
'Clean your desk': My Amazon interview experience - skaul
http://shivankaul.com/blog/2016/12/07/clean-your-desk-yet-another-amazon-interview-experience.html
======
rescripting
I have a confession to make. I cheat at my job. I cheat all day, every day.

I have this little book next to my desk I use to write down ideas and notes,
and then I refer back to it later. Sometimes my boss is standing right there!
I get such a rush.

I found this website called Stack Overflow that has so many answers to
problems I run in to. Sometimes I'll just copy the code directly from the
site, without typing it out again myself!

Sometimes I even just walk up to colleagues and straight up ask them for help
with a problem. They just tell me things I can use in my job, out loud, in a
busy office, and we still haven't been caught!

I know that my cheating gives me an unfair advantage in the job market. I know
this cheating makes me an inferior programmer. And now I know I can never work
at Amazon because I can't get past their super scrupulous interview process.
Oh well, I guess I'll just try and get by, cheating my way though life.

~~~
zdean
Ken Robinson on collaboration in education:

"In the work world, collaboration and team work are essential to success; in
school, it's called cheating."

More here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U)

~~~
shuntress
Collaboration is great for learning something new as a group.

But how do you then assess whether each individual in the group learned that
important concept, or if they just all agreed with the one (and only) student
who _actually_ learned/knew it?

~~~
conanbatt
What would be the point of assessing an isolated individual in a world of
collaboration?

Its akin to evaluating how someone would do something in the middle of the
jungle without tools or support. Sure, you will be able to know who does
better in that setting, but what conclusion can you bring of that?

~~~
mcguire
It's gonna kinda suck to be the engineering team where nobody actually learned
calculus.

Or the surgical team where everyone "collaborated" on basic anatomy.

~~~
conanbatt
How would you know nobody learned calculus?

You are comparing people that dont know to people that know with that
allegory. In a collaborative setting you would be able to see what people
build, teach each other, and learn.

A team with 5 people that know 20% calculus can produce much better results
than a team where 1 person knows 100%. And sometimes they wouldnt be able to
produce a result at all.

------
amzn-throw
Amazon SDE here. The SDES internally are PISSED about all of this, and I
assure you many people are escalating with HR to have this new ProctorU-based
interviewing process changed ASAP.

edit: I don't know if there'll be an official announcement, but as of right
now we're pulling usage of ProctorU for intern loops.

For those asking how this happened, you simply do not understand the THOUSANDS
of interns Amazon needs to interview every year over a couple of week period.
It's a nightmare to scale. So, someone in HR thought they'd show some bias for
action. Oops.

~~~
leeter
I'm glad you're fixing it, but having been through a second round interview
where I was flown out to Amazon in Seattle. I will still never interview with
Amazon again. It was the second most frustrating interview I've ever been in.
It was clear to me that 4 of my interviewers had no intention of even
considering me.

Side note: The most frustrating interview I've ever had was with Microsoft
Boulder: they just flat out insulted me in the interview and questioned why
anyone would hire me based on not getting their trick question. That said my
interviews with Microsoft Redmond were lovely.

~~~
amzn-throw
Can you share some details about why you found it so frustrating? Believe it
or not, most software devs at Amazon REALLY CARE about interviewing, are happy
here, and want to find others too.

We are taught in an internal interviewing class (which is not mandatory
unfortunately) that making sure the candidate has a great experience is just
as important as getting good data on the candidate.

~~~
rublev
>We are taught in an internal interviewing class (which is not mandatory
unfortunately) that making sure the candidate has a great experience is just
as important as getting good data on the candidate.

That's funny. I don't know a single person who enjoyed interviewing at Amazon,
and the one guy that did who got in quit a few weeks later and still won't
stop talking about how bad it was until he's blue in the face. It was such a
bad experience it seems to have partially fused with his identity!

Seems like every once in awhile there's some article taking a crap on Amazon,
and then these types of green comments coming to the rescue.

~~~
camtarn
Ex-Amazonian here. Amazon is big enough that there are actually a lot of
people in the org who enjoy their jobs, think the company's generally doing
the right thing (albeit possibly with caveats), and don't mind defending it.
The reason for the throwaway accounts is that the social media policy asks
employees not to wade into discussions of Amazon, but rather to forward them
to the PR team.

Addressing your experience directly - I really enjoyed my Amazon interview in
Edinburgh eight years ago. Lots of interesting free-form problem solving, with
the whiteboard there to jot down notes rather than to produce working code.

I'm guessing there are teams or entire orgs which just don't take interviewing
as seriously, though - again, with Amazon's scale, it's not surprising.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>>The reason for the throwaway accounts is that the social media policy asks
employees not to wade into discussions of Amazon, but rather to forward them
to the PR team.

Presumably so that said PR team can create throw-away accounts and defend
Amazon.

~~~
camtarn
Well, possibly. I can't prove that that's _not_ the case :) All I can say is
that I've always taken them in good faith, because they match up with the
temperament of some of the people I know and like inside the company.

That's really the problem with the social media policy. On the one hand, it
protects the company from the worst possible outcomes of letting untrained
employees loose on social media - and given the size of the company and the
diverse views held by its employees, I could imagine those outcomes being
pretty dire! But on the other hand there's a chilling effect on positive
impressions of the company.

------
reacharavindh
All these show what kind of candidates Amazon is looking for. A bunch of
desperate people who'd do anything for [money|Amazon brand value|Whatever else
Amazon has]. I wouldn't want to work at a place that resembles an irrational
hell with such people as coworkers anyway. If someone is really that desperate
for a job && believe they are smart to work on things Amazon scale, why
wouldn't they find other jobs or heck start a company themselves solving a
genuine problem? I do know starting a company is not for everyone to be able
to do, but other jobs?

~~~
skaul
Because not everyone [lives in the US | has a North American passport | can
afford to not care about money].

~~~
parthdesai
To this day, i thank my dad who told me to go study in Canada rather in US
since he knew how crazy immigration laws in states are. Graduating from a
Canadian uni gives me options to work for any company/start up i like without
having visa restrictions.

~~~
reacharavindh
Just curious. Can someone who graduates from Canadian university work for any
startup/company in the US just like that? Never heard of this before..

~~~
parthdesai
Nope not in US, but i can work anywhere in Canada for 3 years which is enough
time for me to get my PR.

~~~
masterjack
Same in the US with post-completion OPT letting you stay and work freely for
three years (including the STEM extension)

~~~
makeset
Well, 3 years (at best) to find an employer who will sponsor you for an H-1B
visa _application_. And then you have win the once-a-year _lottery_ to get the
actual H-1B visa (~1/3 chance this year). And then you hope that your employer
will agree to apply for a Green Card on your behalf right away (which they
don't have to; they can keep you on the short leash of H-1B for another six
years). The processing of the Green Card application can also take a few
years. And if you change jobs while your Green Card application is in process,
it's voided -- you have to have your new employer re-apply from scratch. And
if, at any point during all of these, your current status (OPT or H-1B)
expires, you have to pack up and GTFO of the country.

So no, not nearly the same in the US.

------
baddox
I am amazed at how far you tolerated it. This is probably how I would have
handled it:

> As preamble, the proctor made me download some software, one of which spun
> up a UI for chatting with the proctor and giving them access to my machine
> so they can take control of my entire computer, including mouse.

Nope. Goodbye.

~~~
dom0
Well it's good that _someone_ tolerated it; now I have another couple names
for my job black list. Thanks! :)

(Although I wouldn't work for Amazon anyway, but now I don't have to do any
research if a company brings up "ProctorU").

~~~
Karunamon
Holy cow.. I've got an Amazon SRE headhunter sitting in my inbox right now. I
am sorely tempted to decline and send a link to this article as reason why.

~~~
jensvdh
Same here. It was for lab126, I was excited about it until I read this
article..

~~~
euyyn
Some other commenter up there says he worked at lab126 and it's sane there.

------
q3k
Thankfully, I would fail this interview the moment they require me to own a
Windows or OS X license.

> ProctorU currently supports Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Mac OS X
> 10.4 or newer version of those systems. At this time, ProctorU does not
> support any Linux operating systems such as Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

edit: but I'd like to see them muck around with my linux.git .config to make
sure I'm not cheating.

~~~
j1vms
That's why you put Win7 in a VM (e.g. VirtualBox) and let them figure out the
rest.

~~~
q3k
That still requires a Win7 license.

~~~
dexterdog
No, just a Win7 installation

------
delegate
“Clean your desk, please. Your institution [Amazon] has mandated that there
cannot be any written material next to you while you take the exam.”

To which I would reply "Fuck you and your institution".

Run a binary on my machine ? I think the interview should be over right there
and not from my side. If an employee is willing to run binaries from random
people on the Internet on their machines, then they're a security risk.

Is it really so dry out there that people are willing to go through this
bullshit to work for Amazon ?

I know some of you are young and inexperienced, but know that you always have
the choice to say 'No'. If people mistrust you from the get go - this is the
environment you're signing up for. Don't settle for this.

Don't work for Amazon, don't let them establish this bullshit as the norm in
the industry.

Trust me, the dream job will come if you know your value.

~~~
camtarn
"If an employee is willing to run binaries from random people on the Internet
on their machines, then they're a security risk."

Absolutely. I'm not surprised the Amazon SDEs are fuming about this.

------
andrewguenther
I'm getting really sick of HN's attitude toward Amazon employees. Not Amazon,
hate all you want on the company, but I really think the the "only a desperate
moron would work at Amazon" type comments don't belong here.

I love my job, but reading HN makes me feel like I should hate it. This is a
place that told me to "take as much time as I need" when I got married, told
me the same thing again when my dad was taken to the hospital two months
later, and _again_ when my father-in-law had a heart attack a month after
that. I will never forget the kindness I've been shown in one of the most
difficult years of my life.

I know that my experience doesn't align with everyone's. But this broad
categorization of Amazon employees as "desperate" or "corporate drones" is
just false.

~~~
st3v3r
Then work to change your company's culture. Speak out against those doing what
makes headlines here. It's not on us to make sure that Amazon employees are
positively represented. It's on you to make sure that Amazon employees deserve
to be positively represented.

~~~
user5994461
Agree. I'd like to see more spam in favor of Amazon if that's your experience.

~~~
andrewguenther
But that's not the content that the HN echo chamber wants to see. Amazon is a
terrible place to work, so we can only upvote stories that support that
opinion. The last time I saw a positive Amazon article on the front page, the
comments were filled with absolute vitriol. Amazon could cure cancer and HN
would bemoan how terrible the on-call must be for whoever ran the protein
folding servers.

~~~
linkregister
You have a positive upvote balance (so far) for your comments. I believe you
are victimizing Amazon employees and taking comments personally. Anyone on HN
who hasn't worked at Amazon has to rely on the experiences of those who have.
And there is a large amount of negative accounts, especially compared to other
companies.

Whining about a hive-mind is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Sustaining an
opposing view when people generalize about employment at Amazon is a good way
to change minds. HN is about entrepreneurial activity and technology, not
fatalism.

------
noonespecial
The worst part about all this is that even if you did submit to all of this
garbage, all you'd earn is the right to work with a bunch of people who are
either desperate/clueless enough to also submit or managers that think this
sort of behavior is a-OK.

Maybe there was no training video. The test was to see if you'd surrender all
privacy, your whole computer and let them waste your whole day on pointless
bs. There was no spoon, Neo.

~~~
cheeze
Playing devils advocate here...

If they only hire a subset of interns this way, how would a full-time
candidate have any clue? If a manager doesn't get an intern that had this
happen, how would they know?

Okay now most poeple know, it's on HN (and people are pissed apparently
according to another commenter here). Do you expect the current employees to
up and quit?

I think it's easy to say that "you'd just earn the right to work with a bunch
of clueless people", but Amazon is a huge company. Do you expect that all
MSFT/GOOG/AAPL/ETC employees keep close tabs on programs that recruiting are
using (potentially even testing?) And do you expect that people with
mortgages, families, commitments are just going to walk out as soon as they
hear about something like that?

I'm not defending Amazon at all here. Something may be wrong if this shit
keeps happening (there isn't a faces of google website, for example), but I
don't think the burden here is on a lowly SDE or whatnot who is powerless, and
in most cases has no clue of the situation.

~~~
noonespecial
>And do you expect that people with mortgages, families, commitments are just
going to walk out as soon as they hear about something like that?

No, I'm expecting that the people with the most options will start drifting
away. You know, the ones they most need. And now we know they won't be hiring
any stellar replacements any time soon either.

------
krishicks
Is there a business opportunity here?

If Amazon wants complete control over the interview experience, maybe there's
room for a service that rents out small office spaces, like ZipCar or AirBnB,
but for a desk/small office with just a Chromebook, for this express purpose.

Amazon or any other company could say they need a desk close to some place on
some date, and the service could make one available that meets the
requirements (laptop, multiple camera feeds, etc).

Or maybe this already exists?

~~~
inerte
Already exists, lots of certifications are handled this way. There are "test
centers", where multiple types of tests are taken, and the computer is
severely limited.

The "disruptor" here is ProctorU and similar services. They are cheaper,
generally more convenient, easier to schedule and manage.

Maybe you can come up with a better "test center" (perhaps a van?) but most
people don't care at all about what ProctorU does with their computer.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Maybe you can come up with a better "test center" (perhaps a van?) but most
> people don't care at all about what ProctorU does with their computer.

Most people might not, but I suspect many of the best people for many tech,
especially -- but also many other knowledge work jobs -- _do_ care, quite
intensely.

~~~
vtlynch
I think the _best_ people in tech are probably not put into this
interview/test situation.

~~~
ubernostrum
Don't be so sure.

I don't know whether I qualify as "best in tech", but: last year I was
approached by a large company which uses Django, and which solicited me to
apply specifically because they wanted a Django committer on staff. In other
words, I was absolutely a known quantity for them.

They still shoved me in their Fizzbuzz phone-screen funnel. Spoiler: for that,
among other reasons, I stopped trying to follow up with them.

This does not seem to be an unusual practice for large companies. Even when
they're recruiting specific people who they know and initiate the contact
with, they still set these awful "prove you're not one of the impostor rabble
we say are beating down our doors" hoops for people to jump through.

~~~
vtlynch
You are right, Im sure most people, even the best, have to deal with this at
some point.

------
xabotage
Many companies don't understand that hiring on their end is almost as
competitive as getting a job on our end. While I was going to school I applied
for an internship to Epic Systems and another company.

Epic wanted to put me through a proctored, three hour long "assessment" in
front of a microphone, camera, etc. before even getting on the phone with me.

The other company gave me a couple of 30 minute phone screens followed by an
on site interview that gave me far more insight into who they were and what
they did. They made the process as smooth as possible for me and were
genuinely interested in making the most of my application. Guess who I ended
up working for.

~~~
epmatsw
On Epic's side at least, they are actually overloaded with
engineers/applicants now, to the point that they removed their referral
incentives because they have more people applying than they can deal with.
They're perfectly happy if they lose a few percent of applicants if they avoid
some false positive hires.

~~~
willtim
It's still a process that loses the best applicants. The fact that they don't
realise this or don't care, doesn't make a good public impression.

------
manacit
I mentioned this in the last post about this process, but this is not
exclusive to Amazon. I did a ProctorU test for Epic a few years ago that
followed the same requirements.

I installed LogMeIn, let them poke around my laptop, showed some ID and did a
sweep of my room with my webcam. I did not quit however, and ended up taking a
~3 hour SAT-like test.

I don't dislike the idea of setting up a standard environment for a candidate
to take an assessment, but this process feels a bit inhumane and intrusive,
imho.

~~~
pjc50
> inhumane and intrusive

I guess they feel that if they can be inhumane and intrusive towards their
minimum wage employees in the warehouses, they might as well treat everyone
that way.

~~~
manacit
I completely agree, and I think this is the natural evolution of Amazon (and,
to an extent, corporate America). Amazon gets to treat their min wage
warehouse employees as fungible, and their process around hiring and firing
shows that. Have they gotten to the point where a certain amount of their
engineering resources are the same? It's looking like they are trying to get
there.

It's a demonstration of our privilege on HN that we rally against these
interviewing practices, yet they are a mainstay for a huge percentage of the
USA.

I'm not sure I'm getting my point across well, but I think there's going to be
a point where this becomes more and more normal across more and more
companies. They'll hire people to abstract the very difficult parts of
computers away, and bring people in en-masse to fill in the blanks.

~~~
pjc50
I'd suggest getting organised as a preventative measure against this kind of
thing, but that's likely to go down like a lead balloon here. As long as
there's a shortage of developers, we're somewhat safe, but that position is
_very_ precarious.

~~~
jcadam
There is _not_ a shortage of developers. And no, there isn't even a shortage
of _good_ developers.

~~~
acbabis
Then why is it that most of the people I interview can barely write a for-
loop?

~~~
tene
My best guess has been that there's an oversupply of incompetent "developers"
trying to play the numbers game, doing enormous numbers of interviews hoping
they'll find a company that will hire them anyway.

If incompetent developers do 100 interviews per job, and only last at jobs for
6 months before being fired, and competent developers do single-digit
interviews (or 0, getting hired through networking) and stay employed for
years at a time, a very small proportion of bad actors can be severely over-
represented in interviews.

~~~
acbabis
I think this is correct, however, it doesn't completely explain why I'll go
months without meeting a better applicant. If there were a surplus of capable
mid-level engineers then wouldn't I see them too?

~~~
rudolf0
Location, the kind of position, perceived company reputation and pay...

I've been on your side of the table for a similar role and had the same
experience. Literally 20-30 candidates who can't answer basic questions for
every 1 who can (and usually the 1 is "just ok").

I think it's just due to the particular pool your company is dealing with.
Maybe there is a surplus, maybe there isn't, but you're not able to judge that
objectively from your vantage point.

------
woliveirajr
> After about an hour of this, I tell the proctor that I am no longer
> interested in the interview, and that I want to quit. I’m asked if I want to
> reschedule. I repeat that I want to quit. I’m told that a Log Out
> Procedure(™?) will have to be initiated.

Isn't enough to have total access to your computer, you also have to leave
them enough time to clean up (?) any copyrighted material they might have
downloaded on your equipment...

Interesting that you'll never know if they have uploaded some material from
you, be it documents, photos or whatever.

~~~
pidg
You could just run the test software from inside a VM - with all those helpful
'written materials' on your real desktop.

~~~
DuskStar
They check to make sure you aren't running within a VM, unfortunately.

~~~
Avery3R
Malware checks for VMs too, there are documented ways to trick things into
thinking that they're running on bare metal.

~~~
andai
Judging by the article and the comments, that sounds to me like more effort
than Amazon is worth.

------
ajamesm
This vividly reminded me of PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN

~~~
hood_syntax
One of the better greentexts, probably because it hits so close to home.

~~~
pjc50
Greentext? It was a Black Mirror episode.

~~~
CocaKoala
Unless the Black Mirror episode aired before 2013, the greentext predates it.

[http://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF](http://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF)

~~~
joncrocks
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits)

"first aired on Channel 4 on 11 December 2011."

But it's Cuppliance, a substance (drug) to ensure compliance during 'Hot
Shots' auditions rather than to verify identity.

------
module0000
This may not be cost effective, but the way Redhat does remotely proctored
exams isn't bad. Granted it's not a job interview, but it is an example of
someone monitoring you remotely during an exam. It depends on you living
nearby or traveling to one of the remote testing locations though(yes, I see
the irony).

The experience is: you sit in a room at a standard monitor with a keyboard and
mouse. There are video/audio monitors placed:

\- above your head, roughly 2 feet, looking down

\- in front of your face, able to observe your eyes

\- to the left and right of you, about 2 feet

\- behind you

Basically, you are watched from all angles, including what your eyeballs are
looking at. I always feel like a probe is about to come whizzing out of the
desk and begin prodding me when I begin, but the feeling subsides after
awhile.

protip: As a male, asking the male proctor to stop looking down my shirt
didn't have the humorous reception I intended.

~~~
throwaway3893
Thanks for the info. I was seriously considering applying to an interesting
role at Red Hat, but it's not interesting enough to go through that. I've gone
through many interviews during my career, but this sounds more like them
reusing their existing Linux certification exam room for interview job
applicants as well. I believe what you say, but I still find it hard to
believe Red Hat would do this and that the respected Linux kernel and userland
developers went through this without publicly blogging about it.

~~~
module0000
Hey, wanted to reply because I think I gave the _wrong_ idea! I was suggesting
that as an alternative to what the original article described for "remote
monitoring". That experience was just to take an exam - their interviewing
process isn't like that at all :)

But...I can describe it for you if you are interested. My interview process
with Redhat started with the normal recruiter phone call, then scheduled some
interviews with potential team mates. We used a video conferencing platform
called "BlueJeans", which runs fine on windows/macos/linux, and worked through
some exercises so they could observe how I solved problems.

I feel bad for giving the wrong idea in my original comment, Redhat is
definitely not that crazy in their interviews :)

~~~
throwaway3893
That makes more sense. This sounded like a certification exam.

The process you describe sounds normal and fairly reasonable, although I must
say if I were the maintainer/developer of some Linux lib/app and applied at
Red Hat, I would expect to skip most of that to be honest. But even Google
wanted to make Ken Thompson go through their process, which he didn't and thus
couldn't work on their main code base. Maybe he did by now or they granted him
a license to commit, but it was hard to believe at the time.

------
nobleach
I do not _want_ to hire a developer that knows everything off the top of her
head. In my industry, best practices can change. One who is able to work
without any research is probably not using the best methods... they're using
the last greatest thing they learned. This isn't completely bad, I do like
knowing how people solve problems... but I hate the "invert a binary tree on a
whiteboard" mentality.

~~~
WhiteWanderer
Exactly, if an engineer isn't continually updating his knowledge of best
practices and isn't using all the resources available at his disposal then he
probably isn't gonna produce better results than someone who does use every
resource they can get.

------
konart
I'd quit the moment I was told they need to have something more than just a
"share your desktop".

The hell is this, really...

~~~
nkozyra
It's an general aptitude test. If someone cheats they move forward when
perhaps they shouldn't and they waste Amazon's time.

ProctorU does similar things for universities. I've taken a few, they're not
always this intrusive, but I understand the sentiment. People cheat. It's hard
to stop that and even harder to do remotely.

~~~
mikeash
Seems like the proper way to handle this would be to have the test taker go
somewhere with a proper test taking environment. If you don't want them to
come on sit, then I'm sure there are local facilities they could contract to
handle it.

Attempting to take over a person's own computer in order to prevent cheating
on a test is simultaneously an egregious invasion of privacy _and_ completely
insecure. Are we really supposed to believe that you wouldn't be able to hide
some cheating materials from your own webcam?

~~~
nkozyra
> Seems like the proper way to handle this would be to have the test taker go
> somewhere with a proper test taking environment. If you don't want them to
> come on sit, then I'm sure there are local facilities they could contract to
> handle it.

I'm certain it's more expensive for the company, though. And some candidates
don't have nearby access to this.

~~~
rewrew
There a so many locations that almost all do -- certainly much easier than any
local interview location.

~~~
nkozyra
But easier and cheaper than ProctorU? That's the main sell.

~~~
mikeash
Doing things badly is usually easier and cheaper than doing them properly.

------
throwaway3893
Serious question. Given the US laws (compared to Europe) of easily hiring and
firing employees regardless of probationary periods, do they really have so
many "con artist" applicants who turn out to not deliver (skill or motivation
lacking) that they void the trust during the interview phase by monitoring the
applicant's machine? I've interviewed a small and large places, and if they
really want to be sure about this part, they have you come onsite and sit in
the same room with you.

Whenever I was asked to code something as the 2nd step of the interview
process like homework assignment, I'm always glad if it's not a site like
hackerrank with a timer running out and JavaScript monitoring what tabs I
navigate to. Especially, if they already know and have seen my public code and
revision history, I feel like I'm applying for public office of some sort when
they remove trust and make your go through that in addition to spending your
personal time to work on some little project for the interview.

The biggest paradox here is that industry regularly complains about the lack
of qualified engineers while ignoring probationary periods and trying to
replace them with a 4 or 6 step interview/examination process. In many
European countries both parties can walk away from the partnership with zero
hurdles during the probationary period. It varies from 1 month to 6 month in
Europe and if the company fails to assess the employee in that time, you
cannot blame the employee and make him go through increasingly more
distrusting interview process. One has to consider that not everybody lives in
San Francisco and has potential jobs lining the streets, so it's time
inefficient for applicants to go through many interviews.

~~~
Shivetya
some of our best programmers are those whose skill with googling searching
rivals their coding skills. knowing where to look for suggestions is nearly as
valuable as knowing how to code it

------
jknoepfler
I think this is interesting. Most of my interviews with other companies since
I became a software engineer (with a "pedigree" at a big name company) have
been informal chats on the phone or in person with 3-4 people about a
combination of technical and professional matters.

I remember going through the degrading 6-hour IQ-tests, silly white-board
interviews, etc. at a bunch of companies when I was first looking for a job,
but even then there were a few companies that did a pretty good job. I had an
interesting conversation about IoC and clean code at a consulting company,
after which I interviewed with the company president and talked business. That
interview stuck in my mind as being very respectful, and I'd seek the company
out again if I moved back to the state.

My Amazon interview (which I got an offer from) was a quick round of 4
interviews with some tired engineers (they had been marathon interviewing on
the road). I was asked some softball applied algorithms and data-structures
problems, mostly to make sure that I didn't make easy problems too complicated
from what I can tell. The reject rate on those interviews in very high, and
there are probably a lot of false-negatives (and there is a lot of money at
stake), so I think it's understandable that emotions can run pretty high about
them.

A few years in: I turned down the last job that gave me an offer after a very
silly whiteboarding session because I lost a lot of respect for the company
after going through their interview process. Something like this "ProctorU"
bullshit would cause me to quit the interview immediately and send a terse but
polite message to HR at the company that their interview process was a non-
starter for me, and that I would not consider working for a company that did
not treat me as a professional.

------
apricot
It's weird that so many American schools and so many American companies seem
to think the best model for them to follow is the one of a prison, with
inflexible, arbitrary rules that dehumanize and disenfranchise.

Maybe the fact that America imprisons so many of its citizens is to blame for
this.

~~~
wolfgang42
I suspect (though admittedly without any specific theory behind it) that the
cause and effect are the other way around: the mentality of inflexible
disenfranchising rules that permeates the American cultural mentality is what
causes both the school and corporate models as well as the mass incarceration.

------
metaphorm
honest question, I don't mean to be provocative, I'm just trying to
understand.

what the hell is wrong with Amazon's company culture? I feel like I can't go
three months without reading about some story about something with Amazon
related to hiring, working conditions, or management style that is deeply
offensive and alarming.

why does this keep happening over and over again? it's so notorious that the
NYTimes has written magazine articles about it. it's so notorious that Bezos
has to go write apologias in the annual newsletter. what's going on?

I'm asking because 4 or 5 times a year I get an offer from an Amazon recruiter
to come in and interview for a position that otherwise looks appealing. I say
NO every single time because of these issues I keep reading about.

~~~
jtolmar
Amazon's culture is strictly hierarchical and all the mechanisms designed to
protect lower-level employees are busted. You're supposed to be able to
transfer to a new department, but many directors and VPs work to block
transfers. You're supposed to be able to report problems to HR, but they
ignore everything that can't get Amazon sued.

So nothing removes or punishes dysfunctional leaders, and every branch of the
org chart is the sum of all the different ways the people above you are
flawed. Each branch of the org structure is a nightmare in its own way, but
they all eventually become some nightmare somehow because the psychopaths
don't mind and the actual humans eventually leave.

~~~
metaphorm
sounds like they've created their own special hell. guess I won't be
interviewing with them any time soon.

------
binaryapparatus
At some point in history we, as a programmers, allowed that HR 'professionals'
insert themselves between us and employers. Approach used in this interview is
nothing that any half-decent programmer would choose as a reliable test. This
has HR written all over it.

This has nothing to do with quality (of candidates) only to do with HR person
ticking another interview done.

Being contractor, I don't accept any HR involvment for some time, if company
insists on running stupid tests they can't count on me. I have never seen any
HR like approach with hiring that made ANY sense.

If you need and want job done call me. If you want agile/scrum pretending to
work its not for me...

------
gdulli
You'd think a company with massive turnover would try to remove barriers to
finding new talent, not create them.

[http://www.ibtimes.com/amazoncom-has-second-highest-
employee...](http://www.ibtimes.com/amazoncom-has-second-highest-employee-
turnover-all-fortune-500-companies-1361257)

~~~
itp
I'm curious and didn't see an answer to this question while reading that link
(or the link to the original source) -- how does 'median tenure' distinguish
between a company where people are leaving quickly, and a company that is
aggressively hiring/growing? A bunch of brand new employees drags down median
tenure without necessarily being a sign of massive turnover.

------
adrenalinelol
How you're treated during the interview is a good indication of how you'll be
treated by the company if hired. Unless you really need employment, I'd stay
away from Amazon.

------
afloatboat
I had a similar experience when taking Acquia Certification exams for Drupal a
couple of months ago.

I was required to install an application called 'Sentinel' [1] that monitored
my pc, could not have a second monitor or external keyboard attached and had
to move my laptop to show that nothing was on my desk. If I remember
correctly, I wasn't even allowed to use the built-in camera of my laptop.

At some point in the exam the monitor paused the exam because I was holding a
pen (I use a wacom as a mouse) and I had to put it away in order to continue.
When the exam crashed, they told me to just reboot the application. But you
can't login again after a certain time has passed, so they had to reset my
schedule.

I was able to successfully finish the exams, but it added unnecessary stress
to the entire experience and the whole experience felt outdated.

[1]
[https://www.novell.com/training/courseware/ts_proj_info.jsp?...](https://www.novell.com/training/courseware/ts_proj_info.jsp?pid=40464)

~~~
sleepybrett
I choked when i saw 'Drupal Certification'

------
joncp
This seems like an excellent interviewing technique if you invert the results.
If someone actually lets you install spyware on their machine, they fail. If
they raise no concerns about access to reference materials, they fail. The
ones that pass would be security conscious and outspoken about how good
software is written.

... well, except that it would be exceptionally adversarial.

------
repler
Amazon is truly awful at hiring. Their engineers often give strange
programming puzzles to solve, then add arbitrary constraints like, "this needs
to operate in 16MB of RAM".

If Amazon can't spring for a $15 stick of memory it's probably not going to be
a great work experience.

I also wouldn't want to work with engineer who asked BS questions like that.
Waste of time.

~~~
praptak
But this is a legit question. Believe it or not, even at
Google/Facebook/Amazon a) memory is neither infinite nor free and b) tasks
tend to run in thousands of instances.

Being able to save 10M means much more that $15 for a single die.

------
1_2__3
When I worked at a $BigCo about 3 years ago I used to joke about what it'd be
like if we worked like we required candidates to interview.

Me, in a meeting: "Hey Kate, that's a great idea! How about you code it up on
the whiteboard right now."

Kate: "Sorry, what?"

Me: "Write it, on the board, right now. No bugs."

Kate: "Can I use my laptop?"

Me: "Of course not. Here's your pen. Hope you like drawing curly braces."

------
Cyph0n
The previous HN submission about an Amazon interviewee being monitored during
an online test was kind of strange but not a big deal.

But this... this is absolutely horrific. Clean your desk?? Do you expect
people to not use paper in the real world, or what exactly?

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
I've also had the annoyance of being 'interviewed' using this ProctorU method.
They have this 'feature' where you are not allowed to navigate away from the
webpage that has the test, and if you do, it 'blocks' you from doing anything
until you message the proctor and have them reset it for you.

Except, in my case, this damn thing kept blocking up every few minutes, and I
had no idea why. Contacting the proctor, having them diagnose it, and getting
them to reset it, wasted a few minutes every time.

I finally realized what the 'problem' was. It was firing the 'navigate away'
event every time the mouse went outside the boundary of the page. Since I
often play with my mouse, moving it around the screen, it would block me any
time the pointer left the page. I eventually figured it out, but it took me
3–4 block-contact-reset cycles.

All in all, a pretty annoying experience.

------
retube
This cannot be real. Seriously, every candidate asked to submit to this should
tell the recruiter/employer to get f*cked. Totally unacceptable, unreasonable,
patronising.

------
wyldfire
Semi-related tangent: I had a not-terribly-unpleasant experience when taking
an online exam for a linux certification. The certification exam was
effectively an interview round similar to this one because it was the first
step the employer suggested after I submitted my resume for the job. The test
proctor was unseen but could use my webcam to see me. It made me
uncomfortable, for some reason I thought I'd be able to see and hear them if I
needed anything. I suppose they might multiplex the proctors across multiple
test takers. I knew in advance that they wanted a tidy area, so I used a guest
bedroom with a small dresser that I set my laptop on.

I was logged into a VM through my browser and tasked with several simple
sysadmin jobs. Unlike this person's Amazon interview, the technical
difficulties that I encountered were all my own doing. On my server, I tried
to be very disciplined and used 'sudo' sparingly (sudo for each command that I
issued that required escalation. No "sudo -i", that doesn't leave quite as
nice of an audit trail. Well, I fat-fingered something while in visudo (grant
privileges to a user was one of the tasks). I forgot the user's name so just
exited but I must've 'ZZ'd instead of :q!'d. visudo puts up big scary banners
about the syntax error and I quickly dismissed them because I planned to go
right back in fix it in a jif. Well, sure enough, those syntax errors
effectively neuter sudo. Of course, that's the right behavior for sudo and I
just hadn't thought it through. I couldn't complete the remainder of the
exam's tasks without sudo. I thought for sure there's a way for the proctor to
reset the system to neutral -- I'll just start the exam over and go through it
quickly. No such luck. I can reboot the VM but there's no way to halt the VM
during the bootloader. :(

I did whatever I could without privileges and wrote detailed text files about
what I would have done for the ones that required privileges. The autograder
gave me a failing grade and the human that told me to take the exam didn't
seem to care about the problem I encountered (or believe me).

Lesson learned: leave a terminal open in the background with "sudo -i" for
later. You never know when you might need it. [this advice is for exams and
not real sysadmin]. And while you're at it, go slowly and heed that warning
from visudo. ;)

~~~
quesera
No disrespect intended, and with the qualification that exam-taking is a
stressful environment for many people, but..

You can't make that mistake in production. They were right to fail you.

I can see that it was a side effect of being more cautious than usual (so
unaware of the effects of your actions), but _that_ demonstrates a different
problem.

All of which is to say, that you tried and failed, which puts you ahead of the
people which didn't try at all, and imparts some hard won learning that will
benefit you next time. We've all been there.

But you can't overlook a mistake like that. It shows that you were not ready
to pass the evaluation in question. The rest of your actions (acknowledgement,
discussion of error etc) show that you should be ready next time. But to
shortcut it would be a mistake.

~~~
forgottenpass
_You can 't make that mistake in production. They were right to fail you._

Considering these kinds of mistakes happen all the time in production: what
exactly do you mean?

If such a mistake actually can't be tolerated, there is no way sysadmins would
be allowed to log into a production system and run the risk of mucking it up
in the first place. They'd be forced to do the responsible thing and implement
changes in a test environment, and use configuration management to replicate
the change into production. Possibly in a maintenance window, certainly with a
rollback strategy.

Paradoxically, the no-mistakes-ever environment makes the parent poster's
fuckup as even less of a red mark than it otherwise would be. In a more
flexible shop, there is some level of chance he made the mistake on a live
box, in a controlled shop there is none (excluding some phases of disaster
recovery ofc).

~~~
quesera
I absolutely agree with most of that you've said. But remember, this happened
in an evaluation environment. Not a day to day work environment.

If you can't fail an eval by locking yourself out and being unable to complete
the task, how do you fail?

The ideal is proper config management, test/stage/prod envs, automated
deployment, etc. I've come close to that ideal at certain points in the past,
but it's far from universal.

Remember the problem is that OP was using unfamiliar tools and being careless.
We have all made that mistake, but for it to happen in an eval or an interview
has to be a failure. In day to day ops, it would be tough to justify giving
root access.

You want to pass or hire the person who _will not_ do that because they have
already cleaned up that sort of mess in the past.

As OP states in followup, they weren't interviewing for a systems admin
position, which does change the equation. If the eval board is sitting on your
desk and requires just a firmware flash to recover, then OK, it's safe to not
care so much.

------
squeaky-clean
Jesus Christ! Even when I entered programming competitions, which were
supposed to be arbitrarily constrained, we were allowed any printed material,
as long as it fit in a 1 foot-square cube. The world-finals disallowed printed
material, but still let you write notes during the event and the documentation
for each allowed language's standard library is pre-installed on each machine.

There is no possible scenario where this is useful.

~~~
hood_syntax
> documentation for each language's standard library is pre-installed

I've never entered a programming competition but I'm glad to hear there is
still some sanity left in this world.

------
newscracker
From the description this sounds very naive and stupid on the part of the
hiring company.

What exactly are they wanting to test? Is it just a simple aptitude test to
reduce (not eliminate) the chances of cheating? Do they also ask to look into
the interviewee's ears for tiny bluetooth earpieces? What about the ceiling
for hidden microphones and cameras?

The "show your room" part reminded me of (older) movies with funny situations
where the person hiding is always behind the view of the person looking
around.

If someone really wanted to cheat, I guess these people would need to do a
much better job…or just get the person to an office and do the interview face-
to-face.

------
radicalbyte
You should come to Holland, you get to work tax free (for 5 years) and there
are lots of interesting companies in Amsterdam.

We're the #1 place for English speakers in Europe because the local population
are smart and bilingual.

Oh, and I've never seen douchy things like this (I rejected the Amazon
recruiter, not worth taking a pay cut to work for them).

~~~
mcntsh
Tax free? Are you talking about the 30% ruling? Not exactly "tax free", but a
good deal nonetheless.

------
ianai
My alma mater had an interesting way of dealing with cheating. They would
allow every kind of reference material you thought you may need. The test was
just going to be that difficult and have questions no cheating (outside of
copying) would help. There was one final in particular that averaged 17 hours
to complete.

~~~
Balgair
Horse Crap.

17 hours?! Who in the hell would let their grad students out of lab for that
long? :)

~~~
ianai
it's ok, test room was technically in the lab

------
zhte415
This is... the opposite of what I see sensible.

An opposite and goal:

tl;dr: Don't assume providing stress and isolation makes people work their
best. Especially under stress. Taught a course in university, saw response to
strict environments take a while for people to break out from.

Context: I have the chance to do quite a bit of campus work with local
universities while working at a bank. Ops and IT. This usually involves
working with final-year students, and can be quite hands-on.

Background: Working with a local finance university (top in country), I ran a
final-year class on banking for around 40 students (and quite a bit of the
faculty in attendance). Mainly banking operations, not technically hard. Visit
the university with an AVP or VP expert in a varied function, different
visitor and topic each week. Ops, Trade, Finance, HR, Tech, from fund transfer
to letter of credit to dormant accounts to labor law. Basic banking and
business but at a practitioner level.

Finals arrived: Not a member of the university, but asked to design and
supervise the assessment. We'd covered a lot, and assigned essay answers for 3
of 10 questions over 2 hours, hand-written answers. Just answer it as fully as
you liked. Some questions more numerical, some less. Really something for
everyone.

I said I was busy with a call I couldn't refuse, and would be in the room next
door. I wasn't. One hour later I returned to the room, to see each person
hunched over their papers.

Books were not open. Phones were not doing checking. I was disappointed, but
not unsurprised. To be caught 'cheating' in a university in China can mean the
end of your degree. Still an hour to go, I encouraged opening of books (to
protest) and full use of internet.

This seems the opposite of the Amazon policy.

The best papers that came in were a full 10 answers long (more than the
required 3), photocopied, with multiple and varied signatures on each, and
different handwriting in different paragraphs. Some individually submitted
papers were very good. Choice had been achieved. Not only had books been
opened, but collaboration had over-achieved. In only an hour remaining.

Hopefully this was a small lesson.

------
Ianvdl
Is there a list of companies with over-the-top/invasive hiring practices
somewhere?

It would make it easier to avoid them, and _maybe_ send a message.

------
dudul
I'm impressed by the author's patience. I usually slam the door shut after "we
need you to spend 5 hours on this take-home exercise", or "here is a link to
coderank for you to show how well you know how to implement bubble-sort and
quick-sort".

------
YeGoblynQueenne
After reading this (and the previously posted piece from the same author) I'm
thinking of applying to Amazon, not because I have any particular wish to work
for them but because I just thought of a way to cheat their counter-cheating
and I want to try it out.

~~~
gaius
You mean like in Cryptonomicon? ;-)

------
praptak
The only way I'd agree to do that would be on a machine that I'd reimage
before and after. Hopefully I'll never be that desperate for a job though.

------
foota
I recently also interviewed with Amazon, the experience, as the blog states,
was surreal. I was very surprised when I received an offer email without
actually having any interaction with a human that worked at Amazon.

------
markwillis82
I a similar scenario for my "Linux Foundation Certified Engineer" exam. Except
I had to show 2 forms of photo ID for the examiner through my webcam and then
put them the other side of the room so I couldn't use them as notes.

I was repeatedly told off for tapping on the table whilst problem solving. (A
hard habit to break after years of doing it)

------
JulianMorrison
Honestly, I'd have simply told them to bleep off. That is so far beyond
acceptable behaviour that it would make me certain the company itself was
bureaucratic beyond satire. If you don't have a level of basic trust in my
probity, we can't negotiate.

------
makecheck
Sometimes you need to prioritize yourself. This is one of those times: tell
them “no”. Assuming they aren’t robotic enough to hang up on you immediately
for refusing, politely educate them on how _no other company on Earth_ has
asked you to do anything remotely similar to this, and suggest that their
process is way out of line. If they won’t listen, send a polite letter to
someone else (heck, even the CEO). They deserve a clue, at least.

Remember that there are a ton of companies out there and you owe it to
yourself to explore as much as possible before submitting to any one company’s
ridiculous process.

Heck, years ago I used to look elsewhere just for being asked to format my
_résumé_ in a particular way.

------
sergiotapia
I imagine Amazon pays engineers $450,000 because of all of these hoops?

~~~
vkou
Not unless they are Jeff Dean.

------
isaacremuant
I'm honestly shocked that someone would give them such access to their
machine.

More than the absurd test rules, which seem quite common in some educational
or testing environments, the fact the he would relinquish so much of his
privacy and security makes me think he doesn't know his own worth.

It's OK to indulge them in some things but it's not OK to lose perspective and
forget it's a negotiation. If you surrender to every demand, how can you
negotiate later on? With what?

------
markbnj
I'm a cheater too. I confess to using Google, Stackoverflow, Hacker News, and
tons of other online resources to look up stuff every day. This is obviously
stuff I should know already, and be able to recall on-demand. I'm so ashamed.

Seriously, though, that is one of the most surreal things I've ever read about
our industry. I would have quit the interview too, but probably earlier in the
process.

------
ne01
That's why I only work for myself and rather fail at my company until I die,
than to work for someone else and be treated like this!

This is the main reason I quit university to start my own company and the main
reason I will never look for investors.

If I had no choice I would work part-time at a non-tech company for as long as
it took for my company to take off.

------
tuwtuwtuw
Maybe you can spin up an EC2 instance and run the test from there.

~~~
kzisme
They would still require access/camera probably

------
fatjokes
Why would you do this to yourself, in this market for engineers?

If you're going to work at a BigCo, go for one that doesn't abuse you.
Otherwise, work at a startup where at least you'll learn a ton and maybe get
some equity. I can't see any advantage to working at Amazon.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Putting up with the bullshit is a part of the test.

~~~
mindcrime
Both sides are being tested. In this case, Amazon fails.

------
skizm
Is this at a specific location or something? From what I can tell, NYC and
Seattle just do the standard code test on your own time (and allow you to use
whatever external resources you want) then if you pass that, a day of in
person interviews.

~~~
amyjess
Probably a specific department. From everything I've heard about Amazon, the
way they treat people depends entirely on your manager. Each manager has so
much leeway that every group might as well be a separate company.

Which is why you see people tell horror stories about Amazon while other
people rebut them and say their experience working there was great. There's no
consistency between groups.

------
werber
At my last job a candidate was hired after having done their interview by
moving their mouth on camera while someone off screen was actually talking. I
believe they did the spin the computer around thing too, no system is
foolproof

------
kawaiiru
Universities are moving towards using software like proctor u and other
computer lockdown programs for online education. It's absolutely absurd and
every single work around get patched up real quick.

------
Spooky23
The funny thing about this type of bullshit is that it's really similar to the
stuff that Civil Service exams do -- quantitative evaluations of your
reactions to workplace events, exams of your subject matter expertise.

Except when fast-mover companies like Amazon or their lobbyists show up to
peddle their products to governments, the conversation ultimately moves to
this topic. They usually get to a point where they're telling the government
employees how dumb they are, and that they don't have archaic processes like
exams for jobs, etc.

------
mempko
Ita not surreal. The word they were looking for is 'Kafkaesque'

------
jasode
FYI: same topic (not dupe) a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076073)

------
roystonvassey
I've interviewed twice with Amazon and came away both times with bizarre
stories to tell. Some great people work there but I wouldn't want to with the
folks that interviewed me!

------
SonicSoul
I can't help but wonder, what was the test like that you could prepare cheat
sheets for? most dev interviews are problem solving that you can't simply
lookup in 5 seconds

just curious why they are so paranoid about that. i do phone screens where i
can hear people type to google for answers but it's usually pretty easy to
tell that they don't know something and then they come back with textbook
answer. but most questions are not the kind you can just ask google.

------
BigChiefSmokem
Amazon recruiters contact me all the time because I've worked with some big
name companies and movie studios in and around the LA area. I immediately tell
them I only have an associate's degree so they stop calling, texting, and
emailing me.

That tells me everything I need to know about working for that company. I just
wish they would just blacklist me and pass it around to their outsourced
headhunters.

Wells Fargo is another one that has a love/hate relationship with my resume.

------
WalterBright
I wouldn't let anyone remotely take over my machine. I'd just go get a cheap
used laptop from the pawn shop and use that for the interview.

------
a3n
Smith, Winston! Recite quicksort into the telescreen!

------
jedisct1
I went through the AWS interview for an SDE position. And the whole experience
wasn't that bad.

The online test didn't use ProctorU. I was told that a working webcam was
required, but it actually wasn't. I didn't had to give them full control of my
laptop.

I received clear explanations about every step of the process.

The onsite interview was well organized, although very impersonal and
predictable.

------
onion2k
If this was an article about a startup I'd write it up as the (quite
reasonable) fear of the cost of a bad hire. When you've only got 6 months cash
in the bank having someone who isn't up to their job on board could end your
business. Amazon need to understand they can afford to make mistakes now so
long as their review processes are good.

------
cannonpr
Amazon is doing many great things, however the way they are going about it is
starting to freak me out a little bit. This is how we end up in the corporate
dysutopias described in Neuromancer and Snowcrash... Don't we somehow have to
take a step back and try to avoid this, rather than keep trying to optimise
our hiring processes ?

------
leroy_masochist
I guess the key takeaway here is to set up a clean guest user account on your
computer before you interview with Amazon.

------
russelluresti
My Amazon interview experience consisted of scheduling a time for a recruiter
to call and having them not call, then reaching out to them to see if they
needed to reschedule and set up a second time to call and having them
(surprise!) not call a second time.

Fuck Amazon for the collective amount of wasted time they've caused.

------
tmaly
This reminds me of a case when we were hiring for a programming slot.

I have a simple set of tests on paper that you take in person. This guy came
in, looked at the tests, handed them back to me and said he looks stuff up in
books. He was a consultant, but he refused to take simple tests and just
walked out.

------
pfarnsworth
lol what a joke, I'm never going to apply to Amazon if this is the interview
experience. If this meant that I could avoid the onsite coding exercise, then
I might be okay with it, but my guess is that I'd still have to whiteboard
onsite, so what's the point.

------
swehner
Just avoid amazon.

It's really not that difficult.

------
unsignedint
I would argue if the candidate is taking their security light enough that they
would submit to such invasive software to be installed on their machine, they
should be automatically disqualified but I guessed Amazon has different
opinion about it...

------
d3ckard
Sorry for my language but this is just fucked up. I honestly don't get how
Amazon got so successful at what they're doing(I mostly mean cloud services),
if this is the corporate culture they promote. Something just doesn't add up.

------
hartator
Proctor sounds so much dystopian.

------
kirykl
Coming soon: Amazon automated testing centers featuring Amazon Go Store
tracking AI

------
NotQuantum
What happens if you don't have a webcam? Do they just deny you the position? I
don't have a webcam or mic on my desktop currently... I guess I'm never going
to work for Amazon :/

~~~
no_flags
Supply and demand. Most companies are willing to accept some false negatives
in the hiring process to avoid the false positives.

------
diegorbaquero
Now I know that I will need a ready-to-use VM when I apply to Amazon.

But seriously, what?

------
amai
Wouldn't it be possible to start a VM and connect to the proctor using the VM?
Then the software you have to download would only be able to get control of
the VM, but not the whole laptop.

------
bborud
If this had been me it would have been a really short setup mostly consisting
of me saying "go fuck yourself" and then writing an angry email telling Amazon
to go fuck itself too.

------
notyourwork
I am sorry but this saga is tiresome. I have taken online certifications
before and had similar trouble with my FIRST one. The proctor paused my test
and called me to confirm everything was clear from my desk, my floor, etc.
Even had to stand up and walk around. At the end of the day I had no choice
which made me feel wronged but in hindsight this is their process for
certifying you didn't cheat on a test.

They are allowed to have that process, if you don't like it don't use it.
Better yet, if you don't like it how about brainstorming better solutions
instead of being overly dramatic on the internet about someone closing your
applications on your computer for you?

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alfanick
Alright, so I had one HR smalltalk, a one technical over the phone with the
manager, I am having onsite soon - none of these funny proctor stuff, but yeah
your mileage may vary.

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quantumtremor
I'm very glad people are speaking up about this. This is horrifying. Good job
on stopping the process when you felt uncomfortable, we should all be doing
this.

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ljk
1\. could the user run this in a VM and avoid some of the hassle?

2\. part of the hate should go toward the proctorU company too right? they're
the company who made the software

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monksy
This sounds like a perfect opportunity to outsource this job to a webcam
guy/girl. Just pay the person to pretend to get off on this kind of
humilation.

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crististm
The ethics question you asked there is a tough one. I don't know what I would
do if I would be forced to make such a choice.

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shoefly
This made me think of IOI in Ready Player One.

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akerro
Hah, he wasn't asked to drink a verification pill that Amazon sent him 2 week
earlier.

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givinguflac
Watching Amazon reps try to sugar coat everything in this thread is
hysterical. I've heard bad things from several people I know who worked there
briefly. Good to see this article and confirm I'll never apply there.

------
berserkpi
Amazon mostly sucks at interviewing from what I'm told.

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warrenm
wt bloody f?!

There is no way I'd go through the first steps of this stupidity, let alone as
far as the OP did

------
setq
The moment they suggested installing remote control software on my kit, the
interview would have been over.

------
savagebritt2261
Y

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brilliantcode
Amazon SDE interviews were some of the biggest shit shows I've ever been
through personally so this article really hits home.

The furthest I was qualified for with Amazon was in their warehouse, walking
10 hours every day from 8pm to 6 am with two 20 minute for eating and resting.
We were not allowed to sit or stop at any point, even going to the bathroom to
take a piss or shit were being factored into time. There were cameras
everywhere, something like out of 1984. I was treated like a criminal when I
had new pair of steel toe boots they paid for in a box and I couldn't
represent a receipt. I was scanned with metal detectors, told to take off my
shoes, and all in all it was a dehumanizing experience _after 10 hours of
work_ consistently.

I felt like HR and everybody else who were sitting around were looking down at
us. One time, when a bunch of pickers were walking up stairs, one of the HR
guys had a microphone and shouted "both hands on the rails" _as he followed
right behind the group of workers_.

All while I couldn't get Jeff Bezo's smiling face laughing in my head. Fuck
Amazon, seriously, except AWS.

~~~
andai
"except AWS" I've been thinking about things like this, where for example, if
you only buy vegetarian food at McDonalds you are still supporting
deforestation and inhumane treatment of animals.

If you buy AWS you are supporting the inhumane treatment of humans.

------
FussyZeus
I don't mean this in an offensive way at all, but for me and a lot of my
coworkers this would be extremely abnormal. About the time they asked to take
full control of my machine I would've told them politely that there was no way
on God's green Earth they were getting no holds barred access to my machine
for any duration of time, especially with someone who I did not know, and if
the security restrictions were so tight they were more than welcome to Fedex
me a laptop on which I could take my interview tests.

Maybe it's just my privilege showing, I don't know. But employers need to have
boundaries too. Just because you're giving me a paycheck (or at this point,
just considering it) doesn't give you carte blanche to my fucking life.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
"Maybe it's just my privilege showing, I don't know"

This is part true, and is partly your morals and outlook on life.

The truth is that if you need the money, it is harder to enforce those
boundaries or to fight against them. This is why more people can't have blue
hair or visible tattoos: It can get you suspended, fired, or make you un-
hireable. It is why some of the health insurance incentives really aren't a
choice if you can't afford the extra 40% premium from your employer. It is why
some folks can't avoid pre-employment drug tests (or random ones at work) on
purely moral grounds.

But once you get past some of the crappy money ranges, not taking some of this
stuff proves life outlook. You can choose not to work for the prestigious
company because you disagree with their methods. And so on.

------
wcummings
Does this software work on Linux?

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g051051
How is this even a point of such outrage? No one is compelling you to
interview with Amazon. If you don't like their conditions, just don't do it.
Why write about it as if it was such a huge burden? It's their job, their
rules, their conditions. If you don't like it, simply move on.

~~~
alpb
It could be perhaps because most people around here think Amazon is a decent
place to work as developers (and it probably is) but posts like this bring
recruiting issues at Amazon to our attention and awareness. Now if I were to
interview with Amazon and given ProctorU, I know I should turn it down
immediately.

------
plandis
Amazon: Where we are all terrible and we kill puppies (probably, I don't know,
I think I read it in an article somewhere)

^ I've summarized the comments

