
My Amazon Interview Horror Story - ikromin
https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/11/04/my-amazon-interview-horror-story/
======
mltony
I had similar experience with Uber last month. My recruiter scheduled an
introductory phone call with me and then she forgot about it. The call was
rescheduled and then she forgot again. On the third time she did call me but
never apologized or anything. Then she scheduled a technical phone screen for
me a few days later. On that day my interviewer called me two hours earlier
than the scheduled time - no time zone difference, just that recruiter
communicated wrong time to him. As it happened, I was in the middle of my
lunch and caught off guard. The interviewer wasn't happy, so I guessed I
didn't pass that phone screen, but the recruiter didn't even bother telling
that to me - she just ignored my emails and she never even gave me her phone
number. P.S. I was invited to 6 onsite interviews in other companies and in
the end I've got all 6 very good offers. So, good riddance, Uber.

~~~
kposehn
Wow, that should _not_ have happened. Can you let me know the name of the
recruiter? You can email me at keith [dot] posehn [at] gmail

Sorry you had a bad experience and I'm bummed we lost you :(

~~~
knodi123
> keith [dot] posehn [at] gmail

Off-topic side question - is web robots scraping forums for parseable email
addresses still a thing? I'm pretty free with my gmail address, and I haven't
had a problem with spam making it to my inbox, but maybe I'm an edge case...

~~~
btown
Large-scale spam is pretty well filtered these days. But smaller-scale
(especially B2B) cold inquiries to curated lists of interested parties are
still very much a thing. And sites like
[https://hunter.io/](https://hunter.io/) absolutely do use publicly available
search results (including forums) to find which of many permutations might be
someone's email address. They may not be sophisticated enough yet to use [dot]
as part of those permutations, but it's only a matter of time.

~~~
fgrante
François from Hunter here.

Hunter does indeed search the entire public web for professional email
addresses, following search engines specifications like robots.txt.

However, we do not try to reverse obfuscations as it is a clear sign the owner
doesn't want the email address to be collected by automatic means. So even
basic obfuscations like [dot] are enough to prevent the collection.

We also let the email addresses owners modify or delete the data we index
about them: [https://hunter.io/claim](https://hunter.io/claim).

------
sjroot
I was able to read the article before it got hugged to death by HN.

That said, like many similar interview/hiring stories shared here, it reeks of
single-sidedness. Specifically, there is not enough detail regarding your
interactions with the interviewers to warrant calling this a horror story. The
only points of interest in this piece, in my opinion, were that the
interviewers were late and there was a clear communication issue (particularly
when it came to scheduling the interviews).

Other than that, all we know is that you tripped up during some of your
interviews. In those situations, based on your post, it was never really your
fault, which is not the best attitude to have.

Finally, them saying that your engineering skills needed more work shouldn’t
be insulting. Amazon hires tons of engineers and they are generally very
technically competent. However good you think you are, there are millions who
are just as good, and there are thousands who are better. Amazon can only hire
so many people and this was likely their way of saying they simply had more
candidates with more experience.

I know it is frustrating. I can say this because I have absolutely been in
your shoes. (Dream job, all the way to the last stage, then no offer.) At the
end of the day, we have to acknowledge the competitiveness of our field and
use that to drive us to become better.

~~~
tracker1
My understanding is that a lot of this abrasiveness on interview day (third
interview for me as well) is mainly about judging response and culture fit. I
found out a lot more a few months after my own similar experience with Amazon.
I think MS's lot drops are far more egregious though.

The keys are not to let it phase you, stay positive and ask clarifying
questions to give clear answers. It's often far more about personality than
you may think.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
“Culture fit”. I’m sorry, isn’t this just a term for whether they like or
dislike you personally? Sounds like a form of discrimination.

~~~
danpalmer
The term “culture fit” sounds very vague, but at many companies there are
clearly defined criteria, you just don’t know them.

For example, a company may practice test driven development (TDD), and may
evaluate for a candidates ability and desire to use TDD as part of their
engineering culture fit. TDD is not necessarily better than alternatives, and
a candidate may not necessarily be better because they can do it. It might
mean passing on better candidates who don’t prefer TDD.

Culture fit can cover many different aspects, and most are not about being
past a “good enough” bar, but rather valuing the same things as the company.
To “fail” a culture fit interview is arguably a good thing as otherwise the
candidate may have found working at the company unfulfilling, uninteresting or
difficult.

~~~
rabidrat
The company should be training employees to use their process, not expecting
to hire people who already prefer their process. TDD is not some magical thing
that requires years of study and practice and apprenticeship to do correctly.
It's an approach, you apply it, it might be a little weird for a few weeks if
you're not used to it, and then it's fine. What next, will they reject people
for preferring trunk-based development over git-flow?

~~~
slededit
TDD is really one of those things you either like or don't. I for one hate
working that way and would be happy to know about it as early as possible. No
amount of training will change that.

------
commandlinefan
Hey, at least it was Amazon. I had a similar experience interviewing for an
_airline_ company a few years back. A recruiter contacted me, mentioned a job
opening they had. You know how job postings list 20 different “requirements”
but they don’t expect you to actually have all of them? I actually did have
expert-level experience at every single item on their list. They phone-
screened me, brought me onsite for three in-person back-to-back interviews
(during normal working hours, so I had to take time off of my then-current job
to go interview). They called back a few days later and said they wanted to
bring me back onsite AGAIN for a full day of back-to-back interviews. So I
took another PTO day, showed up and interviewed for 6 hours (9 different
interviwers) - only to never get another call back.

~~~
tracker1
I have to agree... I feel the lot-drop approach from many large companies is
_FAR_ worse than at least some feedback.

In the end, I do feel it's often more about personality and culture than
anything technical, once you get past the pre-screen technical interviews.

~~~
pmiller2
Lot drop?

~~~
tracker1
Reference to a car salesman leaving you in the lot... not returning.

Many companies just drop all contact at any given point.

------
burtonator
A friend suggested a position at Github for an Elasticsearch Manager.

A couple weeks go by and I'm in the interview. It's all MySQL questions. And
really specific questions too.

I ask them flat out what the position was for and they said "MySQL Engineer"
...

I replied with "I'm actually more of an Elasticsearch guy" and was told that
they're ditching Elasticsearch.

So not only did they decide it was a good idea to slot me into a position from
ES to MySQL but they also decided to bring me down from Engineering Manager to
individual contributor...

~~~
LoSboccacc
> bring me down from Engineering Manager to individual contributor

That happens all the time. Chances are if they aren't reaching out to you it's
a bait and switch opening.

Easy way to discriminate is whether you'll have your budget or not.

~~~
reaperducer
_Easy way to discriminate is whether you 'll have your budget or not._

Yep. Though it's usually easier for them to just go with the bullshit line,
"We can't afford to pay someone with your level of experience."

Translation: We don't hire people over 30, but we don't want to get hit with a
federal lawsuit.

~~~
tyingq
On the other hand, I've certainly interviewed people that wanted a leadership
position, but didn't do well with leadership questions. But, they did do well
technically.

Offering a position lower than the one advertised, in that situation, seems
okay to me, provided it's not a step down from where they are now.

~~~
LoSboccacc
That's a better situation, a leader is not a manager and there's more overlap
between a lead and a dev position.

------
mcintyre1994
I interviewed recently with Citadel in London, they're one of them market
maker financial companies with a bunch of tech and shiny offices. I was told
we'd have a few interviews, and lunch in the middle (we started at 1pm).
Apparently I didn't do well enough in the second interview (writing random
Python algorithms on a laptop - in fairness, not a whiteboard), so after a
while the guy doing the second interview walked out, left me alone for about
10 minutes (it's okay, their conference rooms have a nice view over the
river!), and then my first interviewer came back and told me that
unfortunately my next interviewer wasn't available. I asked what would happen
next and they said they'd have to rearrange the whole thing and walked me out
the building. It was obvious it didn't go well but I found it so pathetic that
they didn't even tell me, lied about the next interviewer and then even
pretended they were going to be back in touch to rearrange things.

I find it a useful experience though. Next time I'm talking with a recruiter
and they mention Citadel I'll know they don't do their homework on checking
how candidates are treated and I won't work with them.

~~~
ben_jones
Is it common for employers to leave you sitting alone in a conference room
during an interview with no explanation or instructions? This happened to me
straight out of college and I didn't handle it well admittedly during a poor
interview on my part, I was already incredibly anxious and frustrated from my
poor performance and I just walked out and never looked back.

I feel like this is an actual interview tactic in some book somewhere although
I can't imagine why.

~~~
mcintyre1994
That's the only time it's happened to me. It's fun to think that it was a
tactic and I was supposed to either leave or do that one magic trick to wow
them and change their mind :) but more likely I think the second guy just
decided it was a no but was too awkward to say, so panicked and went to find
the first guy to ask him to tell me.

~~~
lucozade
It's unlikely to be tactic, in general. If it's in a normal working day (as
against a specific hiring event), it's likely to be a minor failure of
logistics.

In your case, it's probably not that. It's more likely that the second
interviewer thought that it wasn't worth their time carrying on with the
interview. For example, if their expectations of your experience/knowledge
were way off reality. Very rude of them not to just say so if that is the case
though.

------
rdtsc
> Lunch break. I was given a "lunch buddy" and told this was not an interview.
> I am not sure whether it was taken into account or not.

Ha! At least you got a lunch. Here is my experience with AWS:

* They forgot to call for the 1st phone interview. I stood around like an idiot for 45 minutes waiting. Had to call them eventually. They apologized and rescheduled. Ok whatever, bigco, mistakes happen.

* Rescheduled phone interview goes awesome. I was excited. Was told about the Leadership Principles and to make sure learn and parrot them back during the onsite interview. Ok, a little strange. Got the "I think might be joining a cult" thought in the back of my head.

* Interview day. Show up. Turns out future manager, that is the main person I should have been talking to, wasn't even there.

* Got questions like "what was the worst thing that happened to you?". They probably wanted me to parrot the leadership principles back at them. But of course, what better question to make the person feel terrible than making them remember all the bad experiences in their life.

* Nobody asked much about my resume. I had successfully shipped products, could talk in detail about Linux kernel internals, distributed systems. But instead I was live-compiling "invert the binary tree" type problems at the whiteboard.

* Lunch comes. I am thinking, well at least I'll get to meet some of the future team members. But nobody shows up. After 30 min I started to walk around the hallways hoping someone would stop me and ask me what am I doing there. I even had a snarky reply ready to go.

* After that I did get a bit snarky and refused to parrot back the leadership principles. Was that the bar-raiser who I was talking back to? Could be. Were they the ones that failed my interview or was it the manager that never showed up that vetoed me? I'll never know.

* But that's not all. There is more. The HR person I talked to before the interview was swearing they'd get back to me within 3 days. They didn't. Three weeks later I called them back, not because I was curious about the result much, I had accepted an offer by then, I just wanted to see what the excuse would be.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Then it seemed like a terrible waste of time then
but now it's a story I really enjoy sharing. It's just so fun. It's incredible
the amount of dysfunction and awfulness that resulted from interfacing with
that company.

~~~
kromem
Wow. That "what's the worst thing that ever happened to you" question should
make their legal team's skin crawl.

What if the answer was about being bullied for sexual orientation (and in the
process disclosing information that could bias an interview) or about dealing
with a medical condition?

That's such a stupid question for an interview.

~~~
omg_ketchup
I'm sure they mean "What's a bad work situation you were in, and how did you
deal with it"

~~~
zacherates
Being at work doesn't preclude bullying, harassment, assault, etc.

------
wst_
My experience with Facebook. I've been referred by a friend and got a fast
response from US. Since I am not in US they told me they are going to switch
to EMEA dept. for the rest of interview. Then guy emails me from EMEA saying
that he got my case and if he's not in touch soon I should remind myself to
him... Actually the first one said that too.

WHAT? I should send him an email in case he forgot about me?

Anyway, he forgot. Obviously. After some time (2 weeks or so) I send him an
email. Auto-response comes back "I am on vacation, contact Alice instead."
Well, so I'm emailing Alice and asking what's going on, etc. Another auto-
response "I am on vacation, contact Bob instead." I got really irritated by
that point. So I contact Bob, and auto-response comes back "I have too many
meetings today, I can't respond today." And that was it.

Now, the funny part. After couple of weeks I got an automated email asking me
to participate in interview survey to share my experience. Oh, boy! I'm glad
you've asked, guys! So I describe the situation, ask them did they got a bad
day or they treat all their candidates like that, and was it a joke or they
just disregard people on a daily basis? After I submitted, the next day email
comes. "Sorry, we've already have someone else for the job, bla bla bla."

Really?

~~~
Twirrim
Facebook in Seattle has an open head count. Which means lots of recruiting
attempts. I finally got them to blacklist me locally, because I was getting
3-4 recruitment contacts a month, and had been for ages and was getting
somewhat tired of it. I have absolutely zero interest in working at Facebook,
for a number of reasons.

Some of their recruiters were beyond ridiculous when it comes to persistent.
My "favourite" interaction with them, only marginally paraphrased:

Recruiter: "Hi, I saw your impressive work history on LinkedIn and would like
to talk to you about a job opportunity at Facebook" (probably the only thing
"impressive" in my work history at the time was AWS?)

Me: "Thank you for contacting me, but I'm not interested in working at
Facebook"

Note: This was sent direct to my personal email address, not through LinkedIn.
It happens to be an email address associated with both my Facebook and
LinkedIn accounts, presumably something Facebook recruiters could get at? Most
of their recruitment attempts have come via email instead of LinkedIn, and
reference my work history on LinkedIn.

< a few days pass >

R: "Hi, just reaching out to you again to see if you've had a chance to
rethink about the role at Facebook"

M: "I'm not changing my mind. I'm not interested in working at Facebook"

< a few days pass >

R: "Hi, we have a recruitment open day coming up on $date, there will be food
and drinks and a chance to speak with people who already work at Facebook.
It's an ideal chance to see if there is any work you might find interesting
here"

M: "I'm really, really not interested. Stop contacting me"

< $day-2 >

R: "Just thought I'd send a quick reminder that the open day is coming up in a
couple of days. Hope to see you there"

M: "No, you won't. I'm not attending. Please stop contacting me"

< $day >

R: "Hi, I'm looking forward to meeting you today at the open day" By this
stage I'm half tempted to turn up just so I could punch the recruiter.

M: "You won't. I'm not attending. STOP CONTACTING ME"

< $day+1 >

R: "I'm sorry, I appear to have missed you at the open day. I was wondering if
maybe I could schedule a time to speak to you about engineering opportunities
here at Facebook"

M: "STOP CONTACTING ME"

At which point I went through my email backlog, marked every email as spam,
and put in an auto-junk rule for any further communication from that
recruiter.

------
bastawhiz
A bit late to the party, but a lot of things that this post mentions are very
similar to my own Amazon experience.

\- They asked me to write a four page essay before I was allowed to have an
on-site interview. Exactly four pages.

\- The interview process was more exhausting than any company I'd interviewed
at. They make almost no accommodations to make you feel comfortable.

\- I asked for a Macbook. They gave me an old Dell laptop.

\- I remember that the VC in the room we were initially in just didn't work.
The recruiter spent a good amount of time trying to make it work before giving
up and getting another room. I believe they had just switched the office over
to Chime, which was not reassuring.

\- The editor they had me code in didn't actually run my code, nor did it have
syntax highlighting. A big chunk of the top of the screen was covered by a
banner ad, because apparently they weren't paying for it.

\- The recruiter and first interviewer were both late. I sat in an empty lobby
waiting for someone to show up to tell me what to do while the receptionists
yelled song requests to the Echo across the room.

\- The position was for "special projects," aka "top secret". All of my
interviewers made sure to impress upon me how important the project was, but
even after I got an offer, they wouldn't tell me what it entailed. I literally
wouldn't find out what the project was until I signed the offer.

\- The title they offered me was "better" than the other two offers I got. But
the compensation (including equity) was the worst: double digit percentage
less than the next best offer.

------
softwaredoug
It’s appalling how one-sided many orgs see the interview process. Instead of
treating the candidate as a partner - someone to work together in making a
decision - the candidate might as well be a box of staplers to them.

The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely dispose
of the candidates time without any consideration beyond what the hiring team
needs.

An interview CAN be as much about helping the candidate find what’s best for
them. Heck where I work we actively talk and promote other options where
someone might be happier. We make referrals for people. When it’s not a good
fit we try to give them feedback and genuinely want them to succeed.

Ugh

~~~
gaius
_The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely
dispose of the candidates time without any consideration_

There is a reason companies refer to employees as “resources” these days. Well
at least they’re honest.

~~~
maxxxxx
They have started to call people "resources" at my company since the last one
or two years. It feels so dehumanizing.

~~~
behringer
That's the entire point. My suggestion is move on.

------
mycentstoo
I've had an interview process that included 2 phone screens, 1 virtual coding
exercise, 7 on-sites with a grand total of 4 white board interviews. There's
something profoundly stupid about having that many whiteboards. The
whiteboards were not testing different skills - they were literally just
different problems. I always think back to this:
[https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025?lang=en](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025?lang=en).

I've gotten old enough to not want to re-learn how to put things in order.

------
nimbius
speaking as someone not in tech (im an engine mechanic by trade) and who has
had to hire people in the past

sometimes the recruiter is miles off. its an indication of serious
communications problems, for example i had a job posted for a senior level
(ASE type) certified mechanic with trade school completed. Because HR gets in
a rush, and because newspapers cost money per character printed, half of the
requirements got cut off.

So imagine my surprise when I get a junior level tech walking in on monday
morning and I sit down with an hour long interview that starts out with me
asking her to diagram the one-thousand pound diesel engine in my office. half
an hour in im throwing questions about yanbar piston rings, fluid dynamics in
the compression cycle and asking for six fault conditions on a HINO engine
during warmup and takeoff. I was getting stonewalled in the interview, and
getting a little pissed off that this "senior" level mechanic was blowing
smoke up my ass, wasting my company time, or so i thought.

I asked her to "cut the bullshit." She nearly had a panic attack. She was
nearly in tears, trying desparately to explain how she was working as best she
could to finish school, but that she hadnt any experience with "the bigger"
engines yet. Confused, I asked her more about the job offer and she
conspicuously forgot half of it. Fetching the newspaper from the waiting room
and checking it myself, I saw the problem. I'd spent 30 minutes roasting a
trade school kid and felt awful about it.

Anyhow i guess what im saying is, its not always you. Sometimes Shirley doesnt
double-check the article before she goes on her margaritaville cruise off the
coast of south carolina.

~~~
clarry
So where you work, requirements are actual requirements?

In software, it's often the opposite. You see a fuckton of "requirements" that
aren't requirements at all (or the company is looking for unicorns but
inevitably end up having to hire a totally average human being), so people
just apply whether they have the required skills or not.

------
_hardwaregeek
I had a recent fun experience where I did a code screen for a company. It
involved writing a very basic key value store API in Ruby. However, the
challenge was extremely unspecified. There were no specification for
persistence (database? file? none?), the precise semantics of the requests
(should PUT-ing the same object multiple times overwrite it? According to the
HTTP definition of PUT, yes, but who knows for sure?), or even how the code
was being run (rackup? Separate script?). Note that there wasn't a clear way
to ask questions either. Even better, the code was to be tested via an
automated script. Yeah...automated scripts and unclear specifications are not
a good combo.

I wrote the code to the best of my ability, then submitted it. I got a
rejection a few weeks later and when I asked the person who sent it for
feedback (I will say, that the company at least had a real, very nice person
contact me), they cited a policy of no response.

Granted, I messed up in that I refused to use Rails, since, c'mon, it's a key
value store. Instead I decided to just write it in pure Ruby with Rack and the
SQLite gem. But I suppose that could have been a mistake since A. Rails is a
lot more robust when it comes to input space and B. the testing harness is
probably designed for Rails. Second, it's quite likely my code was just not
good. But I'd at least like some feedback then, or even a printout of test
failures.

This is a company I hold in extremely high regard, so I sincerely hope that
this is just a fluke.

~~~
bertjk
I'm thinking that in this case, knowing to ask all these questions and getting
further specifications was part of the challenge..

~~~
_hardwaregeek
I’d be inclined to agree, except there was no way to contact anybody
technical. I was only put in contact with HR and was sent the challenge via an
automated email from an address that didn’t respond when I emailed it. Not
really sure where else I could have gone to get a response. Unless this was
some kind of CTF where I had to find a hidden email.

~~~
kaybe
If it was CTF you'd probably try to get the official solution from their
recruiter's computer. I wonder if it would give them pause if it was verbatim
the same.

------
8note
I've been a lunch buddy before.

I don't remember there being anywhere on the interview app for me to put in
feedback. I see lunch buddy's responsibility being to make sure you're well
fed and caffeinated, and ready for the afternoon interviews/excited about the
team/org.

~~~
olliej
It’s really not - lunch is part of the interview. Maybe less technically
oriented, but it’s still part of the interview.

[edit: Wow, so much down votes.

I have interviewed and been interviewed at multiple big tech companies. In all
cases the lunch has been part of the interview process, in most I’ve even been
given an explicit “this is X, they’ll be talking about Y over lunch”, or it’s
been called “lunch interview”.

If the company isn’t treating the lunch period as an interview you’re wasting
your engineer’s (or whatever) time, and the candidates. ]

~~~
goostavos
False.

Currently an Amazon employee. 40+ interviews + debriefs. Not once has "what
did the lunch buddy think?" ever been uttered.

I've been a lunch buddy myself a handful of times. My goal is to have a good
time, answer any questions the candidate has, and squeeze as nice of a meal (+
coffee) outta the process as I can. I've never been asked for feedback

~~~
olliej
That sounds like amazon is wasting employees time then. That runs counter to
my experience with other large tech companies.

~~~
mcrute
It benefits neither the company nor the candidate to have the candidate be
overly stressed out all day. Lunch also gives the candidate the chance to chat
informally to a potential colleague and for that potential colleague to make a
pitch for why it's cool to work at the company and live in the area. If the
lunch buddy does their job well the candidate should leave excited to work for
the company and in good spirits for the last half of the interview. On top of
that both people get a free lunch. Definitely not a waste of time.

~~~
sprigyig
Agreed. About half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is
working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

I think it is worth it to the company for me to spend the 5 extra minutes of
my time (since I'm going to eat lunch anyway) and $25 on lunch to defuse those
concerns and sell them on the team. With the phone screen, the interviews, the
feedback forms and the debrief, the company is spending a ton of time on each
candidate brought on site. Loosing a candidate you make an offer to is the
worst waste of time.

~~~
AlexCoventry
> half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as
> stressful as the rumors say?"

And what do you tell them / what do you think?

------
notyourwork
Anyone else find this reading a bit over dramatic. I don't find any horror
here though I agree its not the best candidate experience and that is sad.
However, horror story is just being dramatic because OP is salty he didn't get
hired when he feels he is of the calibre to be hired at Amazon. Recruiters are
non-tech and Google and Facebook have had timezone problems during my
recruiting and this was only in US timezone so I imagine international this is
even more horrendous.

~~~
hudibras
It's just an interesting story. You don't have to worked up about it.

~~~
notyourwork
Sorry if my post came off as worked up, I was merely trying to reduce the
narrative to what it was which isn't all that interesting or unique.

------
chevman
I don't work at Amazon, however my experience has been similar working at a
large F10.

Our internal 'recruitment services' dept is all outsourced/contracted. They
mask this internally through cheap tricks (don't present the staff in exactly
the same manner as contractors in our internal system, etc), but do a little
research and you'll figure out what's going on. I'm guessing they have
hundreds, possibly thousands of contractors on the payroll running the
operation.

They literally don't give a shit how it all goes down. I've escalated
situations up the chain multiple hops and get nothing back, just silence. No
acknowledgement, nothing. Talk to other Director/VP level friends in HR and
they don't even know who to talk to.

I run a small to mid size department (think around 50 FTEs and some
contract/consultant staff) and when we get openings posted, we run the
recruiting ourselves and just instruct the internal recruitment team when
we're ready to write/extend offers. They are usually still working on the
initial candidate screen doing who knows what, dicking people around with
video interviews and stupid phone screens.

Corporate HR and recruiting is totally broken - avoid at all costs.

~~~
xarien
This rings very true from my perspective as well from both sides of the fence.

------
rv-de
Looking at this account from a meta-perspective I feel reminiscent of
fraternity pledgings. A certain percentage of applicants suffering through a
similar experience while getting for whatever reason an offer in the end will
feel by principle of cognitive dissonance especially grateful and devoted to
Amazon. You want to be a part of this shiny company? Here you go - take a sip
from the puke bucket! And they do it thinking that place must be awesome
because why else would you endure that bullshit ceremony? Finally you're the
one passing on your trauma on fresh aspirants.

------
mogelbumm
Recently I had such a bad experience with a Google recruiter who was looking
for an Engineering Manager. He set up an initial call but canceled 8 minutes
before due to another meeting he had at the same time.

So we rescheduled for two days later. I had the video chat link and was
waiting for him to appear. As he didn't appear, of course, I sent an email
asking if anything was wrong. This was 3 months ago and I never received any
feedback or another reply.

~~~
john_moscow
Just a heads up that any kind of a "manager" position in FAANG that goes
through a "recruiter" and not directly through your network is very likely a
bait-and-switch for a regular SDE.

~~~
gargarplex
That's extremely insightful: a manager position in FAANG occurs through
promotion or networking in. Would love to hear all stories of networking,
people within or external to the FAANG organizations.. (getting hired vs.
helping hire)

------
telltruth
Amazon recruiters are some of the least organized. There have been times when
I got contacted by 3 recruiters during same week but none of them knew about
others. There have also been times when Amazon recruiter calls me and I tell
them I was contacted before and they have no ability to verify or look up what
happened before! Many of these recruiters also look like one-off vendors
working on some twisted reward scheme so they often don't care about candidate
experience or long term maintenance of information. There is simply no
organizational memory of some very basic things like candidate profiles,
pipelines, leads etc. Compared to this Google has invested enormously in
maintaining beautiful detailed profiles of anyone who ever contacted them.

Perhaps one reason for this Amazon chaos is also that they really don't care
about employee turnover. Attrition is the way to weed out less productive
folks so you just keep hiring en-mass and keep firing en-mass. Someone might
say this would create huge voids in project memory and continuity but its
perhaps good because it forces to create documentation and other artifacts
with assumption that others won't be around soon. This is very different than
Google culture and it seems to have worked at least to some extent.

------
kamaal
>>The interviewer was one of those typical impossible to please/thinks he is
smarter than everyone, long haired programmer guys.

>>The questions were impossibly difficult without prior exposure

>>I couldn't answer many of the coding questions during this interview because
they were focused on specific algorithms that no amount of preparation would
be enough

These questions are just becoming very common these days. There are thousands
of programmers spending hours every day on online judge sites, and other
associated competitive programming contests scattered over the internets. As
these things increase there is growing question bank of impossible to answer
interview questions. It also turns out most people who hop jobs often are the
same people putting in these efforts into competitive programming contests,
and these people justify their investments in time to ask these questions and
to keep it as an edge over others.

The questions are just impossible to answer unless you spend hours every day
on these competitive programming sites for years.

It also turns out these people move companies in an year _always_. If your
greatest skill is interviewing, working for one company for years seems like a
waste of your skills.

------
curtis
There's one specific problem with tech hiring that generally doesn't get a
mention and maybe should: HR hiring staff apparently has a really high rate of
turnover, especially among contract sourcers and recruiters (and it seems like
many of these people are contractors).

One really easy way to get ghosted during the recruiting process is if your
primary handler quits, gets fired, or just doesn't get their contract renewed.

I don't think this is the primary problem with tech hiring, but it might be a
quite significant secondary problem.

------
ausjke
I interviewed at Amazon and was rejected, main reason is that I was totally
unprepared(don't even know its 10 principles or something, not to mention the
freshman style algorithm stuff preparation).

All I want to say is that, after the hiring experience and learned how their
R&D was running afterwards a bit, I'm not going to hold its high flying
stocks.

The hiring process sucks, the bar raiser is a joke.

~~~
01100011
Of course I'm negative after having been spurned by Amazon and Google, but I
worry about the continued success of these companies after seeing their hiring
processes. Then again, they only have to be less stupid than their competitors
in order to continue being successful.

I think one of the weak spots is the recruiting team. I feel like the
recruiters, often contractors, get paid based on hiring rates alone. There's
nothing disincentivizing them from sending unqualified recruits through the
pipeline.

In the end, I landed a nice position with a 'tier-2' valley company(not FANG,
but close), so I can go back to not giving a shit about the broken hiring
process. Hopefully the industry wises up, but I suspect that the big companies
will be staffed by people who survived the modern interview process and
therefore nothing will change.

------
nfriedly
I passed the phone screen at Mozilla but the interviewer didn't show for the
first actual interview.

I emailed the recruiter and the interviewer to ask what's up and eventually
they apologized and they said they'd reschedule. Except they didn't.

I sent a few followup emails where I suggested some times that might work,
asked if there was an alternate time that might work better, etc. Never heard
another word from them.

I think our entire industry is terrible at recruiting.

------
pjbk
Judging the programming performance of an engineer based on how they fare at
an interview is like determining the looks of someone by how they appear in a
single snapshot.

~~~
sidibe
Both seem often pretty accurate.

------
dissolved_boy
I interviewed with Amazon a little over a year ago and my experience was quite
the opposite of what was described in the article.

Amazon recruiters approached me first on LinkedIn and invited to one of their
off-site hiring events in Europe. I didn't feel like interviewing with them
back then as I wasn't sure I could pass but still decided to try.

Communication with the recruitment team was surprisingly flawless - I didn't
have any issues with timezones (I was based in Europe, they were from
Seattle/Bay Area), there were some last-minute changes that didn't affect
anything/caused any trouble. HR provided me with tips on how to pass the
interview and shared some online/offline resources on how to get prepared -
they also put a lot of stress on their company principles.

After the initial tech screening and a Skype call with one of the recruiters,
I was invited to the hiring event. Amazon rented the whole floor on one of the
top hotels in the city, all the candidates were assigned a room and the
interviewers came to you - 3 interviews for algorithms/data structures, 1 for
system design. The organization was really superb, interviewers were very
positive and eager to share their experience.

In the end, I didn't get an offer, but I'd say I'd definitely try to interview
with Amazon again.

PS. From what I read here, maybe I was just plain lucky to have a positive
experience interviewing with them :-)

~~~
zacherates
I had basically the same experience except it was in Toronto instead of
Europe.

------
sfilargi
For recruiters we are literally just a product they try to sell to their
internal teams. Once you understand this everything else starts making sense.

~~~
BurningFrog
It helps to think of it as _my work_ is just a product being sold.

It's also a more accurate model of what's going on.

~~~
sfilargi
I don’t think that’s true for our interactions with the recruiter. At least
the ones I have talked to, couldn’t care less about my work. They only care
about the odds of me clearing the interview. Their behavior is linearly
related to that.

~~~
BurningFrog
Rereading, I realize we're talking about slightly different things.

I'm talking about the labor market in general, and my point is that _your_
value is not $X/year, your _work 's_ value is, and it's good for your mental
health to make that distinction, whether X happens to be high or low.

You're talking about understanding the recruiter's incentives, and you're
right that, like any sales people, they've focused on making the sale and
getting their commission.

------
inertiatic
Interviewing is broken beyond belief, but it's just a reflection of all the
opinions people hold on interviewing.

Most people's ideas on hiring are plain wrong, so of course when a company
assigns these people hiring duties the process will be broken.

Also, apart from people posting stories like this on Glassdoor it seems like
HR isn't generally accountable for anything as there's no way for candidates
to flag bad behaviour.

I'm not sure how to fix the first problem, but management should force HR to
collect unfiltered anonymous feedback from candidates in order to review their
performance, to avoid having you company mentioned in such a conversation.

~~~
swayvil
Engineers are, as a rule, broken. We cultivate these twisted dwarves, masters
of their 2-inch domain but alienated to all else. We need to keep them in
insulated cells and handle them like plutonium. But instead we treat them like
normal people and let their insanity corrupt everything around them.

------
akudha
I have such low expectation of recruiters these days that nothing they do
bothers me.

 _The impression he gave off was that his field of IT was the only one that
mattered and if you haven 't heard some very specific terms from that field
that you were a pathetic excuse for a human being_

What really annoys me are those interviewers who are hell bent on proving they
are smarter than the interviewee. The point of an interview is to find what
the candidate knows and where she can fit in the organization. Even if the
interviewer is the god of coding, there is absolutely no need to belittle or
make the interviewee nervous. They are simply wasting everyone's time when
they do it, not to mention the bad publicity, like this article.

The interviewers are developers themselves, I can't understand why/how they
can treat fellow devs this badly.

~~~
ben_jones
Simple. It's bullying. Put others down to feel better about yourself. And
thanks to the power dynamic there's no way to push back other then to never
work at the company - which might even be a good company with a couple bad
apples.

------
ubersoldat2k7
What I find interesting is that, on one end, there's a "developers" shortage,
but on the other, all companies are funneling potentially good engineers
through processes designed for the "interview" experts. Also, that AMZ or
Google do open public positions is weird. I'm pretty sure they could have the
best referring programs.

~~~
bufferoverflow
What other realistic option is there besides interviewing?

~~~
Bayart
The Thunderdome.

------
n1231231231234
Sorry to hear that OP had such a bad experience. I guess as so often, it
really depends on which team / division you are interacting with.

I was interviewing for Amazon a while back and my experience was mostly
positive.

I had applied myself and they got in touch via email a few weeks later. After
a brief email exchange, I got invited for a phone interview. All very straight
forward - the interviewer was really friendly and professional. At the end of
the interview, he also gave me some pointers about what he thinks is important
in interviews.

A week later or so, I got an invitation for on-site interviews. I think it was
5 interviews in total. The hiring manager and his team were all really nice.
(Interesting site note: I did mention some interesting and for the interview
relevant HN article at some point and the interviewer told me that I should
not believe everything that is said on HN haha.) I think the "bad cop" role
was given to the two off-site interviewers. They asked some tough questions,
one of which was something along the line of "Tell me about a time when you
were right about something but could not convince others/management." Of
course, I had experienced such situations in the past, but I struggled to give
a clear narrative. I didn't want to look like someone who doesn't care; nor
like someone who doesn't get their point across, nor like a push-over. In the
end, I left it at something like "I still think I was right, but for other,
non-content-related reasons, management went for a different decision." They
didn't seem happy about my answer. The last interview was a bit weird and I
probably asked a stupid question that put the interviewer off.

I think that was my inner obstructionist. I was living in Belgium at the time
and I really love BE (but didn't like my job there). The Amazon job looked
better, but I didn't really feel like moving to the UK, where the job was
located. Also, the team indicated that they are doing more than 9-5. Here,
too, my inner obstructionist was telling me 'meh'.

You can see where this is going: I didn't get the offer. Still, I thought the
process was pretty decent and fair in my case. Of course, this is also just a
personal experience, but I thought I'd share a nicer one.

~~~
walshemj
Pretty much all developer jobs are salaried in the UK aka no fixed hours so
presenting as some one who only wants to work 9-5 rigidly is going to not go
down well.

------
jorblumesea
The internal recruiter usually knows very little about the actual role and
exists only to sell you to other teams. They are usually contractors, and
could not care less about how candidates actually do as they themselves have
no job incentives that align properly. They'll line you up with positions that
make no sense, they'll ignore any advice or opinions you might have, and are
not technically skilled at all. If the interview goes south at any point, the
candidate is to blame for not hitting the bar. Your happiness is not a factor,
they have literally hundreds of resumes with your same skill set.

I once had a recruiter try to line me up with a javascript position when I had
java experience, not understanding the difference.

You have to really police their behavior and almost babysit them, otherwise
you get situations like this.

------
djhworld
I had an off-site interview experience with Amazon a few years ago, they came
over from the US/Canada to London and held a hiring event in a hotel.

You got put in a room and went through 4 face to face interviews which were
very gruelling, but the interviewers were nice and positive (although to my
British sensibility, maybe _too_ positive!)

I didn't get an offer, I don't think I have the chops to pass the interviews
really, I found the preceding 2-3 weeks of interview prep very stressful and
time consuming. It's not just the algorithms and data structures bit you have
to revise on, you need to think up many anecdotes that align to The Leadership
Principles. They're all over that stuff, you cannot be a follower you must
demonstrate Leadership.

All in all though I appreciated the experience, I don't think I would apply
again though.

~~~
starbeast
>think up many anecdotes that align to The Leadership Principles. They're all
over that stuff, you cannot be a follower you must demonstrate Leadership.

If the principle they set is that you must be a leader and not a follower,
then you should presumably refuse to follow any leadership principles they
dictate to you, purely out of principle.

~~~
jdowner
But then you would be following their principles and not leading! Oh the
paradox!

~~~
starbeast
Am now tempted to apply to Amazon, just to wind them up with this in
interview. Knowing my luck though, they would offer me the job.

------
_Donny
As someone who is soon to graduate in CS from an university, these seemingly
reoccurring stories of terrible interviews really scare me.

Is it normal for the interviewing process to take up all the candidates day?
Is it always expected to spend 3 weeks brushing up on algorithms for an
interview?

How important are the coding interviews in the decision process? I consider
myself a decent programmer, and I have passed and even enjoyed all the
algorithmics courses at my university. However, asking me to implement, lets
say, the Minimum Cut algorithm on a whiteboard in front of multiple
interviewers, would totally break me down.

From my limited professional experience, the average day of a developer is the
exact opposite of what you have to display at these interviews I read about.
When I code, I need my silence and time to think, I need a relaxing and
comfortable environment, I need the internet, man-pages, StackOverflow, IRC. I
need my own notepad on which I can doodle, and occasionally write down notes
for later. I need room to make and learn from my mistakes. And last but not
least, I will have bad days where I might underperform. Interviews seem to be
the exact opposite of all this.

~~~
tested243
>Is it normal for the interviewing process to take up all the candidates day?
Is it always expected to spend 3 weeks brushing up on algorithms for an
interview?

Yes and yes. If you want to work at the best companies with the best engineers
and the best workplace culture with the best compensation yes. I even think
it’s worth it. Unfortunately having this strict interview style doesn’t
guarantee any of the above it is just a prerequisite.

> How important are the coding interviews in the decision process? I consider
> myself a decent programmer, and I have passed and even enjoyed all the
> algorithmics courses at my university. However, asking me to implement, lets
> say, the Minimum Cut algorithm on a whiteboard in front of multiple
> interviewers, would totally break me down.

It’s important. 90% of the problems are search problems ie bfs and dfs.
Sometimes they are a little more difficult.

If you are interested in preparing and studying like crazy I suggest you go to
hacker rank, solve the problems in order in python. Look at the solutions when
you finish and study the user submitted solutions. They typically take
advantage of built in data structures that can make life interviewing very
easy

------
kerng
A good takeaway, most people overestimate their own skills and competence.
It's always someone else's fault. If I apply for a company and they don't get
back to me, or pull some stunts as described I assume they have better
candidates in the pipeline. I'm not their priority.

Maybe changing your own view a bit gets you closer to reality.

~~~
rayvy
> If I apply for a company and they don't get back to me, or pull some stunts
> as described I assume they have better candidates in the pipeline. I'm not
> their priority.

This! I'm reading in the thread here about people not arranging the right
times, and people responding to recruiters who _clearly_ don't care, and
people jumping through all kinds of hoops, and I'm just here kind of in
disbelief.

A good way to think about interviewing/being recruited, is in terms of dating.
If an attractive woman says she's gonna call you, never does, then when you
see her on the street she gives you some _" Oh my dad's aunt's cousin's dog
was sick"_ excuse, you're pretty much an idiot for ever thinking she was into
you in the first place, and continuing to want her.

Another thing is that these folks have no idea that by continuing to be
straddled and dragged along (and basically bullshitted), they're confirming
that _" Hey, I'm desperate for this job, so sure, I'll let you walk all over
me"_. Which thus reduces their attractiveness as candidates. A recruiter
misses a call with me? No reply. A company doesn't follow through on what they
said they'd do or bullshits me in the slightest way? No reply. This approach
is definitely a gamble, but you have to have confidence in the fact that _"
Hey, I'm great at what I do and anyone who gets me is lucky to have me"_.

Again, not that different from dating.

~~~
yks
I agree 100% and don’t initiate calls myself until the phone screen is passed
at least, not because I’m such a sought after dev but because doing otherwise
is generally a waste of my time and mind.

But some people actually are desperate, especially if they need to put a foot
in the door with the big players of industry. We all desire basic decency and
not being treated as nuisance.

------
epx
I am convinced all this interview thing is to create a illusion of shortage,
like Tinder.

~~~
BurningFrog
There is apparently a huge shortage of both men and women!

------
samfisher83
Sounds like most big company interviews. They have tons of candidates so they
can just do stuff like that.

------
simonebrunozzi
My story from 2008: [https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-
com...](https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon-
com-314ee8634da9)

Not a horror story, in that case.

------
sxp62000
I can never tell whose side the recruiters are on. Are they on my side,
because if I get hired, the recruiter gets a commission? Or are they on the
company's side?

~~~
dba7dba
Neither. The recruiter is in it for self, for that commission.

I wonder if anyone can come up with a long lasting score card of recruiters.
How do the new hires do after 2 years?

Or maybe even the managers should be graded in how the new hires are hired.

------
jimnotgym
Annoying from another point of view. I was trying to hire someone recently
with OPs skillset...(integrations, mix of languages etc) and drew a blank. I
can't seem to hire anyone in the UK unless it is for php and C#.NET. It feels
like there is something really broken about recruitment.

~~~
walshemj
Where you not offering enough £ or using a poor recruitment agency.

~~~
jimnotgym
It might be both! Also it might be location. A bit remote here (Welsh
borders), another reason I'm relocating.

------
xte
IMVHO it's modern management problem: today instead of delegate responsibility
there is a super-concentration at top of the hierarchy hoping that tech and
"modern management model" can make that possible. As a result companies are
full of byzantine bureaucracy and essentially no one can work well.

And we see results every day.

I think the origin is the extension of Ford-model idea of easily to find and
substitute "dumb" workers that only know to turn a key. That model does not
work in the long terms and because of that automotive industry switch to
Toyota model. Unfortunately someone in "top positions" thought that Ford model
is nice, dumb people are easy to manage, predictable, expendable etc so they
push it as mass as they can at all level of our society.

------
bsenftner
I don't bother with any recruiting or hiring processes anymore. If I can't
phone and speak directly with my candidate boss about the specifics of my
hire, I tell them to go find some other manipulable smuck. I just give them
bad attitude, and guess what? They want me immediately. No one talks to me
unless they need a serious, problem solving developer. Recruiters that fish me
get an earful. I've found being nice is a failure strategy, and having a nasty
attitude turns heads; I get hired. Funny part, I am the most easy going guy
around. I just can not tolerate shitheads, and the corporate recruiting
process is all shitheads.

------
MrsPeaches
Seems like this is a common experience:

[https://thecooperreview.com/google-amazon-facebook-
secrets-h...](https://thecooperreview.com/google-amazon-facebook-secrets-
hiring-best-people/)

------
yks
Amazon uses these psychological questionnaires for screening (the likes of
“Rate the statement ‘I never lie’ from disagree to agree”), of course their
recruitment is a joke

------
mcguire
At least you didn't get an email from a recruiter immediately after the
interview saying, "looks like this is going to be successful."

Contract recruiters are a nightmare.

~~~
LoSboccacc
> Contract recruiters are a nightmare.

One once included me by mistake in a thread with the prospect employer where
the recruiter we openly racist about me

------
Papagallo
I was hired by Amazon a few years ago and left recently. My initial interview
experience doesn't match Mr. Kromin's account well. My experience with the
Amazon interview process while at the organization doesn't match well either.

The main missing detail from Kromin's account is "leadership principles."
Amazon is famous for its list of leadership principles. It constantly hammers
them home to all employees during performance reviews and peer reviews. It
stencils them on the walls of the workplace. Most importantly, it trains
interviewers to use these leadership principles as a basis for judging job
candidates.

[https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles](https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles)

Every person participating in an Amazon job interview is assigned one or two
leadership principles on which to assess candidates. The interviewers are very
open about this and their questions dealing with the principles are very
clear. The recruiters explicitly tell job candidates to read the list and
prepare answers that deal with each one.

Since the Amazon leadership principles are non-technical, perhaps Mr. Kromin
considered them too trivial to mention. But considering the obsessive emphasis
these ideas were given during every Amazon job interview I saw over the past
two years, I find the omission odd. I'm not questioning the facts of this
account -- I'm merely suggesting that they are so vague as to make it
impossible for anyone to judge the nature of the experience.

~~~
ikromin
They are mentioned twice in the blog post

------
intellectronica
Entitled and immature. Not disputing that the author had a negative experience
on this attempt to land a job he is clearly interested in, but his response to
it doesn't take into account:

1\. That in all likelihood nobody deliberately tried to make his experience
negative - people (and companies, even very successful ones) make mistakes.

2\. That the process of trying to get a job (like everything else in life)
involves luck and hardship. Life isn't "fair" and nobody owes us exclusively
positive experiences.

3\. That interviewing for a job one wants is often stressful. We all wish to
be validated and being put to a test is bound to colour our experience at
least a bit negative. It's on us to discount that when judging others. Calling
this experience a "horror story" sounds hysterical and out of proportion. Some
people out there really experience horror stories trying to make a living and
survive. A programmer being invited to apply to a slightly better job isn't
one of them.

If the author did manage to get an offer he would be joining a large company
where there are daily opportunities to feel wronged and deprived and complain
about how unfair the world is. If he couldn't handle it for one day of
interviewing, it's probably for the best if he doesn't make it his daily job.

~~~
tspike
Treating candidates with basic respect isn't asking for too much.

------
bad_news_bears
I had a bad experience interviewing with Facebook’s Product Data Scientist
group. I had two initial calls with a recruiter, was told to expect outreach
for a third, and never heard from them again. I followed up twice – radio
silence.

------
Frye9876
I always find it ridiculous but in my experience passing on beers is never a
good idea.

------
Twirrim
> Senior Software Engineer (L3)

Likely because this is reminiscing, _but_ if they told you Senior Software
Engineer was an L3, things were even more screwed up. Senior Engineers should
be L5-L6.

------
DarkContinent
With Google they decided it was a good idea to organize interviews for me (a
woman) in a window-papered-over room with exactly one other person (a guy).

Not exactly comforting...

~~~
cloakandswagger
What are you trying to imply with this comment? Are you uncomfortable any time
you're in an elevator alone with a man?

Did anything untoward happen? If not, did this at all affect your perception
of men and/or men who work at Google?

------
aredirect
I had a similiar experience with one of the big four, they expected me to know
KMP by heart, in initial coding interview (not on-site even)

------
lmilcin
... or do what most sane people do and just ignore the messages.

I also had rather bad experience interviewing for Amazon few years back.

I was invited for a whole day of interviews. I already had 12 years of
experience in the field, designing complicated stuff and I like to think that
I am rather good at what I am doing at it is rather hard to surprise me.

There was of course screening checks but Amazon representative declined to
answer any of my questions about the job I would be doing so the it was rather
one-sided.

It is important for me to be able to get to know at least initial expectations
from my new employer. I get a lot of invitations and I also must be able to
screen offers that don't offer any chance to be interesting to me.

The whole day interview was quite costly to me, I had to take entire day off
(as a contractor it means no pay) and drive 4 hours to Amazon site (and then 4
hours back).

I would normally decline continuing with the process given the unwillingness
of the company to provide any details of the offered position and the costs
that I was expecting. I only relented because it was Amazon.

I have quite a lot of experience interviewing. I went through a lot of
interviews on both sides of the table and I was also experienced interviewing
successfully for large companies with very selective processes. I have very
good record of being able to predict the results of any interview meaning I
can tell pretty well if I will or will not get offer.

All the interviews on that day at Amazon went very well except for one. On all
but one interviews I was able to solve and confirm correctness of all problems
posed to me without much help and I was able to answer almost every technical
questions. The 2 or 3 questions I couldn't answer I just answered politely
that I did not have experience and since I am not sure I would rather not
answer that accidentally give an incorrect answer.

The one interview that didn't go very well, I was interviewed by a guy who
posed a design problem to me. I was supposed to design a system for a parking
lot. That was literally the description of the problem ("Design a system for a
parking lot.") I was given no directions (what kind of parking lot?
requirements? what kind of aspect of the system I am looking at? what kind of
system?). All my questions about what I am doing were responded with that it
is my job to figure out and no answer. I tried to pose as an analyst trying to
figure the requirements but this too was meant with a refusal to answer.

Nevertheless, I put some assumptions and proposed 2 different solutions (one
high tech with cameras, one low tech with tickets). Both solutions were
refused with explanation that that's not what he wanted to hear.

It is not surprising I was declined day later and of course, no feedback.

Since then I got contacted at least 5 times by different Amazon
representatives but I declined after representatives refused to answer my
questions and stated I would have to, again, go through entire process to
learn anything.

------
hooloovoo_zoo
Whenever I've done these big tech on-site interviews I've had to sign an NDA.
Do those just not carry any weight?

~~~
pmiller2
What precisely did the author disclose that would be considered proprietary
information?

~~~
zwischenzug
In my experience they cover any aspect of the interview process, down to the
layout of the office.

~~~
Latteland
A lot of ndas at interview time are really just cover your ass in case your
company looks like an idiot. I've also been through the amazon interview
treadmill where they interviewed me for a different job than I was approached
about working on. wasted time writing a stupid essay. got no questions about
it. what a waste of time. never really gave me clear feedback that i wasn't
being offered a job.

------
philwelch
So here's a series of interview-related experiences I've had with the same,
large company; a combination of good, bad, and weird:

1\. After a referral from a friend and former coworker, I have an
informational interview with a hiring manager. We hit it off and I get into
the interview process.

2\. I end up interviewing for a different team than before. After lots and
lots of interview prep and a stressful but seemingly okay interview loop, I
meet up with aforementioned friend and former coworker for drinks.

3\. I hear back that I'm not getting an offer for this particular opening, but
this particular rejection cryptically asks me to "stay tuned" for...something.

4\. I'm contacted out of the blue by a contracting firm working with the same
company. This is apparently what I was supposed to stay tuned for. They send
me a list of contract openings, I indicate which ones seem interesting to me.

5\. I have a phone interview for one of the contract slots. I get hired on a 3
month contract, but I'm told that if things work out, they can extend the
contract.

6\. The contract gets extended, and I start asking around about converting to
full time. Doing this requires yet another loop, but I can stay on the same
team and everything, and they have an opening. I start prepping. I also do a
mock interview with another manager in the organization, who tells my boss
that "it wouldn't be a complete waste of time" to interview me (which was much
higher praise than it might sound if you know the guy).

7\. I do the interview loop, in a conference room not far from the desk that
I'm already working at, for a job I'm already doing. After the loop, I return
to my desk and try to do some actual work but shortly realize that my brain is
fried, and my boss kind of laughs and says I can just go home.

8\. A few days later, as I'm working, I catch my coworker coming back from my
interview debrief. He makes eye contact and gives me a little thumbs up. A
couple days later, I get a formal offer. It's a pretty damn good offer. I
accept and schedule my first day for about a month and a half after my
contract is up, so I can get some extra vacation time in between.

9\. Eventually, I end up interviewing people myself. The best story from this
stage is when I have a streak of 7-8 phone screens where the candidate no-
shows. Like, either straight doesn't pick up the phone, or picks up the phone
and when I ask, "is this still a good time?", they say something like, "no",
or, "I'm still driving". Everyone I talk to agrees that this is really weird.
Eventually I find out that the recruiters don't understand how time zones
work, except that was only 3-4 phone screens in and I still had a bunch of no-
shows after that.

------
tomrod
Wow. It's like I read my own experience here.

------
0xFFFE
Archive:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181104014612/https://www.igork...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181104014612/https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/11/04/my-
amazon-interview-horror-story/)

~~~
ikromin
With updates:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181104041749/https://www.igork...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181104041749/https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/11/04/my-
amazon-interview-horror-story/)

------
rustcharm
People should be treated with respect, even if they're not a good fit for the
job. This is disgusting behavior on Amazon's part.

------
dymk
> Two years ago, after a rather unpleasant interview process, I asked to be
> put on a do-not-contact register

Great! Clearly he's closed that chapter in his life and he can move on. It'd
be a bummer if they contacted him again, luckily he can just say "No thank
you" like a normal person. But wait!

> here I am reading yet another email from an Amazon recruiter asking to talk
> to me about a possible opportunity. Will this horror never end?

This gets the _biggest_ eyeroll I can possibly muster.

> This is a retelling of the two tedious months that Amazon put me through
> only to tell me that I can't code, which I now find funny, but at the time
> it was rather insulting and humiliating

Is this guy serious? He didn't meet the bar, but instead of working on the
weak areas of his skillset, he's claiming he's was insulted and degraded.

\---

Amazon clearly was not a fantastic company to interview with, but man this guy
_really_ milks it to the point where I don't have a lot of sympathy for him.

~~~
TideAd
I hear about companies telling candidates they "can't code" or "can't
communicate" a lot. This just seems like a really rude and arrogant thing to
tell someone. If you want to give a candidate feedback, give specific feedback
and give it politely. The people who want to improve will get the picture. If
you don't want to, just thank them for their time and interest.

Other than that, I think you're right. Some of this was really pretty normal
and not worth being upset about.

~~~
dymk
I can guarantee you that Amazon/the recruiter didn't tell this developer that
he couldn't code - that's an inference he made

------
bufferoverflow
This story would have been a lot more useful if you told us what the questions
were, especially the ones you failed at, especially those "impossible" ones.

------
dudul
The part titled "Next 3 Weeks" is where I lost all sympathie for the author.
If you're willing to put up with this shit and sacrifice 3 weeks of family
time to learn useless algos you're asking to be treated like a piece of
cattle.

------
Mononokay
People really need to start putting this stuff behind Cloudflare before
posting to HN.

~~~
ikromin
It is, I didn't think so many people would care enough to read about it though

~~~
devwastaken
If it's through cf it shouldn't have resource exhaustion from the origin
unless the html isn't set to cache.

Cloudflare isn't that necessary, you can go far with just a proper static
serving nginx config. But yeah cf makes like easy.

~~~
ikromin
I can see about 50/50 cached/uncached requests. It's probably the way that the
HTML is being generated, will have to look into that, thanks

