
My Amazon interview experience - jayhuang
http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/my-amazon-interview-experience/
======
luu
I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. At Intel, I got the silent
treatment _after getting an offer_. It was for an implementation (RTL ->
circuit) position. We chatted about schedule and it was apparent that they
wouldn't actually have a pressing need for that sort of thing for at least six
months, and that they were hiring as they could and they expected to be hiring
implementation folks for at least another six months to fill all of their
reqs.

When we got around to discussing start date I asked if I could take a few
months off between jobs and start in a few months. The hiring manager (who was
an engineer, not a recruiter) stopped responding to my emails and returning my
calls. Months later, I asked a friend of mine what happened and was told "X is
busy". Too busy to spend five seconds responding to an email? Really?

Today, that hiring manager is at ARM and I declined an a chance to interview
in his group when I found out who was in charge. I think I dodged a bullet; I
can only imagine what working for the guy is like.

By contrast, I applied for a job I was completely unqualified for at another
company around the time I interviewed at Intel. I didn't expect to even get an
interview, and I didn't. But I still got a nice snail mail rejection notice.
Many years later, I now work for that second company.

Like I said, I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. Putting aside
kindness and basic human decency, even if you're completely selfish, it costs
basically nothing to be polite, and the benefits are pretty large. Conversely,
being rude gains you nothing and has noticeable costs.

~~~
sp_
I got the silent treatment twice when trying to interview at Yahoo and once
with Google. In all cases it was at the stage between initial recruiter
contact and agreeing on a date for the first phone screen. I later found out
(by looking up the recruiters on LinkedIn) that both of the Yahoo recruiters
had left Yahoo and now worked at Apple. Ever since then I started wondering
how big the impact of recruiters turnover is on candidates getting stalled.

~~~
wmkn
I had a similar experience at TomTom. I applied for a position, got a positive
reply, tried to schedule for an interview. After that I did not hear anything
for quite a while, so I e-mailed again and, in case they had e-mail problems,
called the recruiter. He promised to call me back, which he obviously did not.
Later I learned (also from LinkedIn) that the recruiter had moved to another
company around that time.

Funny enough, until this day (months later) the position is still open and it
gets reposted every now and then.

------
timfrietas
Long-time Amazon employee here.

I have to say that I despise with every fabric of my soul the lunch interview.
I wish we didn't do it to people and I decline as many of the lunch interviews
I have to give as possible--I don't think I learn much from the candidates as
they are starving and tired and trying to put food in their faces. The best
candidates tend to answer your questions instead of eating, making you feel
rude for eating yourself; the worst candidates take big long thoughtful bites
to stall answering.

It is definitely one of the more broken things with the Amazon interviewing
system and I wish it would go away.

~~~
packetslave
One thing I like about Google's process is that we take you to lunch, but
explicitly tell you "this is off the record, no feedback will be submitted.
Ask any questions you want, or just chill out and eat."

~~~
krapp
>explicitly tell you "this is off the record, no feedback will be submitted.
Ask any questions you want, or just chill out and eat."

And people fall for that?

~~~
mcmxcwtf
Well, it's true. But if you're paranoid you choose not to believe it.

~~~
cdibona
Till about 2006, the lunch "interviewer" was able to put in feedback, but was
specifically told that they were not supposed to do it.

Except for some smart alecks who would put in "Candidate held fork in left
hand, was neat eater" I never saw anything beyond "n/a" or similar non-
feedback. Most often I would see a savvy recruiter pair up the lunch with the
referrer so they could catch up with their friend and it would act as the
'sell' part of the interview slate.

~~~
001sky
_Most often I would see a savvy recruiter pair up the lunch with the referrer
so they could catch up with their friend and it would act as the 'sell' part
of the interview slate._

This is a functional and smart practice.

~~~
tostitos1979
This (lunch with referrer) happened to me when I was interviewing there and I
agree that it is a smart move. It put me at ease. Presumably by the time you
are there for an on-site, there aren't any questions of fit left.

------
was_hellbanned
I interviewed at a small company. I came in, talked to several people, cruised
through some coding problems, and left with smiles and handshakes. Sent the
usual thank-you email, too.

About three _months_ later, after I'd long written them off, I got a call from
them. They'd "been busy" and asked if I could come by the next day. This time,
I met with several people working on the projects I'd be helping them with
(mostly porting code to platforms I had a ton of experience on). Everything
was looking good. Then the HR guy said something like, "you don't seem very
excited." Since no talk of an offer of any kind had come up yet, I was
severely tempted to remind him that, after the last time I came in, I didn't
hear from them again for months.

The last thing said to me upon exiting the interview, again, all smiles and
handshakes, was, "I'll give you a call tomorrow. But if you don't hear from
me, give me a call."

Fuck that. From the moment I left their building, I never gave them another
thought. As expected, I didn't hear a peep from them.

Employers like to complain about how hard it is to find talent, but then they
behave like this. It's as much our evaluation of them as it is their
evaluation of us.

I've been on the other side of it, too. Being made to interview candidates
when we have absolutely no need for additional people, or for groups wildly
unrelated to anything I do in the company. I wanted to tell the people, "look,
you're probably never going to hear from us again because, frankly, we don't
need anybody, and nobody in engineering has any idea why we're interviewing
you."

~~~
hamburglar
> The last thing said to me upon exiting the interview, again, all smiles and
> handshakes, was, "I'll give you a call tomorrow. But if you don't hear from
> me, give me a call."

I might have been inclined to respond, "you don't seem very excited." :D

~~~
blisterpeanuts
You're funny.

I might say, I express my excitement in other ways. (cue a joke about is that
a banana in your pants or are you just happy to see me)

------
NaOH
I started a non-tech business about 10 months ago. Food, actually. I go to
work every day, but my business, though profitable, isn't large enough yet to
hire. Of course, there are limits to what I can do as one person, so it's
likely that I will eventually hire.

This week and next, I've had a young man who I already knew helping me. The
restaurant where he works is currently closed for two weeks, so I took that as
an opportunity to give him a chance without either of us making any
commitments. I already knew that he had a great attitude (well beyond his
20-year-old age), so this was more of a way to see how well he did in my line
of work and to let him evaluate what I do and how I like to do things. For
both of us, it was a way to confirm that we’d work well together.

In some areas, I've gone out of my way to accommodate him and his
circumstances. I asked what he's paid at his current job so I can pay him more
than that (by percentage, a good amount, less so when viewed as an hourly
rate). I talked through with him paying on a schedule that fit his needs
(weekly, it turned out). I took him with me on deliveries to see how I handle
customer relations. I had him come along when I spoke to a potential new
customer, one that in his presence agreed to receive product from me. I've
openly shared my expenses and revenues.

It's articles like the one linked here, along with my own employment history,
that taught me there are equitable and forthright ways of treating people. As
a business owner, I want to do those things, whether with employees,
customers, suppliers, etc.

What I often tell myself, and share with others, is that there are certain
things I must do. For example, I have no choice about certain licenses I must
have, or tax filings, etc. But everything else is a choice, and I want to make
my choices conscientious of the needs of those with whom I work.

------
fistofjohnwayne
I had a similar experience when I interviewed with LinkedIn almost two years
ago.

I remember two rounds of technical interviews with two people in each. In the
first I was okay but in the second I did very well.

Then a director came in and interviewed me. After a good chat about technical
things and their overall vision for the future he walked me out of the
building and mentioned that after what he'd heard from the interviewers, he'd
have HR send me an offer on Monday. I was excited!

After nothing happened for a week I emailed my recruiter (in house) and asked
what was going on. She said she'd call me the next day but did not. So I
decided to drop it for a while.

A month later I sent yet another follow up email and she finally called.
Obviously it was rejection.

I felt the whole thing could've been handled better.

~~~
relic
Experiences like that are very weird...it makes you wonder if they're actually
interested in making an offer, and just completely change their minds, or
whether they have no intention of making an offer but for some reason think
it's less awkward to just give extremely positive feedback, and then fall off
the face of the earth. The worst is when they apologize and give the excuse
that they have been very busy...because it takes so long to send an email that
says "Thanks for coming in but we decided not to move forward".

~~~
gaius
I know exactly what happened there: he didn't get the headcount signed off,
hoping that he could say "well I've already made them an offer" to force it
through, and HR said nope, you tried to do an end run around us and we're not
playing ball. It's happened to me, at a company that is notorious for doing
it.

------
tn13
Here is my experience about Amazon interview.

We were graduating from a very reputed institute and we were supposed to go
through a screening test. So there was a programming test.

We assembled in the building where their HR lady was supposed to co-ordinate.
Since the AC had some issues we all were sitting close to the window instead
of the front row.

First she shouted \- Guys I want to you'all to sit in the front and not at
back. (Since it was a live randmized programming test there was no fear of
"groupwork").

We said we do not want to do that to which she responded with this :

"You guys want a job or not ? If you want a job and want to answer the test
you will come and sit here else you will walk out of this room."

Then she told us the common password. We requested her to write it on the
board. She refused. I will tell it one more time and you guys will have to
listen else forget the test she said.

I realized that I dont want to work for Amazon.

~~~
GabrielF00
Was this in India? The US hiring process is very different.

~~~
dmunoz
I wondered this also. From interacting with people on careercup.com (which is
absolutely flooded with people from India) it seems like they are pushed
through a lot of written tests, both for programming and for general aptitude.
Definitely a lot different experience they go through over there. Wonder if it
has to do with there being so many people.

~~~
rgovind
In US, you mostly hire for specific roles....developer, or QA or some such
thing, even if straight out of college. Most colleges here are good..you can
trust the grades to about 75% accuracy. In India, in college recruiting, your
plan is to hire relatively bright people and train them later. And you don't
trust the college's grading. For this purpose, you also conduct an aptitude
test. If they pass a cut-off mark, then you consider them for a programming
interview or for in-person interview.

------
piyush_soni
While for me they were polite enough to call for rejection, but I still found
the interview process little 'old school' at Amazon. For example, they asked
me to write code on white board "Exactly as I'd write it on Computer, - AND -
which is ready to go into production" (yes, these were the words). Really, you
want me to hand-write code on whiteboard and also work as a pre-compiler and a
compiler? I hope that's not the way you work.

Another friend of mine (who was rejected twice) was told to do the same thing
- but at the end of it, the interviewer captured the photo of the code from
his cellphone to properly evaluate it later. REALLY? You are not able to even
evaluate the 'production ready' code someone else wrote, and you ask others to
write it!

~~~
georgemcbay
If I hadn't already heard from enough people I trust that working as a
developer at Amazon sucks (depends on team, from what I hear, but I've heard
lots more bad than good) your interview experience alone would be sufficient
to get me to not bother interviewing with them.

I love them as a customer though!

For some reason their recruiters attempt to recruit me quite a lot (via
LinkedIn, email, etc) despite the fact that they have no office in San Diego
and I have no interest in living in Seattle.

~~~
matwood
_I love them as a customer though!_

I recently read "The Everything Store" and and my take away was that customer
is the only relationship you want with Amazon. Everyone else gets hosed.

~~~
erichmond
I had the exact same feeling. Bezos' and Amazon's approach actually made me
question how far would I go to build a billion dollar company. The customer
experience is bar none the best I've seen at a company, but deep down I'd hope
there would be a way to do it that wouldn't require leaving so much collateral
damage.

-edit- Wife was talking to me while writing this post, hence, errors. -edit-

------
codva
Only seven interviews? You got off easy. I had 10, for a freaking sales job. 3
on the phone (one each with HR, sales, and a sales engineer), then they flew
me across the country for a day of interviews - 7 back to back to back...

The thing is, 5 minutes into that first on-site interview I knew I was wasting
my time. They hired a new East Coast Sales VP. He started the week prior. When
you get hired as a sales VP what you do is bring in all your old cronies from
previous jobs. You don't ever make your first hire somebody you don't know.
Even though I nailed the interviews (they told me I handled the case study as
well as anybody does) I knew there was no way in hell I would get an offer.

I was right, although I did at least get a polite rejection email a week
later.

BTW, I probably had my lunch interview at that same sandwich shop.

------
kwres
I have interviewed with a lot big tech companies(Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft,
Oracle etc). I interviewed with Microsoft in Dec 2013, and I found their
process was the best and really well planned.

First I was brought into a giant conference room with 12 other candidates and
the recuirter gave us the overview of the company and gave us the itinerary
for the day.

Then we had our interviewers come into the conference room and call out
people's names to take them to indivisual rooms for interviews. After each
interview we were brought back to the conference room and given a 10ish mins
break to have snacks etc.

After the 3rd interview the recuirter took all 12 candidates to a very
informal lunch, which basically acted like a sale pitch for the job.

Every single interview I had, had been working for the company for 10+ years
and was extremely humble about their work. I especially liked the fact that
they openly accepted their past mistakes and told me how they were fixing
them.

After the final interview the recuirter passed around a sheet where we filled
out our available times in the next 2 days to talk to the recuirter about our
results.

I interviewed on a Friday and I got a call from the recuirter on the next
monday with an offer.

------
pnathan
I've done interviewing as an engineer. It's pretty much totally easy to give a
quick reply to someone who has reached a final state in the interview process.

Here's an example:

"Sorry, we decided to not move forward with your application. Best of luck in
your future endeavors".

Very canned, very corporate. But it's real easy to copy and paste, then email.
Brings closure to the candidate and frees them up to move on. Also, it's just
plain kindness.

~~~
MDCore
I wasn't trying to be sarcastic. My thought was, is there something different
you call yourself, or some different niche that helps you avoid that kind of
treatment? I should have been clearer in my question.

~~~
pnathan
Sorry. No, I meant that I was interviewing people from the perspective of an
engineer, not as a manager or as a recruiter.

------
beering
To other readers - this post is 92% typical post-interview review, but the
last 8% is a big WTF on Amazon's part. So... if you're short on time, feel
free to skip to the end.

~~~
rhizome
I've seen the "radio silence after enthusiasm" routine from other companies
large and small over the years, from startups to Apple and LinkedIn.

~~~
gedrap
Oh yeah. I, normally, put the company which does that in my blacklist. I give
bonus points if it is a small startup which interviews a couple of people a
week and still can't manage to do it. Extra bonus points if they contacted me
first. Yes, it does happen.

Once a person from a local startup suggested to send him my CV at a meetup, 2
more people from they same company suggested to do the same. I got invited to
come over, was told that there is no actual position so they just would see if
I could fit in somewhere. Sounded very positive at the end. Sent a follow up
thank you note. Never heard back.

~~~
amzn12345
I've personally interviewed a substantial number of candidates (phone screens
and in-person interviews) for Amazon.

Amazon is very prompt about responding to candidates, but no decisions are
ever made until the interviewers have a chance to sit down in a room together
and discuss. So I don't know how the recruiter at the end of this account
could have said half the things he is supposed to have said.

This account sounds like a specific recruiter made a series of huge errors and
just kept on compounding those errors with bad decisions. That or there are
some factual inaccuracies in the account.

In any case, my primary point is that I wouldn't write off an entire company
due to what are likely the mistakes of a single individual, the recruiter who
is supposed to be communicating with you.

~~~
bonemachine
_In any case, my primary point is that I wouldn 't write off an entire company
due to what are likely the mistakes of a single individual,_

Well, actually, I would. Because (being as it seems to keep happening, over
and over again, in big companies and in small companies) clearly it's _not_
the mistake of a single individual. The fault lies with the mindset of those
who create the hiring culture in the company at large.

And the shabby treatment frequently dealt out to candidates may not be
entirely consciously intended, but still, it is no "mistake." It is a
perfectly predictable outcome of the hiring culture in these companies.

See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7040656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7040656)

------
drblast
Sounds about right. My experience with Amazon's hiring process was that it was
extremely flaky, which surprised me because it was nothing like my great
experiences with Amazon as a customer.

Did well on the phone interview, got an email the next day saying they'd like
to schedule an in-person interview. Emailed them right back with my schedule,
radio silence for two weeks. No response to further emails or phone calls from
me.

By the time they got back to me two weeks later with an interview date, I had
two offers from other companies that I interviewed with in the interim. Ended
up having to cancel the Amazon interview.

There are some companies that have this process WIRED. Hiring managers respond
immediately to any email and actively work to find the right place for good
candidates, an offer gets made a day or two after the interview, or they tell
you they're not interested. It's very difficult to not want to work there when
you see that.

Friendly advice to entrepreneurs: don't be the Amazon in this story. There are
some really good people I know that are turned off to working there from
similar experiences.

------
RandallBrown
I had a phone interview with Amazon. It too, was with someone with a heavy
accent I had trouble understanding. To make things worse, I could tell that
the guy was giving the interview from home because there were children yelling
in the background.

To make things _even_ worse, the interviewer had trouble understanding my
english. How do I know? Because when he told me the answer to one of the
questions I had gotten wrong, he repeated back the answer I had just given
him.

It was really frustrating.

~~~
pixelcort
Actually, sometimes it's better to repeat what the other person said back to
them to prove you did in fact understand them.

------
bredren
I interviewed at Amazon for a product management role in 2010. I also got the
whole travel / hotel accommodation thing.

A thing that stuck out at me was ego. There was a lot of ego on the other side
of the tables I sat at.

I had one guy interviewing me say he had been recruited by the CIA but chose
Amazon. It seemed important to him that he tell me how good he was at his job.

My lunch interview was totally fine and not awkward.

At the end I spoke with a department head who's job was apparently to make
sure I wanted to work for the company. I kind of needed work then, so it was a
pretty boring end to the day.

My understanding was that Amazon was using an interview model style similar to
Microsoft's, where you can be 'let go' from the process at any point during
the day. If you make it to the 'closer' type person toward the end of the day,
then you've done well. I don't know if this is true.

Ultimately, I wasn't offered the job, but I did get good closure and apart
from some of the personalities I encountered, I was pleased overall with the
experience.

------
lyndonh
Seven interviews sounds like a broken process. What did they learn in
interview number 6 that they didn't/couldn't know at the end of interview
number 5 ?

Also, spending a whole day interviewing in Seattle and not meeting any of the
team you would be working with ? WTF ?

Edit: I forgot some other points:

The interview process is supposed to be about building trust and getting a
feel for whether you would be a good fit for the company and vice-versa.

This process sounds very asymmetrical: they only cared about whether he
satisfied their criteria. This is further proven by finding an NDA to be
signed on the morning of the interview. Couldn't they have sent it in advance
so he would have time to read it ? What super secret details might have
accidentally been revealed by their carefully planned interview process ?

------
TheMagicHorsey
I had a shit experience like that with Google about four or five years ago.
They interviewed me on the phone. Then called me in for in-person interview on
campus. Then like thirty days went by before I got the reply "No, sorry." It
was kind of hell waiting that long to get a no reply.

------
blisterpeanuts
I had a phone interview with Amazon in 2009, when I was between jobs. The
interviewer asked me to write out a binary sort function in my preferred
language.

Now, I can describe a binary sort in pseudo-code pretty well, but it's been a
long time since school (a lot longer for me than for the interviewer, I
suspect) and I suggested I just describe what a binary sort was and we could
move on, but he stubbornly insisted that I do the scripted exercise.

I then asked, is this type of coding a requirement of the job, because that's
not really my strength, and he seemed to become rather irritated. I terminated
the interview, and sent a complaint about this kid to the Amazon recruiter who
set up the interview (never heard back, obviously).

I'm terrible at writing code in interviews or answering quiz type questions.
I'm much more comfortable with top-down types of scenarios--how would you
approach this problem, what tools would you use, what languages, sketch out a
solution for us, how would you test, what's your documentation style, what
version control system do you like to use, etc. I like telling war stories
from previous jobs--weird problems I've had to solve, interesting challenges,
and so forth. I enjoy talking to people, and usually in these sorts of open
ended interviews, I do pretty well.

The OP seemed uncertain about going to this interview in the first place; he
had a pretty good situation, he doesn't really like the interview process and
is not that comfortable with that type of social situation. He didn't like
breaking his routine, either. Therefore, it's not too surprising if his lack
of enthusiasm came across.

What's inexcusable is for him to have invested all that time, and for them to
have invested all that time, and not to give him the courtesy of a one liner
email followup, especially after a verbal offer was made. Annoying, but not at
all uncommon. It's happened to me, too; I remember in particular an all day
interview at GTE, a verbal offer, then nothing. The only thing you can do is
just shrug it off and move on.

(If it's any consolation, I've cut back on Amazon orders since they started
charging state sales tax where I live. I philosophically disagree with the
"use tax" concept (a whole debate for another time) so I just switch to buydig
or ebay or newegg or whoever else is still tax-free. As it turns out, though,
AMZN still has the lower price in many cases, so I might still order from
them, though sometimes I can get it from an Amazon Marketplace Seller for
less.)

~~~
thisisnotatest
For what it's worth, I think it's totally reasonable to ask a software
engineer candidate to implement a binary sort, even if the candidate has to
derive the particulars of the algorithm from first principles. If the
candidate can't implement something as well-understood as a binary sort, how
are they going to perform when given a totally novel problem that no one has
ever solved before?

If anything, the problem with that as an interview question is that it is too
obvious and common, and will not do a good job distinguishing between a strong
candidate and someone who crammed for the interview and happened to practice
that particular problem.

~~~
radicality
Did you and the parent comment mean binary search? I've never heard of binary
sort. And if you do mean a sort, how does it work?

------
robotcookies
My theory: The recruiter may have a few spots to fill and several candidates.
So say, there are 5 eligible candidates and 2 spots to fill. Knowing that not
every one offered a position will accept it, the recruiter tells all of them
they'll be given an offer. That way those candidates are less likely to accept
an offer elsewhere and 'stay in the pool'. Recruiter offers the position to
two and waits to see if they accept. If either doesn't accept, they make an
offer to the next candidate. In this case, the spots filled before getting to
all of them. Since they had been told they would receive an offer but no spots
were left, the recruiter decides to end all contact.

If they were more honest, they would have to give offers to only two. The
others candidates are likely to move on while the recruiter waits for a
response. If the two formally offered jobs don't accept, the recruiter finds
the other eligible candidates have moved on and has to go interviewing more
people.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Yes, I think this is pretty standard all across the board, in every industry.
Don't throw the grade "B" fish back just yet. Smart candidates do the same
thing--"You're my top choice" etc., even while busily interviewing elsewhere.
It's all just a game everyone plays, really nothing new here.

------
mcmxcwtf
Having the interviews in Seattle isn't really that strange. If the Vancouver
office is new or small, there simply won't be enough qualified, experienced
interviewers there to interview you.

Also, since you believe your verbal communication skills are lacking, you
should work on improving them.

------
siliconc0w
I had the same deal, position was in so-cal but wanted to interview in
seattle.

My experience wasn't great. I was put in a small window-less cell and quizzed
by people who didn't prepare and I ended up answering the same questions about
myself and my background for almost every interviewer. I had a real hard time
with a manager-type person who kept on asking me the same non-technical
question over and over even when I tried to prod for clarification. He didn't
explain why my answer wasn't cutting it, he just kept re-asking it. Like he
was taunting me as my answers harmlessly bounced off his bureaucratic shield
bubble.

I felt I did pretty well given the circumstances but I guess the manager
spiked it because I wasn't offered the position.

------
nhangen
I see tons of "I interviewed 5 times and didn't get the job" comments on this
thread. Why is it so hard to get a job in Silicon Valley?

I hear that it's tough to find talent, and I also hear that it's tough to find
a gig. Something doesn't add up.

~~~
lwan
No, it adds up. There are a lot more available workers than positions in SV.

The problem is finding good people. Good people that are a fit both
technically and socially. Superstars get hired. That's it-- everybody wants a
superstar.

~~~
nhangen
If I'm a superstar, I don't need Google or Facebook or Amazon because I can
start my own thing and/or join an up and coming startup and get a solid equity
stake. That's the crux, and why the 'talent crunch' won't go away. It is self-
imposed.

------
omegote
Similar to my experience interviewing for an SRE position at Google Dublin. 3
phone interviews (one with HR, two with engineers) and 5 on-site interviews,
45min each. Took them quite some time to tell me I wasn't getting an offer.

------
jorgem
Even if he had gotten a job offer, it's weird he never spoke to anyone he
would be working _with_. Or visited the site in Vancouver where he would be
working. It seems like more interviewing was still to come.

------
ajma
I work for Amazon. I'm going to use the internal system to look up who dropped
and ball and get the make this right.

~~~
bonemachine
And? How's the inquiry going, so far?

------
arasmussen
This is pretty fail on Amazon's part. Does anybody have a contact inside
Amazon that can help this guy get his job?

~~~
georgemcbay
I don't see the fact that this guy didn't get "his" job as the fail part. The
Amazon employee from Vancouver at the end probably shouldn't have worded
things such that everything sounded final, but maybe they simply interviewed
someone the next day that they felt was a better fit for the job, or maybe
something changed and the decision was made not to hire for the position they
were considering previously -- it happens.

Having said that, I do think not getting back to him at all (even if that was
with an explicit rejection) is a complete fail.

Based on anecdotal data, it seems to be increasingly common for modern
companies (though I usually hear about it on companies that are much smaller
than Amazon, which should have its HR shit together) to just go completely
incommunicado with someone once the decision has been made to not move
forward. Doing this is completely unprofessional (no matter how big or small
your company is), especially in the face of explicit queries about the status
from the person who was interviewed, and I applaud the guy for naming and
shaming Amazon on that aspect of it.

Fix your shit, Amazon HR/hiring managers. Don't be jerks.

~~~
res0nat0r
Not sure whats up with that last person in the interview, but the recruiter
has really _zero_ say in the hiring process. At least when it comes to AWS.

> The last interview was with the lead recruiter from Vancouver (apparently he
> flew from Vancouver to Seattle to interview me, a candidate that was in
> Vancouver and had to fly to Seattle for the interviews…).

The recruiter finds talent, schedules the interview and hassles AWS employees
to interview the applicant. The applicant interviews with 6-7 people (like I
did), that consists usually of your direct manager, a bar raiser (an article
about this was just posted here the other day), and other peers.

 _Only after_ your interview day is over, and everyone has a chance to put
your review info into MRT does everyone meet again and discuss if you are a
valid candidate or not.

The recruiter has no say in this matter since they have no idea how your
answer related to distributed systems lock coordination and Big O(n) notation
work. It sounds like this person jumped the gun.

Amazon HR should at least get back to you with a "sorry we've decided on
someone else", or "we'd love to work with you" letter either way.

------
SoapSeller
When I interviewed with Amazon a few years ago, almost all of their recruiter
emails ended up in Gmail's Spam folder. Clicking on the "Not Spam" didn't seem
to fix this, and I ended whitelisting amazon.com.

At the time I found it quite amusing, but this can be a real problem, since
probably most people don't check their spam folder regularly.

~~~
hatred
Well, on a hilarious note, I too had this issue with Gmail. In fact my offer
letter too went into the spam folder. :|

------
csel
In the future, don't let yourself get distracted with accent etc, especially
if you want to work in the tech industry. It may be different in Vancouver,
but majority of tech workplaces in the US you are going to find people from
all language background with heavy thick accent.

~~~
georgemcbay
Accents can be a huge problem, though, especially over the phone where verbal
communication is all you've got to work with.

I've worked with a lot of developers from many different backgrounds: Chinese,
Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Russian, Ukrainian, etc, etc and while even the
thickest accent becomes easier to understand with prolonged exposure, I'd
still much rather talk to someone without a strong accent when interviewing,
especially over the phone.

If you're spending a significant percentage of your linguistic and
abstract/symbolic brain processing just trying to figure out what the other
person is saying to you (which can happen with particularly strong accents) it
puts you at a big disadvantage for dealing with programming-related questions.

------
Uchikoma
NDAs for interviews? Is this common in the US? I would feel intimidated and
not sure I'd sign that.

~~~
gaius
At one company, we had a list of standard questions we would ask in a phone
screen. Then we got a whole slew of candidates giving the same wrong answers
to a few of them, enough to make me suspicious. Turned out the external
recruiter had been de-briefing their candidates to reverse engineer our
process.

~~~
Uchikoma
We had this too with one large hiring agency.

------
n1ghtmare_
Well, I did phone interviews with both Amazon and Google (both in their UK
offices), and while I got rejected, I found both companies very professional.
Google called on the phone within 2 days and Amazon send an email the very
next day. Also I really hate phone interviews ...

------
gkya
While I'm yet to read the article, I wanted to note down that companies like
Amazon, Google and the like are enormously huge and nobody needs anybody in
these places. Thus do I want to be in small companies where I can be an
_important_ piece of a team.

------
DateK
Could it be that Jay is hopelessly overqualified for this job? Whatever this
position would be.

I assume the sweet positions for algorithm tweaking and HTML/CSS development
from scratch are already taken by core Amazon engineers. Well protected holy
grail. Perhaps they are looking for is a junior expendable wheel in some sub-
project, and not a person actually capable of re-creating Amazon from scratch.

Jay's qualifications seem for me quite senior. He appears to be more suitable
for IT lead of a startup or a member of a think tank of a more intimate
company.

------
jeremyw
Unless interviewers are trained to provide honest (and we hope, compassionate)
feedback to candidates as soon as is clear, the natural desire is to run away
from a face-to-face rejection. Thus, except for definitive no-hire's, it's
forced smiles and positivity (and lots of wasted time all around).

My prep sheet always reminds me, with a few choice options, to subvert my
inclination to duck.

------
prezjordan
Very similar to an interview process I went through about a month ago. The
"full-day" interview sort of irks me. You mention how you were tired, and I
imagine a lot of candidates are, 5-6 hours of straight interviewing seems too
heavy.

When I had my "full-day" interview it left a bad taste in my mouth. (I ended
up not accepting the offer)

> and asked me to write the HTML/CSS for the whole page.

Yowza.

~~~
deadfall
"new release about to be pushed live, and asked me to write the HTML/CSS for
the whole page."

I cringed a little at this, but this is not too bad. They probably wouldn't
expect you to make it perfect. It is not always the result they want, usually
they want to see the process on how to handle working through the problem.

------
jetru
I always thought getting no response in a few days means you're not hired.
This is pretty industry standard. Also, in the interviews they will always
assume that you get hired. What kind of interviewer would say "well, you're
probably not gonna get hired, but...".

~~~
georgemcbay
"This is pretty industry standard."

It shouldn't be, and didn't used to be (I'm 40 so I've been around software
dev for a while).

This kind of behavior is unprofessional and an embarrassment for our industry
if we just consider it our industry standard.

It doesn't take much effort to draft a form letter rejection (that is generic
enough to avoid any potential for lawsuits, if that's their concern) and even
less to send it out. With just a minor amount of work they could act like they
were adult humans who treated other people like humans... why not do that?

~~~
cdibona
In fact I'd go further and say it's pretty much industry standard for
recruiters to go missing/contract ending mid-offer. It might sound aggro, but
if you think you have an offer coming, it's not awful to email anyone you
might know inside a company to get an answer.

Heck, I don't think I even mind telling people it didn't work out, so if you
get in this kind of mess with Google, I'm happy to track down errant Google
recruiters for you for them to officially turn you down, or happier still, get
you that offer that is waiting in some stalled process.

Big companies can be challeging to interview for. So many moving parts that
translate into an offer. pre-interview, interview, referrals, manager and exec
review, headcount allocation, comp negotiation, etc. etc...

------
InclinedPlane
Would someone please disrupt hiring in the tech industry? It's so incredibly
broken and the people who are extracting money out of providing services to
"help" are putting in very little effort for a very big gain without actually
having much impact on the problem.

~~~
argonaut
It is hard to disrupt these practices. These kinds of interviews, while not
the best gauge of talent, do have some correlation with a candidate's ability.
The fact that this process scales well and that all the big companies that
everyone wants to work at do this makes it such that the only way to disrupt
the practice is if another large company gains such a competitive advantage as
to overtake the big corps like Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft.

A lot of companies do things differently. They're just usually smaller
companies.

~~~
lostcolony
I don't think his comment was the interview practice itself (though that needs
an overhaul too), but rather the pacing and relation the company maintains
through the recruiter with the candidate. Neither internal nor external
recruiters seem to share the same priorities as the hiring managers nor the
candidates, and I know a couple of companies (yes, predominantly SV ones) who
have left such a bad taste in my mouth just from my interaction with their
recruiters that even though I've never interviewed with them I don't ever want
to work for them. That is probably unfair, but if I'm of so little value as a
potential hire as to respect the basics of human decency, I don't really want
to see what happens when I'm actually dependent on them for my salary.

What's interesting, too, is that the only time I've -not- encountered -any- of
these issues (with a large SV company no less) was when I had an offer in hand
from somewhere else. Being able to say "Sure, I'll interview with you, but you
need to be pretty quick about it because I have an offer in hand that is
pretty attractive" got me through from initial phone screen, to onsite
interview, to verbal offer, without me having to drive the process at all, in
less than a week.

------
tdumitrescu
I can't wait to see whether Amazon ends up responding after seeing this...

------
tiatia
This is not news. I experienced the same thing at Agilent in San Jose.

------
ye
7 interviews???

I would've given up after 2.

What a broken process.

~~~
mcmxcwtf
That's typical for Amazon, Google, etc. You don't have to pass all of them,
just get enough of them (especially the more senior ones, although you might
not be able to tell who that is) to like you.

~~~
cdibona
At Google we've capped it so that you'd not see 7 unless there is some need to
revise the slate (different job to interview for, or a really badly formed
interview) . In fact we found and target 5 nowadays as the statistical change
of score for incoming candidates after 5 wasn't dramatic enough to justify the
extra trouble.

YMMV/excpetions etc, but still... I remember when we capped it at 8, then 7,
now it's largely 5 at most for 95% of the candidates.

~~~
ye
Why can't you setup one phone screen + one full day interview?

------
hydralist
you sound like a terribly unsocial person if you were that worried about a
phone interview. what is wrong with you?

~~~
packetslave
You sound like a terribly rude person. What is wrong with you?

