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My Amazon interview was the most ridiculous experience I have ever had interviewing anywhere. That round I got offers from Facebook (insta), Google (team matchi

My Amazon interview was the most ridiculous experience I have ever had interviewing anywhere. That round I got offers from Facebook (insta), Google (team matching said maps), Uber (eats) and a few others but not Amazon. At Amazon, I pulled out and declined with an email to my recruiter from the lobby of the building at the end of the day. My interviewers were broken up into two categories: Engineers who didn't want to be there, and terrible mid level managers that quizzed me on memorization of their company competencies. One of the managers was clearly reading his questions from a list, and did not care at all about what I had to say. That, combined with the sad office (manager's share a tiny office, everyone else sits in grey cubicles without sunlight), and no food or snacks (it matters) really broke it for me. All that aside (I am willing to chalk it up to luck, god knows my first (failed) round at trying to get into Google went terribly), Amazon clearly does not compete by hiring the best engineers. Rather, they compete by throwing money at the problem and undercutting everyone else, getting by with mediocre engineering.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sabana 7y ago
What's wrong with reading pre-prepared questions from a written list? (nothing)
- toadi 7y ago
  Nothing but he followed up by saying he wasn't interested in the answers.
- krageon 7y ago
  A job interview is a deeply personal process. If you get someone who is disinterested, which you can easily tell if A. They read from a sheet and B. Don't listen when you answer, that says a lot about the company you are interviewing for.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    >A job interview is a deeply personal process. I think you might put a little too much stock into your work-life if you consider a job interview "deeply personal". You're looking for an employer, not a soulmate (and it's not like Amazon is some unknown quantity).
    - krageon 7y ago
      It would have been better worded as "fundamentally personal". I didn't mean it in the sense that you will talk about what your most secret desires are, I meant it in the sense that you as a person need to get a feeling for the kind of culture/people that the company you are interviewing at fosters. You can't do that without any form of personal connection, unless of course that's something you enjoy. All the more power to you in that case, but it's not for me and I think also not for most people.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Depends how you do it and if you engage with the person you are interviewing
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  Software eng. is very much a job seeker's market right now. The interviewer comes off as cold and uncaring to the peril of his company.
craigzucchini 7y ago
Based on this, and the consistent theme that seems to run through the rest of your comments, it seems to me that all of these companies could stand to do more to assess the character of their interviewees. Reading this in the most charitable way I can still results in it coming across as arrogant, attention-seeking, and as you've made it to age 22 having experienced no hardship at all.
- drinfinity 7y ago
  Agreed.
  - drinfinity 7y ago
    I'm worse though, just in a different way.
- googlemike 7y ago
  I am surprised you learned so much about me from my comment! Let me clarify a little: I am significantly older than 22. I had to drop out of university to provide for my ailing parents and to support my sister. I've spent more than a few nights sleeping in my car around the corner from whichever office or university I happened to be attending at the time.
  - craigzucchini 7y ago
    Really? That theme of generosity is notably absent from most of your comments unless they glorify Google. A positive impression of someone is hard to come by if they seem inordinately eager to jump in on threads that paint non-American engineers in a positive light, or that dismiss racial discrimination as a negative thing.
    - googlemike 7y ago
      Where have I done those things?
angarg12 7y ago
One of my friends has a saying that is very difficult to translate to English, but a fair translation would be "everyone has different memories of the party". The point is not to use anecdotal evidente as absolute truth. Maybe a few rounds of interviews with each company could help to paint a better picture. Personally I could say me interviews with Amazon have been some of the most pleasant I had so far, while other companies have arrogant engineers that ask incredibly hard algorithmic problems that you would hardly ever find in real life. Just because I had one bad interview doesn't mean I should write off the entire company.
- Stryder 7y ago
  Pretty good English equivalent for that saying: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv
ksec 7y ago
While many may hate Ruby Rails for whatever reason, Basecamp's way of operating business has been fascinating to me, and DHH has pointed out many obvious flaws in the way today's business operate that no one bothers to speak about it. They have been talking about hiring [1], and more to come in their podcast ( Not sure if that is out yet ). [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/its-high-time-to-rewrite-the-hiring-script/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/its-high-time-to-rewrite-the-hiri...
austincheney 7y ago
It could be worse. I recently had an interview with a 5 day code assignment to build services, perform data transform against several competing requirements, and some other things. I provided lots of code comments, interactive documentation, test data samples, and a detailed readme file about as long as the code to explain how I went about things and how to reproduce my results The feedback was only that the code was disorganized because all 750 lines were in one file and there was no test automation. I really got the impression they didn’t even look at the code or execute it to see if I achieved success or followed instructions. Felt like they were just wasting my time. All my big GitHub projects are on my resume. They could have given me nearly identical feedback by looking over my GitHub projects and not waste either of our time with this ridiculous assignment. On the upside I view this as a somewhat positive thing because if their developers can’t read code then I probably be miserable there.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  If you don’t write unit tests on an assignment like that, you’ve pretty much failed. I made the same mistake in a similar situation with a different company. It’s tough because the expectations aren’t spelled out clearly, but unit tests are non negotiable. [speaking personally, not on behalf of my employer]
  - slifin 7y ago
    I suppose interviewers regularly fail people for less than this but it's just ridiculous I bet if the interviewee is told to add unit tests the majority could and would It's not a test of skill so much as a test of expectation, hidden expectations are the worse to deal with in an interview If we're going to wag the testing finger and say always unit tests then why not always generative tests? They'd always test more inputs, why not spin those tests infinitely? Did they test in the repl? why not always mutation testing? why not always integration testing? I don't think people like to realise that testing is a spectrum of confidence you'll never reach 100% nor should you expect to Dealing in bullshit absolutes here is stupid, talk to your interviewee about what they could do to ensure their code complies with its intent instead of springing hidden expectations after the fact
C1sc0cat 7y ago
If your doing competency based interviewing (which Amazon appears to be doing) its on you to demonstrate the competencies. But it does seem that Amazon's interviewing is not the best - I have worked for places where you had to take and Pass a 2 day residential course before you where allowed to interview candidates.
- mabbo 7y ago
  It's a half day course at Amazon to be an interviewer, followed by a bunch of "shadowing" interviews and phone screens. To be a head interviewer (bar raiser) requires 100+ interviews under your belt, a lot of additional training, and a lot of further shadowing. The fact is, it takes a certain personality to be really good at interviews. (I suck at it because I like everyone, too optimistic.)
  - GoodJokes 7y ago
    No it takes a certain personality to be a bootlicker for HR. You are probably just fine with interviews and probably better ethically.
draw_down 7y ago
This is where a bunch of people insist that the whole company isn’t like that, it depends on your team, as if that excuses this type of thing.
ex-aws-now-goog 7y ago
> Amazon clearly does not compete by hiring the best engineers. Rather, they compete by throwing money at the problem and undercutting everyone else, getting by with mediocre engineering. Evidence please. Amazon has a lot of freaking fantastic engineers and "throwing money at the problem" is definitely not how they solve problems. It's a huge company and not every single engineer is excellent and there are definitely rotten bits but that's true of _every_ company that's large enough.
- ujoh1 7y ago
  Hello See how you can start making a steady passive incomes of $100 daily on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sabana 7y ago

What's wrong with reading pre-prepared questions from a written list? (nothing)

toadi 7y ago
Nothing but he followed up by saying he wasn't interested in the answers.
krageon 7y ago
A job interview is a deeply personal process. If you get someone who is disinterested, which you can easily tell if A. They read from a sheet and B. Don't listen when you answer, that says a lot about the company you are interviewing for.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  >A job interview is a deeply personal process. I think you might put a little too much stock into your work-life if you consider a job interview "deeply personal". You're looking for an employer, not a soulmate (and it's not like Amazon is some unknown quantity).
  - krageon 7y ago
    It would have been better worded as "fundamentally personal". I didn't mean it in the sense that you will talk about what your most secret desires are, I meant it in the sense that you as a person need to get a feeling for the kind of culture/people that the company you are interviewing at fosters. You can't do that without any form of personal connection, unless of course that's something you enjoy. All the more power to you in that case, but it's not for me and I think also not for most people.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Depends how you do it and if you engage with the person you are interviewing
lr4444lr 7y ago
Software eng. is very much a job seeker's market right now. The interviewer comes off as cold and uncaring to the peril of his company.

craigzucchini 7y ago

Based on this, and the consistent theme that seems to run through the rest of your comments, it seems to me that all of these companies could stand to do more to assess the character of their interviewees. Reading this in the most charitable way I can still results in it coming across as arrogant, attention-seeking, and as you've made it to age 22 having experienced no hardship at all.

drinfinity 7y ago
Agreed.
- drinfinity 7y ago
  I'm worse though, just in a different way.
googlemike 7y ago
I am surprised you learned so much about me from my comment! Let me clarify a little: I am significantly older than 22. I had to drop out of university to provide for my ailing parents and to support my sister. I've spent more than a few nights sleeping in my car around the corner from whichever office or university I happened to be attending at the time.
- craigzucchini 7y ago
  Really? That theme of generosity is notably absent from most of your comments unless they glorify Google. A positive impression of someone is hard to come by if they seem inordinately eager to jump in on threads that paint non-American engineers in a positive light, or that dismiss racial discrimination as a negative thing.
  - googlemike 7y ago
    Where have I done those things?

angarg12 7y ago

One of my friends has a saying that is very difficult to translate to English, but a fair translation would be "everyone has different memories of the party". The point is not to use anecdotal evidente as absolute truth. Maybe a few rounds of interviews with each company could help to paint a better picture. Personally I could say me interviews with Amazon have been some of the most pleasant I had so far, while other companies have arrogant engineers that ask incredibly hard algorithmic problems that you would hardly ever find in real life. Just because I had one bad interview doesn't mean I should write off the entire company.

Stryder 7y ago
Pretty good English equivalent for that saying: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ymmv

ksec 7y ago

While many may hate Ruby Rails for whatever reason, Basecamp's way of operating business has been fascinating to me, and DHH has pointed out many obvious flaws in the way today's business operate that no one bothers to speak about it. They have been talking about hiring [1], and more to come in their podcast ( Not sure if that is out yet ). [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/its-high-time-to-rewrite-the-hiring-script/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/its-high-time-to-rewrite-the-hiri...

austincheney 7y ago

It could be worse. I recently had an interview with a 5 day code assignment to build services, perform data transform against several competing requirements, and some other things. I provided lots of code comments, interactive documentation, test data samples, and a detailed readme file about as long as the code to explain how I went about things and how to reproduce my results The feedback was only that the code was disorganized because all 750 lines were in one file and there was no test automation. I really got the impression they didn’t even look at the code or execute it to see if I achieved success or followed instructions. Felt like they were just wasting my time. All my big GitHub projects are on my resume. They could have given me nearly identical feedback by looking over my GitHub projects and not waste either of our time with this ridiculous assignment. On the upside I view this as a somewhat positive thing because if their developers can’t read code then I probably be miserable there.

alexhutcheson 7y ago
If you don’t write unit tests on an assignment like that, you’ve pretty much failed. I made the same mistake in a similar situation with a different company. It’s tough because the expectations aren’t spelled out clearly, but unit tests are non negotiable. [speaking personally, not on behalf of my employer]
- slifin 7y ago
  I suppose interviewers regularly fail people for less than this but it's just ridiculous I bet if the interviewee is told to add unit tests the majority could and would It's not a test of skill so much as a test of expectation, hidden expectations are the worse to deal with in an interview If we're going to wag the testing finger and say always unit tests then why not always generative tests? They'd always test more inputs, why not spin those tests infinitely? Did they test in the repl? why not always mutation testing? why not always integration testing? I don't think people like to realise that testing is a spectrum of confidence you'll never reach 100% nor should you expect to Dealing in bullshit absolutes here is stupid, talk to your interviewee about what they could do to ensure their code complies with its intent instead of springing hidden expectations after the fact

C1sc0cat 7y ago

If your doing competency based interviewing (which Amazon appears to be doing) its on you to demonstrate the competencies. But it does seem that Amazon's interviewing is not the best - I have worked for places where you had to take and Pass a 2 day residential course before you where allowed to interview candidates.

mabbo 7y ago
It's a half day course at Amazon to be an interviewer, followed by a bunch of "shadowing" interviews and phone screens. To be a head interviewer (bar raiser) requires 100+ interviews under your belt, a lot of additional training, and a lot of further shadowing. The fact is, it takes a certain personality to be really good at interviews. (I suck at it because I like everyone, too optimistic.)
- GoodJokes 7y ago
  No it takes a certain personality to be a bootlicker for HR. You are probably just fine with interviews and probably better ethically.

draw_down 7y ago

This is where a bunch of people insist that the whole company isn’t like that, it depends on your team, as if that excuses this type of thing.

ex-aws-now-goog 7y ago

> Amazon clearly does not compete by hiring the best engineers. Rather, they compete by throwing money at the problem and undercutting everyone else, getting by with mediocre engineering. Evidence please. Amazon has a lot of freaking fantastic engineers and "throwing money at the problem" is definitely not how they solve problems. It's a huge company and not every single engineer is excellent and there are definitely rotten bits but that's true of _every_ company that's large enough.

ujoh1 7y ago
Hello See how you can start making a steady passive incomes of $100 daily on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details