
I Am a Recruiter (a.k.a Spammer) at Amazon - amirsaboury
https://the.devway.xyz/i-am-a-recruiter-a-k-a-spammer-at-amazon-6520ea0b031#.4u67smfmh
======
joshstrange
People in this thread complaining about "humble bragging", "You're lucky to
get recruiter emails", "People wish they were in your position" are missing
the point.

This is NOT a "All these amazing companies are trying to throw money at me but
I don't want it" it's a "These people keep offering me a job I don't want,
given their requirements, and I'm not at all guaranteed it even if I do accept
their requirements". This is akin to getting credit card offers in the mail
IMHO. Getting recruiter "spam" (calls or email) is 99.99% of the time NOT an
indication that you are a great developer but rather you have made some sort
of an email list.

Sure if companies were contacting me with better jobs that I currently have or
jobs that I'm a shoe-in for (ie. they've done their research on me and they
want ME not just someone who has certain keywords on their LinkedIn profile)
then I'd be super happy and a blog post about that would be humble brag but
this is different. These recruiters spam thousands of people with the same
form-letter so they can pull in a handful and get a percentage of their salary
for the first 3/6/12 months they are employed at their new job.

~~~
majormajor
That's still not the complete picture.

My first job was at a company with no visibility to mainstream tech firms,
doing relatively uninteresting stuff, getting paid far less. I had to do hours
of LinkedIn homework and cold-applying to get any single interview, and _that
's still no guarantee of a job either_.

Now I'm at somewhere with a recognizable name and I get recruiter emails quite
frequently. I could set up an interview with a five minute phone call in
response. Sure, any of those jobs may still be a bad fit, or I could fail the
interview, but it's about 50x easier to even get to that stage now.

So if you're complaining about getting recruiter contacts, don't be surprised
when the people not in that world have little sympathy.

(Amazon does seem particularly messy and disorganized, though. I get quite a
few contacts from them from various departments in locations I've told them
before (for other positions) that I'm not interested in...)

~~~
hyperpape
My company is not recognizable, and I get Amazon and IBM emails like
clockwork.

~~~
chocolatebunny
Do you by any chance do web/cloud stuff? The company I work for is fairly
recognizable and I've been there for 10 years but the few recruitment calls I
get are for a one line entry in my resume that said that I did one small web
related project.

~~~
hyperpape
Yeah, my job is java on the backend, JS on the frontend, though it's ExtJS
which is neither hip nor good.

------
mabbo
It's the bullshit that gets me. The lies.

"I read your profile and I think you'd be perfect for this role" \- Amazon
recruiter, who didn't notice I'd stopped working at Amazon 4 weeks before, as
clearly indicated on the profile they 'read'.

They aren't even outside of the norm. Technical recruiters are about 90%
bullshitters who would say anything at all if it meant they got you into an
interview. I'm with my current company in large part because our recruiter is
in the other 10%.

~~~
tlrobinson
My favorites are the ones that reference my joke GitHub projects (like
evil.css
[https://github.com/tlrobinson/evil.css/](https://github.com/tlrobinson/evil.css/)
) as if they're the pinnacle of my achievements (I have actually worked on
notable open source projects, but they're not hosted under my personal GitHub
account...)

Facebook:

 _I came across your Github profile and I noticed your long-stack-traces and
evil.css projects have been gaining quite some traction on Github._

Fitbit:

 _P.S. Cool to see long-stack-traces and evil-css getting some love!_

unnnamed venture-funded startup:

 _I found your profile on Github and I like all the work you 've done with
JavaScript and node (and especially evil.css)_

This one actually seemed genuine:

 _Oh man, I remember evil.css. A guy I used to work with set it as my Safari
user stylesheet, then forgot about it. I don 't use Safari all the time, so it
took me a while to realize something was wrong, and even longer for that guy
to remember what he'd done to my machine. So uh... thanks for that. :P_

~~~
mabbo
But look, look, they _did_ read something about you! They aren't 100% full of
shit! It's an actual, personalized message and not 'hey {candidate_name}!'

~~~
jogjayr
Yeah, that's mostly my reaction too.

OTOH, there's no reason that sort of email can't be generated from a list of
templates either.

My favorite was when a recruiter obliquely referenced something I'd once
tweeted complaining about recruiter spam.

------
otakucode
While Amazon has a lot of tech and Internet savvy individuals, and Bezos
himself is quite sharp, they also have a large cadre of business executives
who come from decidedly non-tech backgrounds like Walmart and similar. This is
the case in a great many, if not the majority, of large "tech" companies.
These executives are the ones who talk out one side of their mouth about
wanting "the best and the brightest" and "doing great things" but out the
other side of their mouth stick to "best practices" and "proven methods." They
are the ones who block remote work. They're the ones who ignore the research
and push open floor plans and put emphasis on the number of hours a person
works rather than the fruits of their work, load days with meetings and
interruptions, etc.

They're the ones who have a wealth of knowledge about business management
practices. Business management practices developed for manufacturing. And
never adapted to address thought-work. In Amazons case, this leads to them
having a great deal of policies that are hostile to tech workers. A coworker
of mine who has several kids was talking with Amazon and even considering the
move to Seattle. But then he asked them about the work schedule. They were not
coy. They let him know in no uncertain terms that he would be expected to work
very long hours in perpetuity, and that if he desired "free time" to be with
his family, he was 'not a good fit'.

These practices lead Amazon to churn through people very quickly, leading to
their constant need for more people, driving their recruiters to become
proficient spammers.

~~~
paxunix
That is terrible. It's extremely team-dependent at Amazon, whether you get the
"you have to work long hours forever" team or the "I don't care if you put in
your timeoff, just live your life outside of work while still getting your
shit done" team. There are many possibilities, and recruiters aren't trying to
match on what's important to you as a candidate, they're trying to fill the
square hole with any peg they can.

------
cwmma
Usually I ignore recruiter spam, but a while back I got this one that started
off with the line

> I recently came across your blog (one picture of your cat had me dying).

I'm fairly certain the recruiter did not read the whole blog post [1] because
it is a eulogy for my dead cat. Normally I'm fairly calm and try to be
understanding and empathetic especially for people just doing their job, but
this put me in such a white hot rage. Not only did I email the recruiter back
telling them off, but this was the kind of rage where you are no longer acting
impulsively, but have come back around the other side to being calm and
rational in your rage, so I tracked them down on google, figured out who their
boss was and CC'd them on it. I felt a little bad about it, latter I've had
shitty sales jobs too, but man rule 1 page 1 of bland icebreaker email openers
has got to be 'make sure it's not a god damn eulogy'.

1\. [http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/94533627852/a-thousand-days-
of...](http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/94533627852/a-thousand-days-of-kublai)

~~~
ben174
Maybe I'm missing something. Why did you get angry at the recruiter for
complimenting a picture of your cat? The recruiter clearly saw you have
affection for your cat and was trying to be personable and pay respect to your
late furry friend.

~~~
eganist
"had me dying" is usually an expression meaning something equivalent to
"rofl."

So it's fine to say you found a picture of the op's now deceased cat to be
amusing and adorable, but maybe don't use the word "dying" in the context of a
dead cat.

------
koolba
> I want to remind the Amazon human resource and recruitment team that you
> have many talented software developers in your company. And, these folks can
> create a database of do-not-want-to-move candidates for you, and you can ask
> your recruiting team not to spam them! A simple cross join!

That'd be an anti-join, not a cross join.

On a more serious note, there should be a "Do Not Call List" for email
addresses. It'd be damn near impossible to implement for everything as I doubt
Nigerian princes will bother checking it, but a "name and shame" campaign
against companies and their recruiting affiliates that ignore it would work.

Course the other problem is that having such a list and such a service also
provides a way to verify the validity of an email address.

~~~
taken_username
Interesting thoughts. At least they can have a blacklist. Like every other
websites that you can unsubscribe, it should be a way to unsubscribe from
Amazon recruiters.

~~~
otakucode
Actually, they probably DO have a blacklist... the question is... what would
it take to get put on it? Asking doesn't work... perhaps being aggressively,
crazily bigoted and abusive?

------
cmpxchg8b
I interviewed at Amazon once. A few months later, I was contacted by another
recruitment agency completely unrelated to Amazon, using the custom email
address I'd registered only with Amazon (I use it to catch people selling my
email addresses).

I asked the recruiter contact at Amazon why they had sold my resume/details,
or if they had a security issue. Of course they said they'd look into it
(still waiting for that response a few years later...).

It is shocking that a company of Amazon's size with so much confidential
information can't keep a hold on private recruitment data. I refuse to
interview with them again based upon their complete disregard for my personal
information.

------
jorblumesea
I really hate how easily they just waste your time.

Amazon recruiter: "Hey let's set up a call"

call happens, then they actually check into my background

Amazon recruiter: "uhh let me check on some things and call you back".

Never hear back. Just the blatant brazenness and stupidity of the entire
exercise. You had time to coordinate and schedule a call out of my and your
day, but couldn't even be bothered to look into my skills for 5 minutes? How
does this help you recruit? How does this help Amazon? Like I get it, I don't
have the pedigree of a Google background, cool, why even bother with a call?

------
monster_group
I don't mind getting such emails. Every now on then there's a free happy hour
invitation in them. I try to attend as many as I can. Usually they are good
opportunities to see what companies in town are up to (and of course free beer
and snacks). Some manager at the happy hour ends up asking me 'Why are you
looking for a change?' to which I reply 'I am not. Your company invited me so
I came. Now it is up to you to convince me to interview for your company'.

~~~
otakucode
"Make game of that which makes as much of thee."

Words to live by. I am considering getting them as my first tattoo at 38.

------
hocuspocus
I first interviewed with Amazon two years ago, and I got no offer. It was a
good experience but it just felt (both to me and to the hiring manager) that I
interviewed with the wrong team. One month later, a different business held
another recruiting event in the city where I lived then, which would have been
a much better match, but whatever.

Since then I've been contacted from time to time. I initiated the process with
a team coming to Berlin in December. I should've known better and asked them
right away about other teams coming in town later :) My mistake. Anyway the
first message I got was slightly inaccurate about the job location, but I
decided to give it a try. I took their automated online assignment (no, not
the infamous proctor.io one they give to interns/entry-levels), did well (it
was reasonable), then had a call with the technical recruiter and was left to
set the interview date with the recruiting event coordinator.

A couple days later, not one, but two _managers_ from AWS contact me on
LinkedIn to tell me about an upcoming recruiting event in Berlin. I reply to
the first one, tell him upfront I started the process with another business
team already, but that AWS would be a better match (given the job location,
and I'm not going to lie, AWS are the cool kids and I like their products). He
says there's no problem, I can cancel my interviews with the other team, and
just transfer the process to the AWS recruiting event. So I tried to do that.

The recruiting event is going on as we speak, I believe. I'm still waiting for
the AWS technical recruiter to get in touch. I reminded the manager 3 times
and eventually gave up. Sorry Amazon, I'm not that desperate. I'm not a fan of
companies that have a generic interviewing process, no matter the team you're
applying for. I think it makes sense that each business team is running its
own recruiting pipeline. But come on, you can do a better job than that.

------
blazespin
Do what I do. Just accept it, let them fly you in, enjoy a day of a nice hotel
and some interviews. I'm not particularly serious about accepting, but they
don't seem serious about listening to me so, hell, I just gave up and enjoy
the ride.

Make sure you keep your receipts and bill them, though. Eat out at a nice
restaurant!

And if you flub the interviews, who cares. It's great practice.

~~~
jcadam
I've discovered my secret to doing well on interviews is to not give a shit.
No idea why it works.

~~~
otakucode
In-person interactions inherently come with a litany of drawbacks due to the
fact that we're human beings. One of them is that confidence makes you look
better than nervousness or any kind of desire (certainly better than
desperation). That's regardless of your skills. Other irrelevant things like
how tall you are, how symmetric your face and dress is, how charismatic you
are, etc all take precedence. Even if you're aware of these flaws in yourself,
and attempt to compensate for them, you will fail. Not giving a shit would be
a great strategy. As would being tall.

~~~
jcadam
My problem is I don't have much control over it. If you're interviewing me,
and I'm doing exceptionally well, it most likely means I _do not care_ if you
offer me a job or not.

This of course means that I've only held jobs I wasn't particularly interested
in. Well, at least at the time I interviewed for them -- some have turned out
better than expected :)

------
jaypaulynice
Worst a recruiter can do is call your company's main line and ask to speak to
you (found your name on LinkedIn). And then they're like: "Hi Jay, how are
you?" like you're best buddies.

------
CaptSpify
> What bothers me is the fact that, on average, every three months they
> approach to the same potential passive candidate for the same type of
> position!

This isn't at all exclusive to Amazon. I get these all the time from other
places. Bad recruiters abound inside _and_ outside of Amazon

------
ffef
If only there was a way to filter emails you don't want to receive.

------
zeveb
I'm conflicted. OTOH I have no desire to move most places jobs would like me
to move (I like the culture and people where I live, and generally _don 't_
elsewhere), and the best years of my life were spent on an all-remote team.
But …

Y'see, the _most productive_ years of my life have been spent with on-site
teams. We've often had some remote teammates, and uniformly they have been
less productive and less connected than the on-site folks (despite being
excellent colleagues and hard workers). I think that digital connexion really
isn't the same as analogue connexion, in much the same way that an ereader
isn't as good as a book. I wish that weren't the case; I _really_ do. But I
think that it's true, regardless of my wishes.

Now, as an employer would I rather have the very best talent working remotely,
and hence less productively, or not as good talent working on-site, and hence
productively? I don't know the answer to that.

Should employers be flexible about remote working (e.g. WFH, even medium-term
remote working)? Definitely. Should they bring full-time remote workers onsite
regularly? Definitely. If you're saving $10,000/year on office space, you can
spend $4,000/year on quarterly trips to bring folks in for a few days.

------
b_t_s
Yea, Amazon's the most spammy of any known company, but the one that really
blows me away is Apple. They occasionally send me recruiter spam at my work
email. The work email that they got from its team membership in my employer's
iOS developer account. That's pretty brazen.

~~~
xenadu02
I have had a developer account for many years. That account is a member of
several teams. I also have other unrelated developer accounts. None of them
have _ever_ gotten recruiting spam. I have never even heard of recruiting spam
via this channel.

I don't know how a recruiter got your email but I doubt it was by trolling
registered developers. If so they violated Apple's policies.

------
Chyzwar
No, remote work would not work for Amazon. There is synchronisation cost that
you need to pay when working local+remote. For large organisation it is
already hard to get anything done (politics/security/bullshit/ego).

Cold email/call is really successful strategy. There nothing unusual about
getting hundreds of emails. For requiters is better to send 40 cold emails
than one crafted and build upon relationship.

Finally as a receiver you can still benefit. Because you can send cold
responses. You directly ask about compensation. You can instruct requiters to
search for specific technology/team/location. There is plenty of more shady
uses.. baiting/bidding/spying etc..

------
jcadam
I'll often respond to a recruiter with "Does this position support remote
work? I don't want to relocate." You know, on the off-chance I can land me one
of those mythical work-from-home jobs.

Most of them don't even bother to write back.

------
PaulHoule
At my local startup accelerator I find that AMZN has contacted many other devs
in my area. I talked to the hiring manager, they are a nice bunch of folks
working on a revolutionary problem but, alas, I am not moving to Seattle
either.

~~~
TylerE
Not so sure about the "nice bunch of folks" bit either. Every story I've ever
heard about working at Amazon is pretty much a nightmare tale.

~~~
PaulHoule
At a big company different people have different experiences. Your manager and
work group make a big difference.

I'm sure you can find somebody for whom working at Amazon is a living hell,
and I am sure you can find somebody as happy as a clam.

As for the people I know there overall I have a positive impression but a lot
of that comes from practicing vendor management (where it helps to have a PMA)
An old Oracle DBA taught me the power of getting what you pay for from vendors
thus I've invested a lot in getting good at getting service from AWS.

------
astdb
From what I hear, Amazon and AWS have totally different cultures (AWS being
much better)

~~~
andrewguenther
This has been my experience as well.

------
partycoder
Well, the recruiting process is a funnel.

You will not have a big output at the end of the funnel if the input isn't big
itself.

So they want as much people as possible going through that process. Each step
needs to be cost-efficient enough as well.

------
joelgrus
I interviewed at Amazon (bad experience), got rejected (long story), and then
TWO MONTHS LATER got contacted by an Amazon recruiter: "We need people like
you!"

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
Terr_
Rejected after a full day of interviews, contacted by no fewer than six
different Amazon recruiters in the next three months.

Honestly it makes Amazon look _bad_ , because it implies they're both
disorganized and desperate for warm bodies.

------
andrewstuart
The reason they do it is because it works.

~~~
metaphorm
but does it work better than any number of other strategies they might use?
maybe the reason they do it is because they're not very good at recruiting and
just go with an obvious method that isn't completely ineffective.

------
pfarnsworth
I've threatened spamming recruiters with the CANSPAM act. I have no idea if I
have a legal ground to do it, but it certainly stopped these particular
recruiters from contacting me again, at least for now.

~~~
porpoisemonkey
I've got a bit of a different tactic you might take if the CANSPAM thing stops
working. I keep a copy of a form letter on Google Drive that I send back on
_any_ suggestion of a "job opportunity" on LinkedIn.

>>> START FORM <<<

Hi <name>,

Thank you for thinking of me for this opportunity. In order to save you time,
I've created an initial checklist of information that I’ve found to be useful
for evaluating whether I’d be a good fit for your position:

* What is the pay scale for the position? (If the pay is based on the resume of the candidate - what is the highest pay scale that the company could offer?)

* What is the name of the company?

* What is the title of the position?

* Does this position allow for remote work?

* What technologies and tools do the company use? (If unknown, leave blank.)

* Is there a job posting I can refer to for required/desired skills for the position so that I can make sure I'm a good match?

With the additional context provided by these questions I can give you a
definitive answer on whether I’d be a good match to your position.

>>> END FORM <<<

It's a bit of an obnoxious thing to do but most of the non-affiliated
recruiters will give up at the outset to avoid the chance of someone applying
at the company behind their back (and thereby eliminating their hiring bonus
payday) and corporate recruiters will often stop after they find out they
can't satisfy my job environment requirements.

~~~
Aloha
I pulled this a lot - I just totally refused to move forward without the name
of the company - if you want my resume, you need to tell me who you want me to
work for.

~~~
MatthaeusHarris
I actually got a "GO TO HELL" response when I did this once. After he told me
what the company was.

Yes, I forwarded the e-mail chain on to them.

------
laddng
I kind of like to look at these kinds of posts as if it were a very attractive
person complaining that so many people are hitting on them. There are a lot of
people who would do anything to be in your position having recruiters
constantly offering them interviews.

~~~
tankenmate
When in fact it is a nuisance, this isn't really the kind of problem you want.
You can only have one full time employment or contract at once (this is what
recruiters want 99.99% of the time); ipso facto if you get these offers
constantly you will turn down almost all of them. For me I've always relied on
personal connections to guide me on whether I want to take an offer (for
interview or job), regardless of whether I have had recruiters chasing me or
not. If you are relying on personal connections to gather this information
and/or offers then the recruiter adds very little value.

~~~
antisthenes
This _problem_ you mention is easily solvable by having a dedicated email
address for a job process, period.

That way you can safely forget about the existence of said email once you find
a job.

------
anon987
Recruiters are salespeople. Treat them as such.

------
lago
humble brag, move along

~~~
joshstrange
Being contacted by a recruiter is nothing special or anything to brag about
unless you get a personalized email. I have gotten maybe 2 personalized emails
ever from a recruiter and in that case they were internal recruiters (not
outsourced). They took the time to research me and mention specific project
I've worked on. In this case it sounds like he was getting "cold-emails" which
I get (and my co-workers) every week or two. I sympathize with the author,
it's annoying to tell a company (TekSystems in my case) that I don't want to
move and I'm only interested in specific jobs and a salary equal to or greater
than X and then have them continue to call and email me with jobs where I'd
make 1/3-1/2 less than I currently make (and I've told them how much I make).

------
zython
What is the problem exactly ?

Dont want to recieve emails ? Filter them out.

Dont want to be hired by Amazon, send a restraining order and what not,
contact their HR directly, or what not but ranting on medium will not solve
the authors problem.

This makes me question if the author is secretly just clickbaiting for
attention

~~~
taken_username
This is the author. I respond to every single Amazon recruiters and told them
my reasons why I am not considering to work for Amazon (specifically,
relocating). I posted online, because I believe Amazon deserves a better
process for head hunting. Maybe it solve the problem, maybe not.

~~~
chias
If you are responding to the emails and are looking for a practical way to
(politely) express your frustration, consider CCing every Amazon recruiter who
has contacted you on your "no thanks" emails to new Amazon recruiters. It may
get a message across when your recruiter receives a response that they can see
addressed to 20+ of their coworkers which begins "As I have expressed to your
colleagues, [...]".

~~~
dennisgorelik
Most people want to move on with their lives. Maintaining list of Amazon
recruiters is not exactly appealing way to spend time.

~~~
taken_username
Actually, I have one :) I did that once. No response from that recruiter after
that. But a few months later, another one spammed!

