
How I got hired by Amazon.com - acangiano
http://www.brunozzi.com/en/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/
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simonebrunozzi
Hi guys, this is Simone Brunozzi, the "new hire" at Amazon.com. Second Life is
not the new holy grail, I just said that it was a key factor for me. Second
Life is still in its infancy, and it's useful only in specific situations. I
consider evangelists very important for an organization such as Amazon. They
don't have an explicit position on Second Life, though. Best,

~~~
davidw
Hi, one thing that I might take issue with is this:

> poorly developed nation from a technological point of view.

There are tons of bright hackers in Italy, in my experience, and in various
fields, there is good tech that comes out of Italy. The problems are political
and economical in nature, in my opinion - the technology is there, it's just
not utilized well because of all the crap that happens politically. As one
small example, it between "capital requirements", and all the fees, it
probably costs something like 10000 Euro to create an SrL (limited liability
company), whereas in my home state of Oregon, I managed to create one for a
little over 100 dollars. I'm sure you know all this, but many people don't
realize how many smart, entrepreneurial people there are in Italy, and only
see the results of years of bad policy decisions.

Complimenti, in ogni caso:-) Leaving Perugia wouldn't be an easy decision for
anyone - I think that area is one of the most beautiful that I've ever seen,
anywhere.

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randy
Is it just me, or does anyone else find 14 interviews (11 on site, 3 phone;
one more if you count the fair) a bit ridiculous? I mean I know people are the
most important thing and you have to make smart choices but damn!

~~~
timr
Yes.

One the one hand, companies like Amazon whine (to whichever politician is
listening) that there's a desperate shortage of skilled technical people. On
the other hand, they subject new hires to 14 interviews.

Tell me: is this the sort of thing you do when you're in desperate need of
employees?

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kirubakaran
Are you proposing that they lower the standards?

~~~
timr
What standards? This is just geek chest-thumping, and has little mathematical
justification.

Let's assume that your interviewers are uniformly _exceptionally_ good, and
have a false-negative rate of only 10% (i.e. 90% of all good applicants are
accepted).

An interview with a good candidate is therefore a Bernoulli trial, and the
outcome of an interview loop can be modeled exactly as a binomial process. If
you conduct 5 interviews, the probability of at least one interviewer saying
no to a good candidate is 0.41. If you conduct _fourteen_ interviews, the
probability of at least one false negative is 0.77, and the probability of at
least _two_ false negatives is 0.42. In other words...you've made it twice as
likely that you're going to have someone falsely reject a good candidate.

Meanwhile, let's assume that these unrealistically brilliant interviewers are
even better at rejecting bad applicants: they each have a false-positive rate
of 5% (and therefore, a true negative rate of 95%). If we assume a five-
interviewer loop, the chance of a single false positive is 0.23. But bumping
the number of interviewers to fourteen _raises_ the chance of a false-positive
to 0.51! With fourteen interviewers, the chance that one will say "Hire" to a
bad applicant is over 50%!

In other words, with every interviewer you add to a loop, you raise the
chances of a false-positive or (even more likely) a false negative decision.
If you have normal interviewers (i.e. people who don't have super-human
discriminatory ability), the problem is even more pronounced.

~~~
mattj
Problem - 1 false negative or 1 false positive isn't usually a problem.
Generally, if you have this many interviews you have some sort of voting
system. Let's say it's consensus - then 1 false negative will disqualify some
good people, but you'd need 14 false positives, you have a (0.1)^14 chance of
hiring a bad person. Expected number of interviews in which you would see this
happen once? 10^14

But, you may ask, what about the case where they should be rejected, 8-6
(assuming majority voting not consensus, but you could apply this to any
voting threshold), and you have two false positives and 0 false negatives, is
it really that horrible that you might experience the borderline case where
you hire someone who might be mediocre, assuming everyone else is pretty good?

Yeah, there is a good chance you'll makes some individual mistakes. But having
lots of interviews decreases the probability of making those mistakes
frequently enough to actually influence the outcome.

Hate to say it, but your "mathematical justification" is really just another
example of geek chest-thumping.

~~~
timr
Well, obviously, you can keep your false-positive rate low by requiring
absolute consensus. If you require _fourteen different people_ to agree on
every hire, then you're not likely to hire any bad people....you're also not
likely to hire anyone at all.

Your second argument is more reasonable: if you stick to strict majority-rule
voting, it's true that you're less likely to get a false-negative result with
a larger number of voters. (You'll also increase the number of false-positive
results). Problem is, nobody actually _does_ it that way. Most hiring managers
are trying to keep the false-positive rate low, and tending toward consensus.
Thus, random false-negatives have quite a bit of impact -- one or two "no-
hire" votes are enough to torpedo a candidate at places like Amazon, Microsoft
and Google.

Clearly, when you do enough interviews, you start to expect "no-hire" votes,
just due to chance. You can claim that this is good for the company, but like
I said before...these companies do a lot of complaining that they can't find
"qualified" applicants. Perhaps if they re-thought screening processes that
involved dozens of interviews, they might find that the qualified applicants
were there all along.

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brooksbp
To be completely honest... that lost a ton of integrity as soon as I read "I
showed up at the Amazon.com’s booth, with my well-dressed and custom-skinned
avatar which, as a bonus, has my same name, Simone Brunozzi (don’t ask me how
I got it because it’s a secret)."

Cmon now... what is this virtual ^&*#$@! coming to? Really Amazon.com?
Really??

Edit: Not only that... but look at the view from his office... I'm practically
speachless at how BS not only that job position and article, but Amazon.com's
participation and movement in that direction is...

~~~
acangiano
Does it really matter if they find the right candidate through Monster.com, on
SL or while they're shopping at Costco?

~~~
brooksbp
Nope, not at all. The reason why I am slightly offended is that people are
treating "virtual interviews" with the same seriousness as traditional, face-
to-face interviews. There will be no substitute for real human, spoken, face-
to-face interviews; more to take out of a person like body language and
emotion. Human collaboration within a close environment is crucial to most
aspects of business and production. It is nothing more than silly for an
individual to feel accomplishment from a job interview via SecondLife; feeling
successful, bypassing face-to-face interaction. Though, I feel this position
might seem too harsh.

~~~
whatusername
Where does it treat them with the same seriousness?

To me the initial SL component was just a screening / outreach process -
finding them someone they wouldn't have otherwise found.

He then had 11 face-to-face interviews (in two different countries) totalling
9.5 hours of face-to-face time..

How was this "bypassing face-to-face interaction"?

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sealedidentity
Bravo. Well done with the interviews and the tips to new grads and
interviewees. Perseverence and studied methods to distinguish oneself from the
crowds is the way to land any job. I'm glad he found a job of his liking in a
great location.

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ojbyrne
I'm guessing that's not going to be the best job ever. Maybe it's Second Life
stigma, but I don't think so.

~~~
jeffbarr
Actually, it _will_ be the best job ever. Technical Evangelism is impactful,
fun, and all-consuming and I would be happy to tell you more off-line.

As Simone's new manager I am happy that we were able to find such a talented
person using Second Life as our first point of contact.I am also happy to know
that he has experience and interest in leading-edge technologies.

Hiring great people is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. You have to
find them, screen the resumes, conduct phone screens, and ultimately meet them
in person. If there's a way to use an advanced technology to optimize and
reduce the time and expense involved, then what's the problem?

~~~
edw519
"I would be happy to tell you more off-line"

I would be happy to hear more off-line. My email address in is my profile.

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edw519
Sometimes it takes someone's ESL to get the best bulletin board material:

"if you work hard for something, in the moment you stand in front of your
challenges you’ll feel stronger than ever"

Bravo!

I'd wish you luck, Simone, but no need. Looks like you already know how to
make your own.

