
Awful Amazon Interview Experince - amir734jj
I just wanted to share my recent experience interviewing with Amazon. I hope it helps everyone.<p>About myself:<p>I am a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, work at a financial company as a senior engineer, and teaching part-time at my university courses such as compiler, algorithm and data structures. I live in the midwest, USA. I love doing interviews and solving algorithm questions.<p>Background:<p>I interviewed at Palo Alto, CA office about a year ago and although it went well and I answered all the questions I was told: &quot;this position wasn&#x27;t a best fit for me&quot; ...<p>A few weeks ago I was reached out by an Amazon recruiter about an opportunity in the Seattle area and I was told the previous recruiter did not find a best match for me and she apologized for wasting my time. She said they would like to do a another round of interviews. As I love challenging myself, I said yes and I did a screening which I was given 2 algorithm questions and about 2 hours and I solved both of them and all my unit tests passed.<p>For the second round of the interview, it was all online for 4 hours and I solved all questions and my code passed all unit tests for all their algorithm problems.<p>Today I got a call from the recruiter saying that I was rejected because &quot;my technical skills were lacking&quot;. I didn&#x27;t want to argue with the recruiter so I accepted the feedback. I just wanted to share my story because I always saw these interviews with Amazon and Google as a challenge but now I feel like they are a complete joke.<p>People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know everything.<p>I am so disappointed at Amazon and their interviewing process.
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rumanator
Some of your complaints lack credibility.

For starters, I find it odd that you claim that the recruiter gave you
feedback, and on the technical skills of all things. If you reached the last
round of interviews of a FAANG, that round does not focus on technical aspects
and it's more focused on soft skills and personality traits that emerge during
the interview. In fact, I know for a fact that they don't look at the solution
at all, and look at the process that the candidate follows such as how he
takes suggestions and how he attacks problems or how he adapts to changing
requirements. Sure, there are technical questions, but they barely fill 30% of
the interview time, and even then their main goal is to gather info on the
candidate's personality traits.

With that in mind, it's easy to believe you bombed your interview if you are
the type of person who opens a discussion on a public forum attacking your
interviewer with accusations of being too incompetent to evaluate you and too
immature and having no clue about how great you are and how awesome you did.
Just from this post alone I was readily convinced I would hate to work with
someone like you, and apparently so did your interviewers.

If you ask me, they've clearly dodged a bullet.

~~~
amir734jj
She gave me one-sentence feedback. Why should I lie? what will I gain? I
wanted to share my experience. That's it.

I got all the unit test passing for all their algorithm questions. I didn't
bomb the interview. Maybe we have different definitions.

~~~
14u2c
You're responding to a comment claiming that technical questions are not as
important by saying you passed all the technical questions. I was on the fence
about OPs theory, but this comment does not help your case. You didn't really
process the feedback, even if you don't agree with it. They might look for
that.

~~~
jtthe13
Yup. Not to point towards OP's case specifically, but it's a usual trap a lot
of exact science majors (and many PhDs) fall into. I'm not saying it's limited
to exact sciences BTW — personality is also a factor. There's a joke here that
we should stop our startup and start a business coaching PhDs navigating the
job market. There's money there I tell ya :)

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so_tired
Why is this getting flagged? Are large tech companies now somehow shielded
from criticism?

This experience actually sounds both common and unavoidable.

FAANGs have x10 candidates for every position. So the interviews are indeed
both difficult and arbitrary. And after a rejection they can always call you
after 6 months and restart the whole shtick. So why not. Sigh.

As someone who interviewed 100s of software engineers - its just the system
doing its best, and there is usually no bad-intent on either side.

~~~
scarface74
I doubt that it is getting flagged because HN users are so in love with
Amazon. More likely because if OP displayed as much of an entitled attitude as
they displayed in the submission, they dodged a bullet.

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n_t
Everyone knows that interviews are imperfect and interviewers even more so. It
is mostly about getting a question which you have seen before. However, what
piqued my interest is "recruiter saying that I was rejected because....". How
does one get such specific feedback on their interview? Throughout my career
all I ever got was "unfortunately we do not share feedback".

~~~
leoh
The secret of these big places is that some corners really suck. Although they
have incredible, warm, intelligent people, they also have a lot of immature
people, too, who who have solid cognitive ability, but don't necessarily have
a lot of heart, capacity for introspection, or general kindness and merely
care about working and getting ahead. People who are immature do what they're
asked and put their heads down to be successful, but can be egoistic when
around people they are interviewing, when around less senior colleagues, or
around more senior colleagues they don't report to (due to jealousy). Although
there are awesome, wonderful people, too, I would try not to take it too hard.
If you're a Ph.D. and as smart as you sound like you are, another role with a
different group either inside or outside of Amazon will make you much happier
in the long term (though I can relate to how much of a bummer it can be to not
get to be a part of a place that you want to be a part of).

~~~
bJGVygG7MQVF8c
Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

Tim Bray says the company has become 'toxic' and the firings are 'designed to
create a climate of fear.'

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-
bray...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-bray-resigns-
calls-company-chickenshit-for-firing-protesting-workers)

~~~
amir734jj
Thanks for sharing

------
andor
_" People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue
how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not
enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know
everything."_

They were probably running through a standardized interview with you, with the
goal of making it a more objective process and to allow comparing results.

Such interviews can appear to be about technical tasks, while actually some
other things are evaluated, e.g. how you approach solving issues, how you
interact with others, how opinionated you are, etc.

If they had "no clue how to calculate time complexity", I'd guess the
interviewer played this role and expected you to explain how to do it,
patiently and without any judgement. How did you respond?

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zer0zzz
Don’t feel too bad. I had an interview with them recently and a week later the
recruiter told me I was going to get an offer the following Monday. It’s been
almost 2 weeks and no word on any offer. I haven't bothered the recruiter
though since I don’t want to work there but it’s still kinda strange.

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jtthe13
Could it be both true that there are indeed companies who are bad at hiring
AND that you haven't picked on more subtle hints about what the problems were?
I'm interviewing a lot of people. Our company makes it a fundamental part of
interviewing to give honest, action-driven feedback (e.g. we recommend pieces
of training, books, even competitors sometimes as we think they'll be a better
fit there). One of our selection criteria is the candidate's reaction to
feedback. It seems you disagree rather strongly with some assessments. There
might have been other selection criteria. Either they were not transparent
enough about them, or you were not listening.

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bJGVygG7MQVF8c
1\. Sure, maybe you're fabricating or exaggerating this

2\. Sure, maybe Amazon interviewers are all consummate professionals with zero
character flaws, zero personality disorders, and a consistently applied and
unimpeachable conceptualization of "professionalism"

And yet, your story completely comports with my Amazon interview experience
and every subsequent experience I've had with an Amazon recruiter. (In ways
that are remarkable because they stand out relative to experiences with other
companies.)

The signal is clear to me at this point: to Amazon, you're cattle.

Anyway, thanks for posting this.

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jhwang5
Ok, so you got rejected and didn't receive meaningful feedback, so you are
venting on HN.

~~~
amir734jj
Venting not because I got rejected, I hate complaining. I was so looking
forward to the interview and I love doing interviews.

I am venting here because I expected more from a company that is so proud of
its interviewing process and I am disappointed.

~~~
scarface74
By “expecting more”, do you mean “get an offer”?

 _People who interviewed me were so arrogant and clueless. They had no clue
how to calculate time complexity. No clue why provided unit tests were not
enough and etc. They were just looking at the solution and thinking they know
everything._

If you displayed this type of disdain at the interview they might have caught
on to it.

In the famous Joel quadrant of “smart and get things done”. You might have
come across too much in the “smart” and not enough in the “get things done”.

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mrslave
There's a lot of variance in the employment processes of $$$MEGACORPs. Your
attitude to give it a go and maybe learn something is admirable. I suggest you
incorporate risk/variance into your time investment formula next time.

And, from your experience, you learnt that there's many imperfections, even at
"the world's best companies". But possibly yourself too, as feedback from
failed employment applications is always incomplete.

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scarface74
Everyone thinks they are above average. Is an interview experience awful every
time that someone gets rejected from a job they think they should have had?

