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> What is the "cultish LP dance" here that is weeding good people out? The "culture fit" interview process focuses on leadership principles, so lots of questio

> What is the "cultish LP dance" here that is weeding good people out? The "culture fit" interview process focuses on leadership principles, so lots of questions like " tell me about a time when you went above and beyond for a customer". Being yourself will get you nowhere, you need to research the questions and the script that is expected of you. > What service does your team work on? I'm a partner-focused SA, so not a developer and not aligned to a particular service.

notyourwork 5y ago
There is nothing cultish about the way Amazon interviews. If you are a good engineer with a relevant background who can speak english you will have no problem passing these interviews. I'm not sure why you are framing it as cultish.
- metadat 5y ago
  Native English speaker here. I was denied for unspecified reasons a couple years ago. At the time it was perplexing, as I had pretty good answers for all their questions. Now I work at one of the slightly more sane FANMAG (to include $ms) companies. Pretty sure I dodged a bullet, maybe the engineering manager spared me because he liked me more than I realized.
  - bogomipz 5y ago
    I would be curious to know which one is considered more sane these days. I feel like I've heard enough negative things about the culture at all of them at this point.
    - metadat 5y ago
      Presently, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle can all be okay as an employee IME. Depends entirely on the division and team you're joining. Ones I'd never consider, even for a cushy VP role- FB, Goggle. Ymmv.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  I interviewed with AWS about 7 months ago and got an offer. I had multiple recruiters emphasize the LP stuff. I prepared, and there’s no way I would have passed without that preparation. In my experience, they also give the toughest programming questions. It is a lot of prep overall.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  That does not match up with my own experience at all. Maybe the service teams are less heavy on LPs due to not being customer-facing?
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    What doesn't match up?
bogomipz 5y ago
Wow, that just seems completely performative. Is "SA" systems admin here?
- oblio 5y ago
  Solutions Architect, jack of all trades that is a sort of customer consultant and creator of solutions architecture (duh) for customers.
  - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
    Customers and partners, the latter basically taking our ideas and selling them as a product - the flow of IP towards Amazon isn't always as clear-cut as people believe :-) Broadly though it is a pre-sales role to help people get started, followed by ongoing guidance as the customer iterates (this is the part which often turns into free support).
millzlane 5y ago
As some dude from Baltimore who has just picked up a second gig there. It seemed to me that these are normal questions asked of you in most interviews. In my daytime position at the first gig I have interviewed technicians and have asked similar questions of them. It's not about culture fit. It's about finding their answer to basic customer service questions. It would make sense that a customer obsessed company would be focused on a set principals they have found success in. Speaking of the research, the recruiters email you the principals and specifically mention to you to review them and to consider them during the interview process. They even send you a document about the STAR method of interviewing to help you have a smoother interview. To me as a guy from Baltimore who doesn't know anything half the people here do. I don't think the interview process could have been smoother.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  They are normal-ish questions and I can see where the STAR guidance is better than getting no help at all - I just think the process is too rigid overall. I've interviewed a handful of people for our team in the last year - all had the right background and technical expertise, but since they didn't have an example from their career which matches up with the LP questions they were asked, they were knocked back. All of them would have been "bar raising" from a technical standpoint, but since they were not demonstrably already "Amazonian" in their mindset, we couldn't hire them.
smarmgoblin 5y ago
I interviewed with AWS about a year ago. Knocked the programming/system design interviews out of the park, but it was clear the LP interviewer simply didn’t believe I was being truthful about the example I gave (included a period where my team had no direct manager, which is abnormal). He also had a programming question for me but we didn’t have time for him to explain it. No offer, recruiter emphasized that they were halving the “cool off” period for me (so I could interview again soon), and maybe they do this for everyone, but it’s clear there was one interview making the difference here. Interesting that this is apparently a common problem.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  When I interviewed, the instructions I was given by the recruiter were very explicit. For the Leadership Principles, I did my hardest to come up with at least two items for each LP, and of course they had to be in STAR format -- Situation, Task, Action, Result. To that, I added a URL to back up my story for all of the cases where I could. So, when I used the example of designing and starting to build the replacement e-mail system for ASML for literally zero additional cost [0], I pointed them at the URL for the Invited Talk that I gave based on that work. And when I used the example of when I broke all e-mail across the entire Internet, I pointed them at the URL for the article that was published in The Register. When I talked about what I had learned about Chef and DevOps, I pointed them at the invited talk I gave in Edinburgh entitled "From zero to cloud in 90 days" and the accompanying tutorial I taught called "Just enough Ruby for Chef". And so on. I really feel that having the URLs to backstop my stories helped me sail through that part of the interview. In my case, I wasn't being hired as an SDE, so there wasn't much programming tests they wanted me to take -- one of their senior developers did connect me to a shared coding platform, which we really just used as a shared whiteboard. He asked me some questions on how I would solve some problems, and I used my 30+ years of experience with Bourne shell and bash to show him stupid first order solutions to those problems and then we talked about what some of the second and third order solutions might be. The longer I work at AWS, the more convinced I am that everything depends on the people you're working with. There are good teams and bad teams. There are good managers and bad managers. And if you can find a good team with good managers, then you're golden. In this respect, I don't think AWS is materially different from any other employer I've known. [0] They had already bought all the hardware, including some stuff I scavenged from a closet where they had been sitting new-in-the-box for a couple of years; the OS was covered under their site license; all the application software was open source; and my time was free because I was already there under another contract)

notyourwork 5y ago

There is nothing cultish about the way Amazon interviews. If you are a good engineer with a relevant background who can speak english you will have no problem passing these interviews. I'm not sure why you are framing it as cultish.

metadat 5y ago
Native English speaker here. I was denied for unspecified reasons a couple years ago. At the time it was perplexing, as I had pretty good answers for all their questions. Now I work at one of the slightly more sane FANMAG (to include $ms) companies. Pretty sure I dodged a bullet, maybe the engineering manager spared me because he liked me more than I realized.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  I would be curious to know which one is considered more sane these days. I feel like I've heard enough negative things about the culture at all of them at this point.
  - metadat 5y ago
    Presently, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle can all be okay as an employee IME. Depends entirely on the division and team you're joining. Ones I'd never consider, even for a cushy VP role- FB, Goggle. Ymmv.
jnwatson 5y ago
I interviewed with AWS about 7 months ago and got an offer. I had multiple recruiters emphasize the LP stuff. I prepared, and there’s no way I would have passed without that preparation. In my experience, they also give the toughest programming questions. It is a lot of prep overall.
AitchEmArsey 5y ago
That does not match up with my own experience at all. Maybe the service teams are less heavy on LPs due to not being customer-facing?
- notyourwork 5y ago
  What doesn't match up?

bogomipz 5y ago

Wow, that just seems completely performative. Is "SA" systems admin here?

oblio 5y ago
Solutions Architect, jack of all trades that is a sort of customer consultant and creator of solutions architecture (duh) for customers.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  Customers and partners, the latter basically taking our ideas and selling them as a product - the flow of IP towards Amazon isn't always as clear-cut as people believe :-) Broadly though it is a pre-sales role to help people get started, followed by ongoing guidance as the customer iterates (this is the part which often turns into free support).

millzlane 5y ago

As some dude from Baltimore who has just picked up a second gig there. It seemed to me that these are normal questions asked of you in most interviews. In my daytime position at the first gig I have interviewed technicians and have asked similar questions of them. It's not about culture fit. It's about finding their answer to basic customer service questions. It would make sense that a customer obsessed company would be focused on a set principals they have found success in. Speaking of the research, the recruiters email you the principals and specifically mention to you to review them and to consider them during the interview process. They even send you a document about the STAR method of interviewing to help you have a smoother interview. To me as a guy from Baltimore who doesn't know anything half the people here do. I don't think the interview process could have been smoother.

AitchEmArsey 5y ago
They are normal-ish questions and I can see where the STAR guidance is better than getting no help at all - I just think the process is too rigid overall. I've interviewed a handful of people for our team in the last year - all had the right background and technical expertise, but since they didn't have an example from their career which matches up with the LP questions they were asked, they were knocked back. All of them would have been "bar raising" from a technical standpoint, but since they were not demonstrably already "Amazonian" in their mindset, we couldn't hire them.

smarmgoblin 5y ago

I interviewed with AWS about a year ago. Knocked the programming/system design interviews out of the park, but it was clear the LP interviewer simply didn’t believe I was being truthful about the example I gave (included a period where my team had no direct manager, which is abnormal). He also had a programming question for me but we didn’t have time for him to explain it. No offer, recruiter emphasized that they were halving the “cool off” period for me (so I could interview again soon), and maybe they do this for everyone, but it’s clear there was one interview making the difference here. Interesting that this is apparently a common problem.

bradknowles 5y ago
When I interviewed, the instructions I was given by the recruiter were very explicit. For the Leadership Principles, I did my hardest to come up with at least two items for each LP, and of course they had to be in STAR format -- Situation, Task, Action, Result. To that, I added a URL to back up my story for all of the cases where I could. So, when I used the example of designing and starting to build the replacement e-mail system for ASML for literally zero additional cost [0], I pointed them at the URL for the Invited Talk that I gave based on that work. And when I used the example of when I broke all e-mail across the entire Internet, I pointed them at the URL for the article that was published in The Register. When I talked about what I had learned about Chef and DevOps, I pointed them at the invited talk I gave in Edinburgh entitled "From zero to cloud in 90 days" and the accompanying tutorial I taught called "Just enough Ruby for Chef". And so on. I really feel that having the URLs to backstop my stories helped me sail through that part of the interview. In my case, I wasn't being hired as an SDE, so there wasn't much programming tests they wanted me to take -- one of their senior developers did connect me to a shared coding platform, which we really just used as a shared whiteboard. He asked me some questions on how I would solve some problems, and I used my 30+ years of experience with Bourne shell and bash to show him stupid first order solutions to those problems and then we talked about what some of the second and third order solutions might be. The longer I work at AWS, the more convinced I am that everything depends on the people you're working with. There are good teams and bad teams. There are good managers and bad managers. And if you can find a good team with good managers, then you're golden. In this respect, I don't think AWS is materially different from any other employer I've known. [0] They had already bought all the hardware, including some stuff I scavenged from a closet where they had been sitting new-in-the-box for a couple of years; the OS was covered under their site license; all the application software was open source; and my time was free because I was already there under another contract)