
Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience - quantumtremor
https://rajk.me/amazon-interview-experience/
======
kafkaesq

        The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam:
    
    	Your microphone
    	Your webcam
    	Your physical location
    	Your head movements
    	Your eye movements
    	Your mouth movements
    

Creepy as all get-out. By all means, lets have more leaks like this.

~~~
dgritsko
It's worth noting that these are Proctorio's
([https://proctorio.com/](https://proctorio.com/)) restrictions; they're just
a third-party company that Amazon is using to administer the test. I've used a
couple of similar systems (e.g. ProctorU -
[https://www.proctoru.com/](https://www.proctoru.com/), where a human will
actually watch you via webcam(!), or ProctorTrack -
[http://www.proctortrack.com/](http://www.proctortrack.com/)), and
"monitoring" of this sort is pretty much par for the course (no pun intended).

These companies are typically used in settings where some level of rigor is
expected (e.g. administering an exam for an accredited university). In that
context, I think these restrictions make sense in order to ensure some degree
of validity in the test results (especially since you're only expected to run
the software for the duration of the test).

~~~
electic
It just sends the wrong message. As a company, you are advocating tech that
spies on people or in this case the test taker. Overall, it leaves a nasty
taste in your mouth that a company would use technology such as this. What
else would they be okay with doing once you start working there?

Why not do an onsite if you want to make sure of the validity?

~~~
dgritsko
>Why not do an onsite if you want to make sure of the validity?

Convenience and logistics. Is it worth yours (or Amazon's) time to pay for
travel expenses, when applicants could literally be located anywhere?
Evidently not, at least not in the early stages of the process.

~~~
jcoffland
If it's not worth Amazon's time to interview me in person then it's not worth
my time to consider them as a potential employer. This is just lazy and they
will end up with lower quality candidates because of it.

~~~
derefr
They will probably fly you out _after_ this, for another stage of the
interview. But at the "FizzBuzz stage", they do really need to make sure that
the person answering the question is the same person they're later flying out.
There are a surprisingly large number of college students who've gotten used
to "paying for grades", who attempt things like that.

~~~
Aeolun
Maybe they should just conduct fizzbuzz then?

~~~
wyclif
I think the point is that even if employers do conduct fizzbuzz, some
candidates use someone else's answer.

~~~
wheelerwj
those are the people you should hire. why would you pay to reinvent the wheel
when you really need someone to invent better IAM controls?

~~~
joncrocks
Because the point of FizzBuzz is not to get a working FizzBuzz class that can
be integrated into an application, it's to see if the candidate can actually
produce a working version themselves.

Imagine you're hiring someone to do your taxes. Sure, you'd expect them to use
a calculator to do all the hard addition/subtraction, or more likely
spreadsheets. But if you asked them to add 5 and 3, and they said "I would use
a calculator, this is a stupid question, I can't just tell you off the top of
my head" then you're probably not going to hire them.

It's a super basic test of 'Can this person code themselves out a paper bag."

~~~
wyclif
Thank you! For a few hours there I couldn't believe I was the only one in the
thread that understood this.

------
manacit
By all means, this is not unique to Amazon - not that it makes it any better.

I did a post-grad interview for Epic (epic.com - healthcare software) in a
similar fashion, that was at least as draconian.

After passing a 15 minute phone screen, they sent me a link to a service that:

* Installed their proprietary software on my Mac

* Connected me to a real person who verified my DL against who they were expecting

* Had me swing my laptop 360 degrees around the room I was taking the test in, to make sure there were no notes or people assisting me on the quiz

* Took remote control of my computer and force quit any programs in Activity Monitor that were on their 'blacklist' (including Dropbox, etc)

* Gave me what I imagine amounted to a three-hour SAT style test with English proficiency, math, logic, etc.

* The whole time, had that same person watching me through my webcam and watching my screen, to make sure that I was not cheating.

I passed, and during my in-person full-day interview in Wisconsin, they had me
do a few more of these tests (that were slightly harder and more about
communication skills), as well as some interviews with people in person.

It was an interesting experience for sure - definitely a different side of the
coin compared to what a lot of HN is probably used to. I ended up getting an
offer that was very good considering they are based outside of Madison, but
ultimately decided to go somewhere else.

~~~
onetwotree
I think you made the right choice. I live in Madison and have some friends and
coworkers who work or have worked for Epic. The burnout is epic (pun
definitely intended).

I think the only ones who really like their jobs are a barista and a cook.

~~~
epmatsw
I really enjoyed my time there actually. There's a decent burnout rate for
some teams and roles (especially for ones that travel a lot), but there are
some groups there that do interesting work. I was one of their Security team
leads for a year or so right before I left and had a lot of fun with it.

------
bsg75
> You will not be able to open any tabs or windows

If I had to code purely from memory, without the benefit of language or
library docs, I would not be able to write anything of use.

Personally when hiring, I'm not interested in a candidate's memory recall, but
the ability to use resources when faced with a new challenge.

~~~
shorodei
Within these restrictions, I don't think they expect your written code to
compile. They just want to ensure the integrity of the test itself. Is it
worth the invasion of privacy? Personally, I don't think so.

~~~
Barrin92
Well if you participate in an on-site test which the person was willing to do
you are essentially tested under the same conditions, so I'd not really
consider this to be a privacy invasion.

~~~
khedoros1
You're presumably giving them a view into your home and its location. You'd
potentially be required to change security settings on your computer, to re-
enable things that had been explicitly disabled. You're likely to also want to
close whichever browser tabs or open programs that might be deemed
unprofessional.

Those are all things that I'd consider invasive that I don't have to deal with
during an in-person interview. And the wording is just creepy anyhow.

~~~
Barrin92
True enough, but not everybody actually lives in places where on-site testing
is an option, and they'd probably prefer cleaning their room up to not having
the ability to apply for a job.

And given that all of this happens voluntarily, and assuming that Amazon isn't
going to infect you with malware(which seems very unlikely) this kind of
testing is a great opportunity for people who have the resources or time to
show up in person.

There's some kind of privacy chauvinism involved in these discussions that
ignores the realities of people who don't live next to the Amazon HQ.

~~~
khedoros1
What I wrote was just a reaction to when you said that the arrangement wasn't
a privacy invasion. I don't have any problem with off-site testing, just this
particular implementation of it, which seems uncomfortably distrustful, like a
harbinger of what working there would be like.

> And given that all of this happens voluntarily

There's voluntary in the sense of willingly (I have no reservations about
doing this; heck, I'd offer even if you didn't ask me to), there's voluntary
(I choose to do a thing that sucks because I don't seem to have another
choice), and there's everything in between. My problem is when the "voluntary"
action is more on the negative side of that scale, which it often is when
someone's looking for a job.

I'm not trying to criticize candidates' choices. I'm trying to criticize
Amazon's implementation of their hiring process. The point isn't that
"candidates should be principled enough not to stand for it", but that Amazon
should decide "this way sucks, let's find something better".

> assuming that Amazon isn't going to infect you with malware(which seems very
> unlikely)

True, they just have you voluntarily install someone _else 's_ malware.

------
mabbo
As a developer at Amazon who does interviews, what the fuck?

I imagine part of this is a response to the very, very large amount of time we
spend interviewing interns every winter (I know I typically do 2 or 3 sessions
of 3 1-hour interviews in a row). There's just too many interviews to do.

Someone wants to innovate and find ways to sort the good from the bad without
SDE time spent, I would guess. I hope this isn't the new system for everyone.
Then again, if it saves me hours and hours of phone screens...

~~~
nxc18
Coming from the candidates perspective, I loved it. The whole process was
efficient and flexible. The coding questions were realistic. The workday
simulation was really cool.

I get that the author cares about privacy, but without doing what they do
there should be no way to make the process as smooth as it is without getting
tons of cheating. (It sounds crazy, but being in uni, I've seen crazy amounts
of people cheat, often on the order of >50% of the graduate cs program.)

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
It's almost unbelievable - and perhaps the perspective of people who interview
for one of these in-demand companies can offer the better perspective on why
go to these lengths .

I work for one of the big 5 in demand software companies to work for -
originally I would do a live-programming question on Coderpad as part of a
first round pass with candidates. I used a pretty basic question as sort of a
fizzbuzz - build a Pascal's triangle. The amount of people who took the exact
top sample direct from StackOverflow without even attempting to change
anything or mask their cheating was astounding.

We've since adopted a better heuristic approach that more accurately reflects
the day-to-day work and abandoned the smoke test, but as everyone knows, the
most valuable resource any interviewer has is time - the more of that you can
save, the better off you are.

~~~
flukus
Did you call it fizzbuzz or pascals triangle and is that how they were able to
google it? If you change the parameters to ducky-fuzz (the drinking game
variant) and describe the requirements they shouldn't be able to google an
answer, at least not a 100% one.

~~~
thomasahle
Unless people already know the problem and its original name.

~~~
OJFord
I'd have thought that's a more valuable '+1' than a correct fizzbuzz answer -
shows the candidate can recognise a common pattern in a problem, and know the
name from being interested enough to hang out on HN, SO, or whatever.

------
zeppelin101
Wait, I see nothing wrong with any of this. Obviously Amazon is trying to curb
cheating on remote coding/compatibility tests. They don't actually care to
collect any info about you beyond what you do during the test. They don't care
which websites you visit before or after the test. Or how you use your
clipboard - after the test. But during the test, it's not so unreasonable.
People do cheat, especially if they can get away with it and when the payoff
is potentially huge.

~~~
imsofuture
The premise that cheating is a major risk or issue in job interviews is ....
nutty.

~~~
williamscales
And yet...I have seen people cheat on technical interviews conducted over
video chat. It's pretty obvious in that situation — oh, where did that come
from? — but I can see it being an issue in a highly automated interview
process with minimal human oversight.

Of course, I think that the real answer for that is to use a human to
interview everyone. It's crazy to treat potential future employees this way.

~~~
hermitdev
Had something similar while interviewing Chinese offshore developers from
Accenture. We caught on that the translator was basically answering the
questions, and not the candidate. As a result of that experience, I will not
work with anyone that does not speak English (I don't care if it's not their
first language - I can work with poor grammar & broken English and I can
handle heavy accents over a phone), but I will not go through a translator
(and I don't want to have to go through a translator for day-to-day work,
anyway).

------
frakkingcylons
I went through Amazon's two online tests in October 2016 while interviewing
for a full-time position.

I took the first test just like the OP, the logical reasoning part seemed kind
of irrelevant and a waste of time for me. That was nothing compared to the
second online test.

The environment of the second test was like a scenario out of Black Mirror.
Not only did they want to have the webcam and microphone on the entire time, I
also had to install their custom software so the proctors could monitor my
screen and control my computer. They opened up the macOS system preferences so
they could disable all shortcuts to take screenshots, and they also manually
closed all the background services I had running (even f.lux!).

Then they asked me to pick up my laptop and show them around my room with the
webcam. They specifically asked to see the contents of my desk and the walls
and ceiling of my room. I had some pencil and paper on my desk to use as
scratch paper for the obvious reasons and they told me that wasn't allowed.
Obviously that made me a little upset because I use it to sketch out examples
and concepts. They also saw my phone on the desk and asked me to put it out of
arm's reach.

After that they told me I couldn't leave the room until the 5 minute bathroom
break allowed half-way through the test. I had forgotten to tell my roommate I
was taking this test and he was making a bit of a ruckus playing L4D2 online
(obviously a bit distracting). I asked the proctor if I could briefly leave
the room to ask him to quiet down. They said I couldn't leave until the
bathroom break so there was nothing I could do. Later on, I was busy thinking
about a problem and had adjusted how I was sitting in my chair and moved my
face slightly out of the camera's view. The proctor messaged me again telling
me to move so they could see my entire face.

The whole experience was degrading. If you're wondering why I did it, well,
I've been using various AWS services for five years and I admired the work
that the AWS team had done. Furthermore, I need the income to support my
parents and Amazon was the best chance I had at the time. I got invited to do
an on-site interview but I declined once I had another offer, and I'm glad I
did.

EDIT: Small detail I forgot to mention. When I was showing them my desk, I had
the monitor for my desktop (I was using my laptop for the test) and they asked
me to turn the monitor so it was facing backwards.

~~~
nilkn
I do understand why Amazon might do this, but I just can't get onboard with
this. Being treated like a cheater upfront is just not how I want to start my
relationship with a potential employer.

Even when I was in college my university (Rice) had an honor code which meant,
among other things: (1) professors didn't have to be present in-class during
exams, and in fact they were encouraged to leave; (2) professors could give
take-home exams and students were trusted to not cheat or otherwise violate
the terms of the exam.

It wasn't just theoretical; most of my exams were not directly proctored in
college, and I never personally knew of anyone who cheated. If you did cheat
and got caught, though, you would have a trial before the entirely student-run
Honor Council. If found guilty the punishments were extremely severe.

I know Rice is not the only school with this sort of honor code. I believe
Caltech has one as well, and there are definitely some others.

~~~
avarun
Vanderbilt does the same, and it works well, especially the whole Honor
Council concept.

------
ryandrake
Wow, can't believe I'm seeing people justifying/defending this--on HN of all
places! This is unacceptably invasive, and if this is a glimpse of the future
of getting a job, we're all in for a lot of trouble. If you think this kind of
information is acceptable to monitor/record during an interview, what on earth
do you think is off-limits??

Justifying this as "just to make sure people aren't cheating" is like
justifying the police putting a camera in everyone's living room "just to make
sure people aren't criminals" or putting a GPS collar on your spouse "just to
make sure she's not having an affair". Totally unacceptable.

~~~
vmarsy
> Justifying this as "just to make sure people aren't cheating" is like
> justifying the police putting a camera in everyone's living room "just to
> make sure people aren't criminals" or putting a GPS collar on your spouse
> "just to make sure she's not having an affair". Totally unacceptable.

While you might have good reason to get offended and find this to be a big
privacy invasion, probably like 90% of people here, the comparison you use
here is invalid. Putting a camera in people living room or a GPS tracker is a
_permanent_ surveillance. This in comparison is only for the duration of the
exam. In many schools, especially in some cultures where cheating is more
common and accepted , there's pretty strict measures implemented for exams,
including humans checking all of the same things that tool is checking.

Again, it's definetely a big privacy invasion, but it's Amazon tentative at
scaling/automating the first phase of the job interview process. I'm sure
anyone with proven credentials could bypass this step, but if it gives a
chance to prove one's skills for a job without having any special degree, I'm
sure some people would be fine with the temporary privacy invasion.

~~~
ryandrake
OK, then we'll turn the camera and GPS on only once in a while, when we have a
good reason to make sure things are kosher.

~~~
palunon
Depends. If they warn you long before turning on the camera, you decide the
exact moment when the camera is turned on, and how it is positioned, and you
only have to turn it on once while taking a test, would it be so bad ? Just
put your laptop facing a wall, and the personal information you give is your
face (which your prospective employer would see at some point anyway) and the
color of your walls (big deal !).

It is an invasion of privacy. Is it an unacceptable invasion of privacy for
the duration of an interview/test ?

~~~
literallycancer
Yes, it would be bad. Privacy is not a slider. You either have it, or you
don't.

~~~
palunon
Then you don't have privacy anyway since a long time, and since it is not a
slider, this doesn't change anything...

------
Spooky23
Have you ever done lots of remote interviews in a big company?

The scamming is unbelievable. I've personally seen outright fraud... the guy
in the video was a redhead with freckles, his name was an ethnic Vietnamese.
Somehow they brought him in for an in-person interview, a Vietnamese dude
shows up.

\- Clueless. Guy was literally reading a manual.

\- One guy offered me a bribe.

\- one guy asked if his status as an illegal and conviction for hacking a
phone company back home would effect things.

~~~
draw_down
I can believe a company has their reasons for doing this. I also think they
can kiss my ass if they expect me to agree to this.

------
arh68
A firm similar to Proctorio, HireSuccess, says this on their website:

> _Hire Success does not offer nor provide any option where an Applicant is
> required to submit a photograph or video response to questions because we
> believe it violates EEOC Guidelines._

I wonder how Proctorio + Amazon reconcile that viewpoint.

Furthermore, if you read the EEOC, some of Proctorio's questions seem to
really push the rule: _If an employer requires job applicants to take a test,
the test must be necessary and related to the job_. How is 27:24::64:X related
to the job, again?

[0] [http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-
legal/](http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal/)

[1]
[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm)

~~~
kevingranade
On one hand, I would _LOVE_ for all interview processes to be annonymized, as
I think this is the only way for them to be truly
gender/ethnicity/religion/age/etc neutral.

On the other hand, if submitting a photograph or video of the applicant
violated EEOC Guidelines, in-house interviews, which are the vast majority of
interviews, would also be in violation, so this is an untenable position
relative to the status quo.

Setting aside their predictive power, questions related to logical reasoning
are most definitely job-related in an interview process for a technical
position that explicitly requires logical and deductive reasoning skills.

------
reacharavindh
I find this funny, stupid and creepy at the same time.

Creepy - recording a dude's facial reactions, eye movements, mouth movements..
All this for a remote interview screening?

Stupid - I believe quickly Googling for some documentation, or even better
solutions can save loads of a developer time in this day and age with
StackOverflow. I would instead consider a person that was smart enough to
cheat in a code test like this as a great choice. This reminds me so much of
schooling system in India where the kid who memorizes essays verbatim scores
higher than the kid who actually understood it and reproduced in own words.

Funny - Did they really think no one would object to this and post this on
social media or HN?

My current manager who hired me right out of Grad school tells me, "Interview
is a two-way process. A candidate need to be tested whether is talented and is
a good fit for the team. Equally importantly, the candidate should be sold on
the idea of working for us(company)."

On that case, Amazon has even tougher job of convincing a candidate. Not all
sane people would want to work for above average pay while putting up with
ridiculous work pressure [thinking about that guy who jumped off of Amazon
work place].

[1] - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-
wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-
off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff)

~~~
reacharavindh
On the other hand, if they were really looking for compliant, obedient, and
desperate candidate who are "good enough", then I think this screening is a
job well done!

------
iamleppert
Why would anyone want to ever work for Amazon? Their culture is terrible and
they are not innovative despite their claims to the contrary. They are simply
a technical sweat shop that tries a lot of random things.

There's more to life than working for a big tech company. Big tech companies
are the worst. If you value your life and you're a creative person and good at
what you do, find yourself a (good) medium size company that pays well.

They're out there.

~~~
perryh2
Some people don't have the privilege of working anywhere other than big
companies. They're completely fine at big companies and can overlook seemingly
terrible culture because they can get immigration visas and green cards. Most
startups and medium-sized software companies don't even consider applicants
that aren't American. I don't have an American last name and the first
question many recruiters ask me is about my citizenship.

~~~
abc_lisper
> Most startups and medium-sized software companies don't even consider
> applicants that aren't American.

Not true! atleast not in bay area. I have worked for many years on H-1 here,
along with others on the same visa.

------
drubio
As much as I would like to bash Amazon for their draconian and insane
interview loops -- which I've been put through once.

The post clearly states these clauses were part of an exam taken on
[https://proctorio.com/](https://proctorio.com/) for the Amazon interview. So
it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses.

I would happily bash Amazon interview loops all day long, but in this
particular case, I would also need to criticize anyone else that uses
[https://proctorio.com/](https://proctorio.com/) for these practices.

~~~
kafkaesq
_So it 's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses._

By all accounts, Amazon is a pretty tightly-run organization. And given the
scale of the hiring they do, you be pretty sure that in fact, yes they are
exactly aware of what proctorio is doing -- and chose them for precisely that
reason.

~~~
jasoncchild
Both of these points are conjecture

~~~
kafkaesq
"Both" as in yours and mine, agreed.

------
quantumtremor
Reiterating the questions posed at the end,

To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software)
engineer should work? What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and
needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)?

It is true that it'd be pretty easy to circumvent the tracking, by placing
paper over the webcam, running the browser in a virtual machine, spoofing data
to the browser, and so on. However these are infeasible for most non-technical
people, so I don't think it's a real solution. Freedom shouldn't be only for
those with extremely technical knowledge.

~~~
jellicle
Well, obviously putting paper over the webcam would result in a FAIL grade for
the test, so it's hardly that easy.

Maybe you could record yourself staring intently at the screen and play that
back to the webcam during the exam.

~~~
walrus01
What happens if you have an old laptop like a Thinkpad T60 that doesn't have a
camera?

~~~
spc476
Or a desktop computer sans camera?

------
c3534l
I don't really care much about amazon because I hear they monopolize your life
and have an aggressive culture. However, I do like me some puzzles:

1\. The passage is about the good and bad of fanfiction which is posted on the
internet. I pedantically disagree with the exact reading of response 2, but
it's the correct one, I believe.

2\. Only conclusion 1 is necessarily true, because of the transitive property
of inequalities; X ? Y and Z/Y can be rewritten as X < Y <= Z. However, we
cannot relate any magnitude information to V and it is not necessarily true
that a number becomes larger when multiplied by another number (if we assume X
is zero and V is positive, for instance).

3\. These kinds of spot-the-pattern questions are incredibly arbitrary.
However, the most obvious thing to associate with the alphabet is a numerical
association with the letters based on it's placement in the common (but not
universal) ordering of the Latin alphabet. When you do that, you see that UVS
is the only sequence of letters that aren't "descending" even though letters
can't truly be ordered.

4\. The No Free Lunch Theorem says that no statistical method can find a
pattern on the set of all possible inputs, which is why these questions are
all bullshit, mathematically speaking. The only thing that makes 4 a better
next step for the sequence 1, 2, 3, is that our own personal experience tells
us that counting is fairly common, but enumerating the squarefree numbers
isn't. You could also make the case that 27:24 has the pattern of 3^3:3^3-3,
so maybe 64:x is 4^3:4^3-4 making it 60, but this doesn't feel in any way
obvious to me, so I have no idea what they're thinking.

~~~
uiri
> 2\. Only conclusion 1 is necessarily true, because of the transitive
> property of inequalities; X ? Y and Z/Y can be rewritten as X < Y <= Z.
> However, we cannot relate any magnitude information to V and it is not
> necessarily true that a number becomes larger when multiplied by another
> number (if we assume X is zero and V is positive, for instance).

It says that the product of X and V is greater than or equal to the sum of X
and V. Conclusion 2 is that the sum of X and V is less than the product of X
and V. How could the latter claim be false if the former premise is true?

I agree with you on 4 and came to it another way: 3^3 : 3 * (3-1) * (3+1) ::
4^3 : 4 * (4-1) * (4+1)

4 * 3 = 12 * 5 = 60

~~~
c3534l
> It says that the product of X and V is greater than or equal to the sum of X
> and V. Conclusion 2 is that the sum of X and V is less than the product of X
> and V. How could the latter claim be false if the former premise is true?

Suppose X is 0 and V is 0. The product of X and V is 0 which is indeed less
than or equal to 0 - 0 = 0. Substituting V and X both for zero in (V - X) < (V
* X) gives us (0 - 0) < (0 * 0) which simplifies to 0 < 0, which is false.

------
joncp
This is Amazon, which is known to be one of the least ethical dev shops
around. I'm terribly unsurprised by this.

~~~
rtjs
Can you please give me some sources that explain how it is unethical? (I am
aware of the NYTimes article which explains how badly they treat their
employees, but that doesn't necessarily translate to unethical _development_.)
I ask because I am about to join them, so forewarned is forearmed.

~~~
abc_lisper
> I am about to join them, so forewarned is forearmed.

I didn't go there, but here's some i found on the net.
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home)

~~~
papaf
That's quite shocking. I saw this in the advice section:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/don-t-
acc...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/don-t-accept-your-
offer)

 _Please don 't accept your offer. PLEASE don't go there. Your brains will not
be wasted at Amazon, but your life will be. And no one will care._

------
geebee
I suppose this explains why some companies simply use universities to do their
filtering for them.

It's been a while since I took the GRE and LSAT, which I tutored for a while,
but they have questions much like the ones listed here. Some of these tests
take place on a computer now, others are still large proctored exams. I'm
pretty sure I was fingerprinted before taking them.

I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire,
which is why it's convenient to use universities. I'm not so cynical as to
believe that universities don't impart valuable knowledge and critical
thinking to some of their student. However, the quality of education doesn't
vary nearly as much as people claim between a very very elite university and a
strong state school.

The real value is largely in the filter, high standardized testing scores,
along with (at elite privates) a number of students admitted because they come
from powerful and wealthy families.

Supposedly research shows that people who post these kinds of numbers but
attend less prestigious universities do about as well as the people who post
these numbers and attend a prestigious university (I'm figuring this is
because they almost always attend a reasonably good university, and the
quality of teaching doesn't really drop off much).

Anyway, I think that companies can't ask for SAT scores, but maybe they can
just administer their own SAT? Having an outside company do this is probably
valuable from a liability point of view. My guess is that some kind of end-run
is going on here...

~~~
dragonwriter
> I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire,
> which is why it's convenient to use universities.

Any place where it would be illegal to use this kind of question (at least,
for anti-discrimination reasons) it would be illegal, on the same basis, to
use university background (or anything else) that acted as a proxy for the
same type of questions.

~~~
geebee
Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use
universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right?

I don't think it even needs to be quite that insidious, it can have that
effect even if the employers aren't consciously aware that this is what
they're doing.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially
> use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right?

Not really plausible deniability, but there is popular mythology about general
intelligence tests being illegal and not university background, while in
either case the rule is that if it disadvantages a protected class, it must be
demonstrably a valid predictive measure of job performance to be legal;
because of the popular mythology, people are probably more like to _challenge_
use of tests than use of university admissions, so using tests probably has
higher expected legal costs even when you are right, and greater chance of
getting sanctioned when you are wrong, because if people don't bother to
challenge it in the first place, there is no risk of sanctions.

OTOH, for the same reason, people actually _using_ tests are more likely to
actually be aware of and guided by the legal rules, so there are probably more
cases where university background is being used in an illegal way than is the
case for general intelligence tests.

------
mightybyte
I can somewhat understand this kind of crazy monitoring if the stakes are high
and the score on the test is the only or finally-deciding factor. But online
tests for interviewing candidates are never that. So in this case I don't
think this level of invasiveness is justifiable in the slightest. It's just a
screen. Cheaters will get filtered out at the next stage in the hiring
process.

------
brudgers
If nothing else, the requirements screen for people likely to accept similar
conditions in the workplace.

------
pfarnsworth
When I interview people, I give them a question and tell them to google
whatever they want and use whatever libraries they want that will make their
lives easier: I'm not asking a trick question.

Even then only about 15% of the people pass my question. I'm sure there are
plenty of fair interview questions you could ask where you don't have to care
about cheating, and just see if they can come up with an answer.

------
mbfg
Ok so lets say i get this job at Big Brother Amazon. They give me my first
assignment. I find a way to 'cheat' such that i finish the project in record
time and it is perfect. You don't want that?

What the hell does cheating mean in software development.

~~~
amzn-336495
> What the hell does cheating mean in software development.

Management. At Amazon there are literally thousands of managers that don't
know what the hell they are doing just waiting for you to code up something
they can take credit for and keep their jobs. They hired YOU to do a real
project that they can't cheat. If there was a cheat they would have already
done it or gotten one of Amazons 15,000 other devs to do it. If they hire you
its some combination of no one else can do it or no one better wants to expend
the effort in a long drawn out assignment with low payoff.

Lets say you are smarter than 15,000 other people and actually found a cheat.
Congratulations, that cheat is now the baseline expectations. You better have
more tricks up your sleeve.

------
randomuser9227
Other companies aren't so draconian, and don't tend to treat potential talent
so poorly.

[https://careers.mozilla.org/university/](https://careers.mozilla.org/university/)

~~~
avarun
It's been a month, haven't heard anything, and ended up having to accept a
different offer, so everywhere has their own problems.

------
scantronz
It's official. We now need burner laptops, TOR routing, secure enclaves,
faraday cages, and EM spectrum analyzers just to apply for jobs.

But serious question: Who's the fucked up creep that decided to sell this
idea? And who are the fucked up creeps that went along with it?

Why is this okay?

Have people lost their minds?

Whatever happened to Scantrons and a #2HB pencil?

------
thr0waway1239
I would love if someone built a Chrome extension which highlights comments
from folks self-identifying as working at the companies mentioned in the
story.

For one, the general radio silence around ethical issues from the same folks
who jump in with gusto on technical issues is both the most fascinating and
the most creepy thing I have seen recently, and I am guessing the signal
(people debating ethics) over noise (people debating technicals) ratio is low
when you consider the implications of people taking these things for granted.

I guess someone will be asking if the signal and noise should be the other way
around, given that HN is mainly for discussing technical issues. Maybe, but it
emboldens the general attitude from these folks, which I will sum up thus:

"We have more insight into this issue than you because we are on the inside.
We are probably smart enough to know what we are doing because we are working
at these companies in the first place. And no one really knows the answer to
these questions anyway, so what is the use discussing them endlessly?"

Another way to rephrase the above is: "We know what is best for you, and if
you are questioning this assumption, you are just hating".

This reminds me of Eric Schmidt's comment on privacy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew)

------
ausjke
I recently interviewed at amazon and was rejected, the reason I think is that
as a senior developer I should have picked up the coding books and do some
practices before the interview, for 5 coding questions I only made 4, I
misunderstood one of the requirements and failed that, still it's my fault.

What surprised me are two things:

1\. the hiring personnel emailed me a few times saying she will call me on the
results, it is a 1~2 minute call actually but it took her a few days calling
me back saying I was not selected, not sure why this practice is preferred and
I would appreciate a simple email or a quick call after the decision was made.

2\. more importantly, during the interview, I feel all of them(6 of them in
total) are reciting the amazon principles all the time, it made me feel the
employees are totally brain-washed, yes I understand company cultures and
such, but Amazon just made me feel weird, I somehow sense I'm talking with a
group of robots who all repeat the same "principles" with no soul, and they're
proud of that.

The second item made me concerned, honestly if I got an offer, I won't go
anyways.

------
rdtsc
Just a few days ago I did a fun and completely ridiculous exercise and
compared Amazon to a country, and then wanted to see how it would look like. I
ended up with Stalinism.

(I'll just paste it here and add some more to it):

* Personality cult: Bezos = Stalin

* You sing praises to the great leader: the 14 leadership principles.

* Officially they have a zero-tolerance policy for harshness. But I bet if anyone complains to HR they get sent to Siberia (i.e. put on performance improvement plan) or shot (terminated). [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-contacting-jeff)

* The top management is the Central Committee. They wield massive power. Officially it is a meritocracy but it is all about gaining favors with the ruling party.

* In the warehouses I hear they do these group exercises: Stalin loved public performances

* They like to monitor your microphone, eye, head, and mouth movements : NKVD (the secret police is watching you)

Who wants to add more?

~~~
CamperBob2
I wouldn't paint Amazon with that kind of brush, but you could make a good
case that old-school IBM worked that way. They even had a corporate anthem.

~~~
rdtsc
I think IBM would be more like GDR or the Brejnev era of Soviet Union.

Stalin was ruthless and the system also had this strong cult of personality.
Also loved slogans which have to be repeated and paid respect in public. But
also under him there was heavy industrialization so that is you know the
revenue generated if you wish.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Anyone who has seen Adam Curtis' documentary, "The Trap," will find this
familiar.

Our society has become so obsessed with quantification that we have become
blind to any other ways of understanding the world around us, and made us
poorer in our analysis, instead of being more informed with more information.

It is like saying that if something cannot be measured, then it does not
exist.

------
eykanal
Amazon - just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do
something.

Not to mention... this is just the _interview_. Imagine what it must be like
for the people who actually _work_ there.

------
ceejay
I think stuff like this is only acceptable, morally and perhaps legally, if
they tell you what they uncover / discover about you with this. That way we
can verify it's all above board.

Imagine they put the "eye movements / mouth movements / head movements"
through a machine learning system and discover that certain head movements
lead to poorer results (or maybe not poorer results, but slightly slower
results). Only it turns out these particular head movements, etc. are due to a
disability protected by the americans with disabilities act. They may not have
fed this into the system directly, but if the decision was made based solely
(or primarily) on these things, are they not breaking the law?

And how could it even be traced in this case if the person doesn't yet know
they are going to have said disability, but the ML algorithm somehow learned
that the person is likely to (for example) become deaf within the next few
years.

------
minimaxir
...so what is the answer to 27 : 24 :: 64 : ?

~~~
powercf
56.8…

Given that they've defined "::" differently to the usual "as" the answer could
be anything. More specifically, the answer is f(64), where f(x) is wharever
was in the head of the guy who made the question.

The same goes for the "what is the next number in this sequence" questions:
unknowable given the information provided.

~~~
userbinator
The answer is "x, such that x is an element of the set containing Everything."

But personally, if asked this question suddenly, I would've gone for the
simplest: 61, because 27 - 24 = 64 - 61.

------
downandout
I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone &
webcam. I realize this doesn't address the principle of the issue, but it does
address the practical issue of applying for the job without giving into much
of the creepiness here.

That said, with employees literally throwing themselves off of buildings to
get away from Amazon [1], I'm not sure how much nonsense I'd put up with to
get a job there anyway.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-
wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-
off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff)

~~~
Skuzzzy
>I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone &
webcam

It's required that you take the test with these enabled.

~~~
downandout
What if you don't have a webcam? Also, you could use one of the many webcam
emulators that let you use prerecorded video, such as ManyCam.

------
throwaway_amz
I took this test last month. Nobody is pointing this out but this is test is
here because Amazon is either lazy or don't care enough to create tests. They
reuse every single programming question in their interviews, online tests and
group assessments. This leads to high chances of people simply copying
readymade solution. The solution, it looks like, is to spy on everything you
do. It was pretty intrusive. The proctor closed all my tabs on all windows,
all the notepad/sticky notes, all windows, and background processes. (of
course people can just 'remember' solutions, but then they are also getting
fired is not too hard. )

------
dkarapetyan
Big company interview processes are great and by great I mean just terrible
and dehumanizing experiences. I applied to Amazon at some point and then
completely forgot about it. I hear back from them like 6 months later and in
that time I had interviewed at more than a dozen companies in the bay area
with much more pleasant interview processes.

The cycle times make no sense to me when it comes to big companies. I don't
know how Amazon hires and retains programmers.

------
ndesaulniers
You don't want to work at Amazon anyway

------
golergka
Unrelated to the main point of the post, but claims that math and logic
questions "have nothing to do with programming ability" are a little strange.

------
orange_county
People who are saying the webcam monitoring is a equivalent to spyware are
over-reacting. This is no different than an in-person interview.

I think if anything the logic portion is the biggest travesty here. It doesn't
have to do anything with programming and it boils down to a reading
comprehension test that does not bode well with non-native speakers. But I
guess that is there goal.

~~~
frakkingcylons
I took their online assessment. They also require you to use your webcam to
show them your desk and your entire room. Also, they required that I download
software so they could remotely control my laptop (via a remote desktop
application) and modify system settings and turn off background services.

------
tn13
As someone who has first hand experienced cheating in interviews I think this
is an extremely good move.

I know some people in bay area who are making > $100k in cash (no taxes paid)
just by answering screening interviews on other people's behalf.

This is called "interview by proxy" and the person generally takes first
month's salary as remuneration in cash.

~~~
pavlov
If an employer is so disorganized that this doesn't become obvious during the
first month of working there, they probably have much greater problems than
cheating on their idiotic cargo cult coding tests, and fixing the cheating
would do absolutely nothing to save the company.

~~~
andrewguenther
"this doesn't become obvious during the first month of working there"

This is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Do you know how difficult
it is to fire a person? Do you know how much it costs to hire someone? You've
given this person a relocation bonus, possibly put in the work to set up a
visa, given the first chunk of a signing bonus....

~~~
staticautomatic
I'm so tired of the assertion that it's "difficult" to fire someone, even
insofar as "difficult" means "HR won't allow it." HR's reasons are stupid,
particularly if you're in a so-called "right to work" state. I work on multi-
million dollar lawsuits for a living, and in every single employment suit I've
worked on involving an individual who was fired from a large organization,
that person had already been through some kind of PIP.

~~~
paulcole
How are you defining "right to work" in this context? I thought that had to do
with not requiring employees to join a labor union?

~~~
sbierwagen
When talking about employment law, "the right to work states" is often used as
a generic category used to refer to states with weak employee protections,
since the right to work states generally are also red states:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Right_to_Work_states.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Right_to_Work_states.svg)

~~~
paulcole
Can you find an example of where "right to work" is used as a generic category
instead of its actual meaning:

"Right-to-work laws are statutes in a reported 26 states in the United States
that are an effort to give employees the right to work without being required
or compelled to join to a union."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

------
throwawayosiu1
I did go through the entire process (3 tests in total, the first 2 were as he
mentioned and the final test was a couple of coding questions - pretty basic
stuff tbh)

However, I was disqualified for being out of the frame for less than a second
(I grabbed a bottle of water and it was a bit further from my laptop)

I don't mind getting disqualified but I'd have appreciated either of the
following:

    
    
      1. mentioning that you should be in the frame at all times (this was not mentioned what so ever)
    
      2. displaying the frame so you knew you were going out
    

Either one complements the other but there is no way to know what's being seen
from the camera apart from the fact that it's recording (based on the camera
light)

oh also, I think the author will have issues getting hired by Amazon again
(when I took the test, they made me accept an agreement that basically stated
that I could not share the questions with anyone - online or otherwise)

------
58028641
Running it in a VM can bypass/block most of those restrictions.

~~~
brianwawok
Or you know, having another computer? I literally have 12 computers or phones
in my house. Could I not use another one if I needed to cheat that badly?

~~~
runarb
They may catch you if they replay

* Your webcam video

* Your head movements

* Your eye movements

* Your mouth movements

that was all collected during the test.

~~~
58028641
Tape over the webcam. If they ask, just say you always gave tape over your
webcam for security reasons. You could also use a computer without a webcam.

~~~
antisthenes
That will probably result in an automatic fail.

------
throwbsidbdk
I can see why they might do this, anyone that can land a job with similar
benefits somewhere else probably doesn't even apply, leaving them with the
worst to choose from. Their climate gets even tougher because they "can't hire
enough good engineers" and the cycle repeats.

------
Jach
> To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software)
> engineer should work?

A significant one, surely.

> What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make
> rent/pay the bills/eat food)?

Look, sometimes you can compromise for practicality. But even then there's
pretty much always more than one option. Almost anyone can get a low wage job
at department store/grocery store/restaurant/whatever so they can eat, guilt-
free, and there are still degrees. You don't have to immediately go for the
extreme of selling your soul to the devil, you have other options. (To bring
it back to the concrete, especially as a tech intern; there are tons of
companies that aren't Amazon.)

------
_audakel
So I know this was posted a bit ago, but I feel like this would be kinda funny
to mess with. 1 - Can it detect covering the camera? If so does different
color coverings allow it to procede? If not I would put a funny video on my
phone and hook that in front of the video.

You could always just see how it is contacting your webcam and then just
change the stream of data to some other source that is not hte webcam

Mic -> maybe mess around with how it is contacting your mic and (ports? idk)
and load some really annoying music to pipe through to it.

Physical Locaiton -> do laptops have built in GPS or is it just off your ip
address? if so could you just use VPN? Have it come from like some random
place.

------
taesu
I'd be concerned about OP if he/she signed an NDA, but I guess he/she is
smarter than that.

I participated in the interview as well. 5 hour long face to face interview.
Hour each with 5 different engineers Did not get an offer.

------
Insanity
This is one of those cases where I am slightly appalled by the violations of
privacy, yet do kind of understand why they'd want to do this.

But as other's have pointed out, these are not restrictions from Amazon,
rather from the third-party they have decided to hire. I guess there might be
alternatives that could restrict some of the access that is not needed.

Either way, you need a way to determine who is playing fair and who is not.
Flying someone out for an on-campus interview will be significantly more
expensive (considering as well how many people apply), and there is only so
much you can achieve with a skype interview.

------
ssarker
I wanted to try the assessment, but when I got to install proctorio app, I see
that "This extension needs access to: All data on your computer and websites
you visit" I didn't wnt to have a extension knowing it supposedly needs access
to "All data on my computer". But did it anyway, as I wanted to try to get
this job. I hand issues and called. They took control of my machine and
restarted it with me doing anything. Not go to apply for this position or ever
take test using this proctor.io app.

------
gwbas1c
Interviews and recruiting is a two-way street. Legal / ethical or not, this
kind of lock down sends a "we don't trust you" message.

Why would you interview someone you don't trust?

------
pricj004
For anyone else curious, I got the following answers:

1) Fan fiction websites have pros and cons for the authors

2) Both the conclusions are true

3) UVS (the only one not in reverse alphabetical order)

4) 60 (because 3^3=27, 3^3-3=24, 4^4=64, 4^4-4=60)

~~~
throwaway012304
Here are my answers:

1) Some authors feel that they created a good story, but it is not appreciated
as much as the fan fiction versions.

2) Only conclusion 1 is true (assume X = 0, then conclusion 2 is false).

3) POM, the only one that doesn't have two consonants in a row.

4) 63, because it's always an even number and an odd number.

------
Arkaad
Seems like Amazon has trust issues.

------
freyir
I wouldn't say these tactics are good, but they're understandable. The issue
is cultural differences, where the pressure to succeed and a different value
system leads to people to gaming the system to succeed. The alternative is
hiring people who have used deceptive methods, rather than competence, to
succeed up to that point.

If companies hadn't been burned many times, they wouldn't resort to such
drastic measures.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Your eye movements

Presumably they have a cunning plan to use eye movements to decide which
candidates are better programmers because eye movements suffice to tell apart
the expert from the novices, in programming:

[http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/u...](http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9.pdf)

(...allegedly)

------
lambda_func
Absolute bullshit. All these tech companies are totally crazy about their
interview processes as if they are really working on ground breaking stuff.

------
fosco
I think I would be okay with this, if it was on their premises with their
computer. that being said, I find these practices repulsive. but I feel like
the SNL/west world skit. [0]

[0][https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-
coope...](https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-
cooper-360/3428579)

------
sintaxi
I would have assumed this is to test which applicants will stand up to
authority and anyone who goes along with it would be disqualified.

------
guelo
What's the privacy issue? If you go to an on-site interview they'll look you
write in the eyes and see your eye movements. They'll know where you are, if
you're browsing the web for some reason, etc. It's just a test they don't you
cheat on. Are you thinking they'll sell their interview data to advertisers?
Seems preposterous.

------
rdtsc
Let's say if this would not be just for interns but for everyone. Then there
would be this second order effect where they filter candidates who don't mind
this happening to them. If they keep at it long enough, they'll end up shaping
the culture of the company in a certain way. Which may not be the way they'd
want.

~~~
random_coder
Or Which may be exactly what they want.

------
gengkev
How is a Chrome extension able to detect what external monitors or running
applications there are on the system?

------
makmanalp
Wait, so is this kind of pre-interview multiple choice IQ test style thing
common now? In general or for amazon?

------
chucksmash
> (I'm not sure how this [accessing other tabs] works with Chrome's sandbox,
> though).

Just fine. The "tabs" permission is a blanket perm across all tabs in all
windows. Extensions run at a higher level of trust than Joe Random Blog's JS
and accordingly have access to more powerful APIs.

------
alon7
Why not agree with the terms and boot up an Ubuntu live CD, install chromium
and do the tests

That way they only get the microphone, webcam and physical location which is
annoying but not as worst

If you cancel the microphone and the webcam, will they still let you do the
test? What if I have a desktop computer with no webcam?

------
imgabe
Hmm could you just record a loop of you sitting motionless at your computer
and feed that to the camera input? Maybe some incredibly loud high pitched
noise to the audio?

Not suggesting these as feasible solutions, but something like this deserves
to be trolled.

~~~
dividuum
FaceRig
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/274920/))
seems fitting.

------
audleman
> To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software)
> engineer should work?

I believe you should use your personal code of ethics as a compass to guide
you in your life, including where you work.

> What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make
> rent/pay the bills/eat food)?

You're describing a clash of personal ethics and social ethics. Social ethics
are saying this kind of tracking is alright, your personal ethics no. So, how
strongly do you believe in your conviction? Would it be worth going hungry to
stand up for what you believe?

Sort of a sliding scale, huh? The more you are pushed towards survival, the
less options you have to exercise your personal ethics. On the other hand,
maybe this point isn't as important as it seemed at first thought and you'll
decide you're willing to be subjected to monitoring for the duration of the
test (but not before or after of course)

~~~
hermitdev
> "I believe you should use your personal code of ethics as a compass to guide
> you in your life, including where you work."

My first full-time job, I encountered this. I was less than a week away from
quitting because of ethical concerns, and my boss got fired first. After that,
I decided to give the company a chance, and I ended up being there for +9
years (was at a hedge fund).

I guess my advice is: are the ethics violations due to the company or your
manager. If company, leave. If manager, report the violation. If no response,
or retribution, leave. I held my manager's ethics violations in for ~6 months
and it took an emotional toll. Not worth it. What he'd asked me to do was
illegal and if I'd done it and been caught, I would have gone to jail. Fuck
that, turn them in immediately.

------
debt
i was wondering why facebook and google acquired eye tracking companies.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-
tracking-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-tracking-
startup-gazehawk/)

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-
eye...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye-tracking-
startup/)

------
Robadob
They sometimes use a similar locked down browser (respondus) for in class
assessments at my university. Never used it myself, so not sure how similarly
fine grained any tracking is.

------
sliken
Looks like there's a market for software that contains the browser/OS in a VM
and allows feeding in your own audio/video feed.

------
Tempest1981
Does Proctorio have some automated way to analyze the user's hand/mouth/eye
movements, and spot unusual activity?

------
monksy
That's tempting to apply just to take the test without any pants on and
automate a porn browsing script in the background.

------
grogenaut
I've stated this nested in the comments but I'll leave it at the top too.

THE INTERNSHIP IS THE INTERVIEW.

These are just screenings.

------
woodcut
I think the irony is 'proctology' is the branch of medicine concerned with
inspecting the anus.

------
daodedickinson
If I ever decide to stop being a human being and start being a lab rat I know
I have plenty of options.

------
rajacombinator
Pretty cringeworthy, yet no surprise for a shop that's known to be a gulag.

------
wutf
It's an IQ test.

------
canacrypto
Though I agree these requirements are unacceptable, I'd like to point out that
you've refused on grounds of privacy infringement and then leaked Amazon's
private information.

~~~
spc476
Unless he signed an NDA prior to this, I don't see an issue.

------
known
Amazon hires highly skilled
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slaves)

------
bobbybidon
You should have done the test in a virtual machine and disabled some features
(cam, microphone) and record the screen (outside the virtual machine
obiviously).

------
skynetv2
Most online exams require these permissions to make sure you're not cheating.
No big deal. It's not as sensational as author made it to be.

------
ledriveby
How the hell can it record other websites and the entire screen? Neither of
those things are accessible to standard Web technologies.

~~~
kardos
It doesn't have to, you just have to believe it does...

------
estomagordo
Sounds like sour grapes to me.

------
ytwwaarmozhanoa
I recently accepted a position at Amazon (have not started working there yet)
and I have a similar experience.

The first part of the interview was exactly like the linked experience. No
coding questions just reasoning. The second part I had to use ProctorU instead
of Proctorio. Personally I thought the experience was super weird but
understandable, I'll get to that later, somebody watched me through my webcam
the entire time with my microphone on. They needed to check my ID before the
test. They needed me to show them the entire room I was in (which was my
bedroom). My desktop computer was on behind my laptop so I turned off my
computer (I don't remember if I offered to or if they asked me to) but they
also asked me to cover my monitors up with something which I thought was silly
after I turned them off so I covered them with a towel. They then used LogMeIn
to remote into my machine so they could check running programs. I quit all my
personal chat programs and pretty much only had the Chrome window running.

The proctored section involved a work simulation and coding questions. Before
the coding section started they opened up the Java 7 and 8 docs, C++ docs, and
an online calculator in my browser so I could use those for reference. I could
take a break in between the two parts but I didn't need to. In total it took
about 3 hours for me to finish everything but they said to block out 4 hours.
After that I got an offer.

I didn't talk a real person who actually worked at Amazon (by email or through
webcam) until I received an offer.

I can understand why people would be bothered or disturbed by these practices
but I just thought that Amazon has a ton of applicants and it would take more
time for engineers to talk to applicants. In total it took about a month from
when I first applied to when I got an offer. I was then flown out to visit
Amazon (not for more interviews because I already had an offer) and I actually
got a chance to talk to people and learn about teams and ask questions. Yes, I
asked multiple different people about Amazon's problems and they all said that
their personal experience has been fine but a few said that they know of
people who have had bad experiences. Seems like it's dependent on your
manager. I know somebody who works there now (not in engineering but works in
Seattle) and they love it. I found a team I liked, I talked to people who
worked on the team and they all greatly enjoyed it so I accepted after my
visit. Everyone who I talked to seemed very passionate about what they do and
all take ownership over their projects.

I also applied to other large companies at the same time as Amazon (Google,
Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter). Microsoft and Facebook haven't sent me
anything. There was a mixup with Google's emails so that delayed my interview
process but by the time I started talking to them I had already pretty much
made my mind up about Amazon. I didn't go through any real interview rounds
with Google, just preliminary screening questions. Twitter sent me a coding
challenge but their email also said that they wouldn't get back to people
until mid December.

------
wheelerwj
just in case:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/a...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/amazon-
interview-experience/)

------
77pt77
What's stopping someone from running this inside a VirtualBox for example?

------
ssarker
.

------
jghn
Will they be tracking my middle finger?

------
Crito
> _" Hopefully these should convince you that this test has absolutely nothing
> to do with programming skill."_

It's a rather blatant IQ test, though of course they would never call it that
because that would open them up to disparate impact lawsuits.

------
draw_down
I guess they have interesting problems to work on but I can't believe people
work there. Hell no. (Not just this, I also know people who have worked there)

------
Cozumel
'However these are infeasible for most non-technical people'

Most non-technical people wouldn't be applying for a software internship at
Amazon!

------
wcummings
This is fucking psychotic, I will never work for Amazon.

------
wheelerwj
ahahahahahah says the guy who works at amazon.

Of course you're going to try and justify it.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076359)
and marked it off-topic.

------
na85
That is absolutely draconian.

------
Skuzzzy
Test

------
iliveinseattle
feels like this person is overreacting. You should also not be sharing any
questions that were asked.

~~~
kafkaesq
No, it feels like Amazon is over-reacting, and unduly distrustful of the
bright young people who would wager their careers and reputations to come work
for them.

~~~
andrewguenther
Cheating in interviews is real and shockingly common. I don't think this is as
much of an overreaction as you think it is.

~~~
kafkaesq
I'm not saying that there's no "benefit" to these restrictions. It's just that
(1) they address problems that can be easily solved otherwise, and (2) they
come with _substantial_ negative side effects -- like turning away any
candidates with a shred of self-respect and/or some notion of their true worth
(even as a fresh engineering grad) on the open market.

~~~
andrewguenther
"turning away any candidates with a shred of self-respect and/or some notion
of their true worth"

Given that this thread seems to be fairly split on this issue (at least at the
time I'm writing this) this seems like a bit unfair to say. Personally, I
wouldn't give a shit, and I like to think that I have at least _some_ self-
respect.

