4 ms·

I have interviewed with Amazon several times. Every time I don’t make it through because I realized the people in many of the roles were (a) not the best people

I have interviewed with Amazon several times. Every time I don’t make it through because I realized the people in many of the roles were (a) not the best people (b) I seemed to know way more than many of them about their domain (c) they kept trying to offer me horizontal transfer (d) they wanted to pay me less than I know I am worth. My impression is Amazon is a factory tuned to hire and churn a sort of middle of the road white collar worker with no creativity who can sort of plug into some pre designed module and churn away and be yelled at to “go faster.” Some of the people I met at Amazon we’re ultra talented but all the ones I ever interviewed with seemed like total morons. I never understood why. Maybe I just interviewed with the wrong teams

dboreham 4y ago
I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. And he quit the valley startup where we both worked when things became rocky there, and went back to a different job at Amazon. So YMMV it seems.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. I've heard the same thing about them. I think it's a place where certain kinds of people like to work, for a while, because it pays well and looks great on a resume, and they don't mind working long hours to do that kind of work and earn that kind of pay. But it's not for everyone.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    When I worked there, it was a hell of a lot less stressful than the startups I'd worked for before that, where the company was always just a couple of months away from disaster. Once I picked up Financial Independence habits, my life was a breeze (even though the job itself was a techno-bureaucratic nightmare straight out of a Dilbert strip)
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Well, yes, I'd consider most startups to be the most stressful type of workplace you could possibly work at as a SWE.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        yeah, I'm just worried that someone is going to avoid Amazon because they think their $120k startup job is less stressful To be fair, the startup jobs I had weren't that stressful either. I was in a comfortable indoor environment with a nice computer and reasonable work-life balance. Way nicer jobs than working at a restaurant or something
Olreich 4y ago
There are brilliant devs at Amazon. There are poor devs at Amazon. The quality of the dev has very little bearing on promotion and hiring from what I can tell. Story telling and document writing appear to be the only things that are graded on a scale, everything else is pass/fail.
- bombolo 4y ago
  I worked with a very mediocre former amaxon developer who felt like he was god's gift because he had worked there. Avoid if possible.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    This is my experience with most people coming from FAANG in general. Started using it as a signal for people to avoid hiring instead of as a good signal.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      Seems we are rubbing former amazon developers the wrong way
Sparkyte 4y ago
Management there sucks because they don't work like managers they work like people shoved into those positions to be ignored by their own team.
ryanSrich 4y ago
I applied to Amazon several years ago before I started my own company. I got to the final round of interviews and I cannot express how almost every single person I interviewed with that day (8 fucking interviews in a single day, in person) seemed to not give a shit about what I was saying. It was a draining process and by the end I just wanted to leave. I didn’t get an offer.
banqit 4y ago
So you didn’t make it through the interview because the interviewers are idiots? Not everyone at Amazon is an amazing dev but I can assure you Amazon isn’t the largest cloud provider because it’s stocked full of idiots.

dboreham 4y ago

I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. And he quit the valley startup where we both worked when things became rocky there, and went back to a different job at Amazon. So YMMV it seems.

midoridensha 4y ago
>I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. I've heard the same thing about them. I think it's a place where certain kinds of people like to work, for a while, because it pays well and looks great on a resume, and they don't mind working long hours to do that kind of work and earn that kind of pay. But it's not for everyone.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  When I worked there, it was a hell of a lot less stressful than the startups I'd worked for before that, where the company was always just a couple of months away from disaster. Once I picked up Financial Independence habits, my life was a breeze (even though the job itself was a techno-bureaucratic nightmare straight out of a Dilbert strip)
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Well, yes, I'd consider most startups to be the most stressful type of workplace you could possibly work at as a SWE.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      yeah, I'm just worried that someone is going to avoid Amazon because they think their $120k startup job is less stressful To be fair, the startup jobs I had weren't that stressful either. I was in a comfortable indoor environment with a nice computer and reasonable work-life balance. Way nicer jobs than working at a restaurant or something

Olreich 4y ago

There are brilliant devs at Amazon. There are poor devs at Amazon. The quality of the dev has very little bearing on promotion and hiring from what I can tell. Story telling and document writing appear to be the only things that are graded on a scale, everything else is pass/fail.

bombolo 4y ago
I worked with a very mediocre former amaxon developer who felt like he was god's gift because he had worked there. Avoid if possible.
- capableweb 4y ago
  This is my experience with most people coming from FAANG in general. Started using it as a signal for people to avoid hiring instead of as a good signal.
  - bombolo 4y ago
    Seems we are rubbing former amazon developers the wrong way

Sparkyte 4y ago

Management there sucks because they don't work like managers they work like people shoved into those positions to be ignored by their own team.

ryanSrich 4y ago

I applied to Amazon several years ago before I started my own company. I got to the final round of interviews and I cannot express how almost every single person I interviewed with that day (8 fucking interviews in a single day, in person) seemed to not give a shit about what I was saying. It was a draining process and by the end I just wanted to leave. I didn’t get an offer.

banqit 4y ago

So you didn’t make it through the interview because the interviewers are idiots? Not everyone at Amazon is an amazing dev but I can assure you Amazon isn’t the largest cloud provider because it’s stocked full of idiots.