them someone they wouldn't have otherwise found. He then had 11 face-to-face interviews (in two different countries) totalling 9.5 hours of face-to-face time.. How was this "bypassing face-to-face interaction"?
- icey 18y ago
  What does a virtual job fair have to do with integrity? It let an HR person from Seattle interview someone in Italy for a job in Luxembourg... To me it seems like Amazon being smart. Regarding your edit, I don't think you understand how important technical evangelists are at places like Amazon, Microsoft, Sun, etc... They are essentially technical sales-people; they're the ones who say "Hey, this is what we're working on, and this is why it's important". To be completely honest with you, your post seems like sour grapes.
simonebrunozzi 18y ago
Hi guys, this is Simone Brunozzi, the "new hire" at Amazon.com. Second Life is not the new holy grail, I just said that it was a key factor for me. Second Life is still in its infancy, and it's useful only in specific situations. I consider evangelists very important for an organization such as Amazon. They don't have an explicit position on Second Life, though. Best,
- davidw 18y ago
  Hi, one thing that I might take issue with is this: > poorly developed nation from a technological point of view. There are tons of bright hackers in Italy, in my experience, and in various fields, there is good tech that comes out of Italy. The problems are political and economical in nature, in my opinion - the technology is there, it's just not utilized well because of all the crap that happens politically. As one small example, it between "capital requirements", and all the fees, it probably costs something like 10000 Euro to create an SrL (limited liability company), whereas in my home state of Oregon, I managed to create one for a little over 100 dollars. I'm sure you know all this, but many people don't realize how many smart, entrepreneurial people there are in Italy, and only see the results of years of bad policy decisions. Complimenti, in ogni caso:-) Leaving Perugia wouldn't be an easy decision for anyone - I think that area is one of the most beautiful that I've ever seen, anywhere.
randy 18y ago
Is it just me, or does anyone else find 14 interviews (11 on site, 3 phone; one more if you count the fair) a bit ridiculous? I mean I know people are the most important thing and you have to make smart choices but damn!
- timr 18y ago
  Yes. One the one hand, companies like Amazon whine (to whichever politician is listening) that there's a desperate shortage of skilled technical people. On the other hand, they subject new hires to 14 interviews. Tell me: is this the sort of thing you do when you're in desperate need of employees?
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    Are you proposing that they lower the standards?
    - randy 18y ago
      I don't think the issue is about lowering their standards, but rather re-evaluating them. Throwing more interviews at applicants doesn't give you much more info beyond a certain point (which is presumably somewhere before 14).
    - timr 18y ago
      What standards? This is just geek chest-thumping, and has little mathematical justification. Let's assume that your interviewers are uniformly exceptionally good, and have a false-negative rate of only 10% (i.e. 90% of all good applicants are accepted). An interview with a good candidate is therefore a Bernoulli trial, and the outcome of an interview loop can be modeled exactly as a binomial process. If you conduct 5 interviews, the probability of at least one interviewer saying no to a good candidate is 0.41. If you conduct fourteen interviews, the probability of at least one false negative is 0.77, and the probability of at least two false negatives is 0.42. In other words...you've made it twice as likely that you're going to have someone falsely reject a good candidate. Meanwhile, let's assume that these unrealistically brilliant interviewers are even better at rejecting bad applicants: they each have a false-positive rate of 5% (and therefore, a true negative rate of 95%). If we assume a five-interviewer loop, the chance of a single false positive is 0.23. But bumping the number of interviewers to fourteen raises the chance of a false-positive to 0.51! With fourteen interviewers, the chance that one will say "Hire" to a bad applicant is over 50%! In other words, with every interviewer you add to a loop, you raise the chances of a false-positive or (even more likely) a false negative decision. If you have normal interviewers (i.e. people who don't have super-human discriminatory ability), the problem is even more pronounced.
edw519 18y ago
Sometimes it takes someone's ESL to get the best bulletin board material: "if you work hard for something, in the moment you stand in front of your challenges you’ll feel stronger than ever" Bravo! I'd wish you luck, Simone, but no need. Looks like you already know how to make your own.
sealedidentity 18y ago
Bravo. Well done with the interviews and the tips to new grads and interviewees. Perseverence and studied methods to distinguish oneself from the crowds is the way to land any job. I'm glad he found a job of his liking in a great location.

39 points by acangiano 18y ago

ojbyrne 18y ago

I'm guessing that's not going to be the best job ever. Maybe it's Second Life stigma, but I don't think so.

jeffbarr 18y ago
Actually, it will be the best job ever. Technical Evangelism is impactful, fun, and all-consuming and I would be happy to tell you more off-line. As Simone's new manager I am happy that we were able to find such a talented person using Second Life as our first point of contact.I am also happy to know that he has experience and interest in leading-edge technologies. Hiring great people is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. You have to find them, screen the resumes, conduct phone screens, and ultimately meet them in person. If there's a way to use an advanced technology to optimize and reduce the time and expense involved, then what's the problem?
- edw519 18y ago
  "I would be happy to tell you more off-line" I would be happy to hear more off-line. My email address in is my profile.

brooksbp 18y ago

To be completely honest... that lost a ton of integrity as soon as I read "I showed up at the Amazon.com’s booth, with my well-dressed and custom-skinned avatar which, as a bonus, has my same name, Simone Brunozzi (don’t ask me how I got it because it’s a secret)." Cmon now... what is this virtual ^&*#$@! coming to? Really Amazon.com? Really?? Edit: Not only that... but look at the view from his office... I'm practically speachless at how BS not only that job position and article, but Amazon.com's participation and movement in that direction is...

tdavis 18y ago
I do a lot of, for lack of a better term, "geeky" things, but I would never write about anything involving Second Life. Perhaps it's unfair discrimination and perhaps I am just ignorant to SL's real worth/usefulness, but... I can live with that. I disagree with you on your edit, however; "evangelists" can be very important to an organization.
acangiano 18y ago
Does it really matter if they find the right candidate through Monster.com, on SL or while they're shopping at Costco?
- brooksbp 18y ago
  Nope, not at all. The reason why I am slightly offended is that people are treating "virtual interviews" with the same seriousness as traditional, face-to-face interviews. There will be no substitute for real human, spoken, face-to-face interviews; more to take out of a person like body language and emotion. Human collaboration within a close environment is crucial to most aspects of business and production. It is nothing more than silly for an individual to feel accomplishment from a job interview via SecondLife; feeling successful, bypassing face-to-face interaction. Though, I feel this position might seem too harsh.
  - whatusername 18y ago
    Where does it treat them with the same seriousness? To me the initial SL component was just a screening / outreach process - finding them someone they wouldn't have otherwise found. He then had 11 face-to-face interviews (in two different countries) totalling 9.5 hours of face-to-face time.. How was this "bypassing face-to-face interaction"?
icey 18y ago
What does a virtual job fair have to do with integrity? It let an HR person from Seattle interview someone in Italy for a job in Luxembourg... To me it seems like Amazon being smart. Regarding your edit, I don't think you understand how important technical evangelists are at places like Amazon, Microsoft, Sun, etc... They are essentially technical sales-people; they're the ones who say "Hey, this is what we're working on, and this is why it's important". To be completely honest with you, your post seems like sour grapes.

simonebrunozzi 18y ago

Hi guys, this is Simone Brunozzi, the "new hire" at Amazon.com. Second Life is not the new holy grail, I just said that it was a key factor for me. Second Life is still in its infancy, and it's useful only in specific situations. I consider evangelists very important for an organization such as Amazon. They don't have an explicit position on Second Life, though. Best,

davidw 18y ago
Hi, one thing that I might take issue with is this: > poorly developed nation from a technological point of view. There are tons of bright hackers in Italy, in my experience, and in various fields, there is good tech that comes out of Italy. The problems are political and economical in nature, in my opinion - the technology is there, it's just not utilized well because of all the crap that happens politically. As one small example, it between "capital requirements", and all the fees, it probably costs something like 10000 Euro to create an SrL (limited liability company), whereas in my home state of Oregon, I managed to create one for a little over 100 dollars. I'm sure you know all this, but many people don't realize how many smart, entrepreneurial people there are in Italy, and only see the results of years of bad policy decisions. Complimenti, in ogni caso:-) Leaving Perugia wouldn't be an easy decision for anyone - I think that area is one of the most beautiful that I've ever seen, anywhere.

randy 18y ago

Is it just me, or does anyone else find 14 interviews (11 on site, 3 phone; one more if you count the fair) a bit ridiculous? I mean I know people are the most important thing and you have to make smart choices but damn!

timr 18y ago
Yes. One the one hand, companies like Amazon whine (to whichever politician is listening) that there's a desperate shortage of skilled technical people. On the other hand, they subject new hires to 14 interviews. Tell me: is this the sort of thing you do when you're in desperate need of employees?
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  Are you proposing that they lower the standards?
  - randy 18y ago
    I don't think the issue is about lowering their standards, but rather re-evaluating them. Throwing more interviews at applicants doesn't give you much more info beyond a certain point (which is presumably somewhere before 14).
  - timr 18y ago
    What standards? This is just geek chest-thumping, and has little mathematical justification. Let's assume that your interviewers are uniformly exceptionally good, and have a false-negative rate of only 10% (i.e. 90% of all good applicants are accepted). An interview with a good candidate is therefore a Bernoulli trial, and the outcome of an interview loop can be modeled exactly as a binomial process. If you conduct 5 interviews, the probability of at least one interviewer saying no to a good candidate is 0.41. If you conduct fourteen interviews, the probability of at least one false negative is 0.77, and the probability of at least two false negatives is 0.42. In other words...you've made it twice as likely that you're going to have someone falsely reject a good candidate. Meanwhile, let's assume that these unrealistically brilliant interviewers are even better at rejecting bad applicants: they each have a false-positive rate of 5% (and therefore, a true negative rate of 95%). If we assume a five-interviewer loop, the chance of a single false positive is 0.23. But bumping the number of interviewers to fourteen raises the chance of a false-positive to 0.51! With fourteen interviewers, the chance that one will say "Hire" to a bad applicant is over 50%! In other words, with every interviewer you add to a loop, you raise the chances of a false-positive or (even more likely) a false negative decision. If you have normal interviewers (i.e. people who don't have super-human discriminatory ability), the problem is even more pronounced.

edw519 18y ago

Sometimes it takes someone's ESL to get the best bulletin board material: "if you work hard for something, in the moment you stand in front of your challenges you’ll feel stronger than ever" Bravo! I'd wish you luck, Simone, but no need. Looks like you already know how to make your own.

sealedidentity 18y ago

Bravo. Well done with the interviews and the tips to new grads and interviewees. Perseverence and studied methods to distinguish oneself from the crowds is the way to land any job. I'm glad he found a job of his liking in a great location.