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The other thing to add on is that Amazon is having a hard time recruiting, at least anecdotally from friends who work there. Between their reputation as a compa

The other thing to add on is that Amazon is having a hard time recruiting, at least anecdotally from friends who work there. Between their reputation as a company and hot job market, filling some senior level eng roles has become near impossible.

teh_infallible 5y ago
A recruiter contacted me one for a position at Amazon, and I straight up said I will never work there because of the way they treat their employees. (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh well)
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh well) They seem to have a lot of recruiters and I'm surprised if this even got you off their "contact every month" list.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Both Facebook and Amazon have contacted me recently, and in both cases it was a senior manager doing the recruiting. Maybe just a new strategy in general, or perhaps it's because both companies struggle with reputation.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    If they were contacting you with a specific interesting position, that would be something. If they were contacting you with a generic position they just needed to fill...that sounds like a lot of cringe.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I have only actually talked with the guy from Facebook. All he did was talk about how great his teams are, how super intelligent his engineers are, etc. While he politely listened to what I had to say, he was definitely on a mission to market his little slice of Instagram and get me interested in running the Facebook interview gauntlet. He even suggested that it would be totally okay if I was one of those people that wanted to study for a month or two before interviewing. Study?! For a job interview? It was a weird experience. I normally shun recruiters, but I was just curious enough to hear what this guy had to say. His LinkedIn profile didn't indicate any past involvement with recruiting, so I wanted to know why a senior manager would spend time recruiting random people -- he must spend every waking hour on these calls.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Studying a month for a job interview...well, if you need a job and have the time, it can definitely work out well in the end. The leetcode problems are kind of fun to work on once you get into them, but they are definitely of limited use. My Facebook interview was weird also, but the people were super nice and the coding problems were fairly easy. I failed on distributed systems architecture, oddly enough, as it was an area I had no experience in for a senior hire (but I got an offer from Google the same day I was rejected from Facebook, so I didn't have much time to be sad about it). But managers recruiting random people, just seems weird to me. If they wanted me for my specific skill set, that would be great! But if they were just looking for general hires, they must have lost a bet or something.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    I know a local Amazon director and he was spending a lot of time with recruiting, he had to hire a very large amount of people and that was his top measure for that year. Even paying above the market, with their reputation and the competition on the market it was difficult to meet the target.
- hacker_newz 5y ago
  Don't worry, they don't last that long.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Both and I someone else I’ve spoken to have been reached out to by Amazon recruiters for different, both technical roles. Neither of us get any attention from “good” companies whatsoever, but we both at least got a handful of messages from Amazon recruiters. They seem desperate. I didn’t bother pursuing as a little research showed they wouldn’t offer enough for me to relocate anyway. I’m not a fan of the FAANG hiring/placement and would probably not engage Amazon on that unless they could offer me a particularly enticing role, at least not now. Am I missing out on money? yeah probably. The most interesting thing though, was how robotic the recruiter felt. The messages I got felt more like some mass automated messages than someone reaching out to speak to me about open roles.
- UweSchmidt 5y ago
  It's not possible to burn a bridge with a recruiter, these are 'salespeople' who get many no's per day and have pressure to perform. A recruiter call doesn't mean a company has interest in a candidate. It just means the Amazon job description and your resume both included the word JAVA.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I probably burned a bridge with Activision-Blizzard a few years ago. They contacted me about a potential job, and I said "When I was earning my degree, I dreamed of working for Blizzard. But then earlier this year, you announced record profits, and then only a couple days later announced the lay-off of over 800 workers. No thank you." And considering their current controversies, my opinion on working for them has not changed. If they ever contacted me again, I'd probably just laugh.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    But...you're aware that record profits aren't a blank check to employ whoever you want in whatever positions they want, right?
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      Of course. But to make a layoff announcement right after a record profits announcement is pretty poor taste.
    - 8note 5y ago
      Clearly they could afford to keep the people that were working while said profits were extracted
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    You sure showed that HR drone.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rzanella 5y ago
I interviewed for Amazon Brazil once, it felt like I was being questioned by the police as if in a movie: - 4 straight hours inside a room - every hour the interviewer changed - got asked the same questions over and over again I was quite upset that I didn't pass... couple weeks later I was not, what a shitty experience it was.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "- 4 straight hours inside a room - every hour the interviewer changed - got asked the same questions over and over again" It's the same in UK, at least they standardised it!
  - humanlion87 5y ago
    It's the same in North America as well. If you get scheduled during lunch time, you will get the opportunity to go outside at least :) All that is moot now because of covid.
  - spacedcowboy 5y ago
    It's the same in the US too. My last (internal transfer) job interview at Apple was 8 hours long, 8 interviews.
    - matthewfcarlson 5y ago
      I think I might have you beat with 9 hours, but that was an external interview
- jdavis703 5y ago
  This sounds like a fairly normal interview process. How do tech interviews typically work in Brazil?
  - rzanella 5y ago
    I don't think it's a "Brazil" thing, I've been in Europe for a while now, I only mentioned where it was because maybe it's different between (Amazon) branches. The current job I'm at was like 5-6h of interviews, it was hard to pass, but it didn't feel like the interviewers were trying to play "good cop, bad cop"
sharkweek 5y ago
I have shared this story on here before, but my first "real interview" out of college was at Amazon and to this day it is still one of the worst experiences of my career. The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh grad but was assured that'd be fine. Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to me. Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I found my Amazon interview to be surprisingly easy and friendly, except for one interviewer who gave me Alien Dictionary and got offended when I told her this was a well known leetcode problem. Oops..didn't get the job.
- dayvid 5y ago
  Very similar experience. It was a boring and tedious interview. The behavioral part of the interview felt odd with a focus on tailoring my experiences around Amazon principles which I wasn't aware of until a few days before the interview. The employees seemed nice, though, but not really cheerful and a little standoff-ish. It honestly felt like a more traditional style of interviewing. I contrast that with another FAANG interview I had, where you had lunch on campus and they tried to leave a positive impression.
mrRandomGuy 5y ago
Good, if you treat all your employees like garbage don't be surprised when not that many people with actual skill are willing to join
morelandjs 5y ago
They also sort of shoot themself in the foot with their interview process. I recommended the absolute best person I know for a position he was exceedingly qualified for. Amazon would have been lucky to have him. They blitzed him with leadership questions and were “not inclined”. Incredibly dumb given their current situation. He’s not even bad on those dimensions, they just can’t get pretty off topic imo.

teh_infallible 5y ago

A recruiter contacted me one for a position at Amazon, and I straight up said I will never work there because of the way they treat their employees. (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh well)

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> (Probably burned a bridge with that recruiter, but oh well) They seem to have a lot of recruiters and I'm surprised if this even got you off their "contact every month" list.
rootusrootus 5y ago
Both Facebook and Amazon have contacted me recently, and in both cases it was a senior manager doing the recruiting. Maybe just a new strategy in general, or perhaps it's because both companies struggle with reputation.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  If they were contacting you with a specific interesting position, that would be something. If they were contacting you with a generic position they just needed to fill...that sounds like a lot of cringe.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I have only actually talked with the guy from Facebook. All he did was talk about how great his teams are, how super intelligent his engineers are, etc. While he politely listened to what I had to say, he was definitely on a mission to market his little slice of Instagram and get me interested in running the Facebook interview gauntlet. He even suggested that it would be totally okay if I was one of those people that wanted to study for a month or two before interviewing. Study?! For a job interview? It was a weird experience. I normally shun recruiters, but I was just curious enough to hear what this guy had to say. His LinkedIn profile didn't indicate any past involvement with recruiting, so I wanted to know why a senior manager would spend time recruiting random people -- he must spend every waking hour on these calls.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Studying a month for a job interview...well, if you need a job and have the time, it can definitely work out well in the end. The leetcode problems are kind of fun to work on once you get into them, but they are definitely of limited use. My Facebook interview was weird also, but the people were super nice and the coding problems were fairly easy. I failed on distributed systems architecture, oddly enough, as it was an area I had no experience in for a senior hire (but I got an offer from Google the same day I was rejected from Facebook, so I didn't have much time to be sad about it). But managers recruiting random people, just seems weird to me. If they wanted me for my specific skill set, that would be great! But if they were just looking for general hires, they must have lost a bet or something.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  I know a local Amazon director and he was spending a lot of time with recruiting, he had to hire a very large amount of people and that was his top measure for that year. Even paying above the market, with their reputation and the competition on the market it was difficult to meet the target.
hacker_newz 5y ago
Don't worry, they don't last that long.
the_only_law 5y ago
Both and I someone else I’ve spoken to have been reached out to by Amazon recruiters for different, both technical roles. Neither of us get any attention from “good” companies whatsoever, but we both at least got a handful of messages from Amazon recruiters. They seem desperate. I didn’t bother pursuing as a little research showed they wouldn’t offer enough for me to relocate anyway. I’m not a fan of the FAANG hiring/placement and would probably not engage Amazon on that unless they could offer me a particularly enticing role, at least not now. Am I missing out on money? yeah probably. The most interesting thing though, was how robotic the recruiter felt. The messages I got felt more like some mass automated messages than someone reaching out to speak to me about open roles.
UweSchmidt 5y ago
It's not possible to burn a bridge with a recruiter, these are 'salespeople' who get many no's per day and have pressure to perform. A recruiter call doesn't mean a company has interest in a candidate. It just means the Amazon job description and your resume both included the word JAVA.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I probably burned a bridge with Activision-Blizzard a few years ago. They contacted me about a potential job, and I said "When I was earning my degree, I dreamed of working for Blizzard. But then earlier this year, you announced record profits, and then only a couple days later announced the lay-off of over 800 workers. No thank you." And considering their current controversies, my opinion on working for them has not changed. If they ever contacted me again, I'd probably just laugh.
- void_mint 5y ago
  But...you're aware that record profits aren't a blank check to employ whoever you want in whatever positions they want, right?
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Of course. But to make a layoff announcement right after a record profits announcement is pretty poor taste.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Clearly they could afford to keep the people that were working while said profits were extracted
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  You sure showed that HR drone.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rzanella 5y ago

I interviewed for Amazon Brazil once, it felt like I was being questioned by the police as if in a movie: - 4 straight hours inside a room - every hour the interviewer changed - got asked the same questions over and over again I was quite upset that I didn't pass... couple weeks later I was not, what a shitty experience it was.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"- 4 straight hours inside a room - every hour the interviewer changed - got asked the same questions over and over again" It's the same in UK, at least they standardised it!
- humanlion87 5y ago
  It's the same in North America as well. If you get scheduled during lunch time, you will get the opportunity to go outside at least :) All that is moot now because of covid.
- spacedcowboy 5y ago
  It's the same in the US too. My last (internal transfer) job interview at Apple was 8 hours long, 8 interviews.
  - matthewfcarlson 5y ago
    I think I might have you beat with 9 hours, but that was an external interview
jdavis703 5y ago
This sounds like a fairly normal interview process. How do tech interviews typically work in Brazil?
- rzanella 5y ago
  I don't think it's a "Brazil" thing, I've been in Europe for a while now, I only mentioned where it was because maybe it's different between (Amazon) branches. The current job I'm at was like 5-6h of interviews, it was hard to pass, but it didn't feel like the interviewers were trying to play "good cop, bad cop"

sharkweek 5y ago

I have shared this story on here before, but my first "real interview" out of college was at Amazon and to this day it is still one of the worst experiences of my career. The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh grad but was assured that'd be fine. Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to me. Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I found my Amazon interview to be surprisingly easy and friendly, except for one interviewer who gave me Alien Dictionary and got offended when I told her this was a well known leetcode problem. Oops..didn't get the job.
dayvid 5y ago
Very similar experience. It was a boring and tedious interview. The behavioral part of the interview felt odd with a focus on tailoring my experiences around Amazon principles which I wasn't aware of until a few days before the interview. The employees seemed nice, though, but not really cheerful and a little standoff-ish. It honestly felt like a more traditional style of interviewing. I contrast that with another FAANG interview I had, where you had lunch on campus and they tried to leave a positive impression.

mrRandomGuy 5y ago

Good, if you treat all your employees like garbage don't be surprised when not that many people with actual skill are willing to join

morelandjs 5y ago

They also sort of shoot themself in the foot with their interview process. I recommended the absolute best person I know for a position he was exceedingly qualified for. Amazon would have been lucky to have him. They blitzed him with leadership questions and were “not inclined”. Incredibly dumb given their current situation. He’s not even bad on those dimensions, they just can’t get pretty off topic imo.