Something I'd like to see massive companies do to is offer lower skilled internships. I had a tough time convincing anyone to hire me coming out of a bootcamp, and I saw a lot of other people in similar situations- even people who I know are much better developers than I am. Internships also tend to require someone to be enrolled in an accredited institution. Offering a simple coding test and a small stipend seems like it would be pretty low risk for a company that has the cash and manpower to run a program like this. Large companies seen uniquely positioned to be able to try something of this size.
There should be a medical residency-style job matching algorithm. Most jobs are way more fungible across companies than corporations would like to think. If a graduate would be almost equally ecstatic to work as an SE-1 at Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, etc...why should they have to apply to each one independently? Of course, the applicant would rank them by preference. If none of them want the applicant, he/she would "drop" to less sought after firms.
Companies on the platform would agree on certain tests the applicant would need to take, and at which institution. They would also agree on the information they all want (in a common app). Interviews would play little to no role in the process, since only technical interviews offer any marginal value according to emprical evidence. If social skills are important, they can be included in an empirically proven test of social skills. Imagine a VR simulation where you are grouped with other applicants, and ML algos are fed dozens of inputs based on your interactions in the simulated environment. Human testmasters can still have input into the process, delivering guided exercises, looking out for algo-hacking, interacting with test-takers, and weeding out anomalies.
From my experience with friends going through the residency match, more people end up unhappy or mediocre about their match rather than happy. I say this as the partner of someone who matched at their number one choice. The day was defined for me by how I felt for all of our friends who didn't end up at their number one (or 2nd-5th choice) and ended up feeling somewhat broken.
I can't assess that analogy without knowing what your friends were dissatisfied with. Was it because they ended up in a different state away from their family? Was it because their coworkers were worse than they expected? Etc...some problems will always exist, regardless of the matching modality. Additionally, people always want more. They often think they can get better when they get exactly what they deserve, along reasonably objective measures of assessment. Lastly, there is selection bias in who you hear from. All the residency announcements I see on Facebook are wildly happy, with exclamation marks and all. I won't conclude from that that everyone is happy with their match, just like I don't believe the reverse.
Increasing matching efficiency reduces transaction costs. Those costs are huge, and they lower our quality of life and the dynamism of our economy.
Our financial markets are very liquid most of the time. An underappreciated fact is that the aforementioned liquidity increases investment and keeps America on top of the world. Our labor markets aren't nearly as liquid. That is why there is a disconnect between how well corporations are doing and how well employees are doing. Both people and corporations would be better off if our labor markets were more liquid. We currently don't have the tools to make that happen. However, they are easy to create. They just need widespread buy-in and agreement on the core problem of inefficient matching in the labor markets.
Think of all the people who would have benefited from internships they never got and better jobs that they never applied for. If they got those internships and got those jobs, not only would they benefit, the whole country would benefit. It is in our collective interest to 1. keep people employed 2. at the best job at the best company 3. that is equal in quality to the person's qualifications. You can bring up the fuzziness and subjectiveness of qualifications and job quality, but let's be real. We all know who from our graduating class can get a job at an SP500 company and who can get a job at a Russell 2000 company. Both would benefit from a common app-style job application for different reasons. Let's stop pretending otherwise, because that hinders innovation and keeps us in the unsatisfactory status quo.
All of the residency announcements I saw on Facebook were also wildly happy, but I know for a fact that some of the people who posted those were literally in tears before that and put themselves together to post a "happy" announcement. Personally, I like the idea of having the option to choose whether or not to accept an offer.
I'm not so sold on the idea that a match system will improve labor liquidity. How do you negotiate wages? Medical residents are stuck with the salary of the site that they matched at. When you enter the match, you cannot simply choose not to accept the job "offer" you are given.
I just don't think the cost/benefit is there. These people would take more training (more time of "more skilled" engineers"). They already have way too many competent applicants for the "more skilled" internships.
Internships are more about fostering talent than making money off of intern labor. It makes sense to have something at the start of the talent pipe as well as towards the end of it.
AWS does have lower skilled internships; at least certain populations. At least in Premium Support. For example, AWS has a program while they'll take military vets and teach them the tech to work in Premium Support.
And then once you have your foot in the door at Amazon, there's a host of programs that will teach you to code and become an SDE. I even knew a guy who worked in a warehouse that was using internal programs to become an SDE.
> Something I'd like to see massive companies do too is offer lower skilled internships.
or how about train? companies are part of the problem they complain about. companies do not value onboarding or training their own workforce. training smart people on the job is the best way to ensure success for both the company and the individual.
if these companies are so advanced and full of smart people and apparently think they know something about education, you think hiring would be much easier if they adjusted their hiring instead of looking for people that are carbon copies of themselves.
If this course doesn't focus almost entirely on leetcode style problems, than it's pretty bunk for actually getting into Amazon.
Amazon's OA is significantly worse than even it's big competitors regarding the required leetcode grind. I don't think there's a Software Engineer who was hired in the last several years at Amazon who wasn't grilled on a few leetcode medium (and likely, a hard or two) style problems.
Moreover, if you're good enough to get into Amazon and deal with it's reputation for horrible WLB, back-stabbing and political culture, bad pay (for a "FAANG"), horrible vesting, mediocre benefits, and working for a literal vampire, than you can (and should) go work for one of it's competitors who will pay you and treat you strictly better. Microsoft, Google, Apple, the unicorns, and even Oracle OCI all fit the bill. Microsoft will give you easier leetcode questions and a 20 hour work week. Oracle OCI certainly will pay you better (their whole schtick is to poach Amazon Employees for their own cloud).
Amazon is rightfully shamed as being "not good enough to stay in the FAANG" because they treat their engineers so badly. I guess the only reason to work for them is that they need a lot of Java devs for AWS and many places are slowly abandoning Java - but even then - there are so many java shops around still that you shouldn't have trouble finding work.
I suppose COVID may change things a bit but we should be telling aspiring engineers the truth about Amazon.
Well... one of two things is true: that's either possible, or it's impossible. If it's possible, then no amount of us being upset or disappointed in it is going to change things - we'll be the last generation of well-compensated programmers, and probably the last generation or programmers who don't do that job while studying for a "better" job on the side. If it's impossible, they'll continue to smash things and thrash around like a bull in a china shop, leaving devastation and destruction in their wake as they demand to have their way for decades and centuries to come, making our lives miserable the whole time (or they'll come to their senses and realize they were being unreasonable, but my money is on the former).
Agreed. If we flood the market with programmers, the bar will most likely be raised... or salaries will simply decrease. To be clear, I still agree with teaching STEM as much as possible and bringing on the flood.
their comment was in no way "nasty", it's a bit of a sideways comment to imply so, and you are completely ignoring the real motivation behind something like this and the problems with company's complaints on having a supposed shortage of STEM candidates.
the whole STEM "crisis" is born out of companies wanting people already trained to do the job they want them to do rather than training them. and more specifically, companies want software engineers already trained specifically how they want.
movements like this have had a detrimental effect on other roles that society needs. so yes, someone is offering free educational resources, but that someone is a massive multinational corporation whose scale drives them to seek benefits from society, and not the other way around. and amazon's size and influence yields them a lot of power. there is also a larger societal problem in that we cannot solve humanity's problems through technology alone, which STEM efforts completely ignore.
It just means to prepare. Someone decided to use the word to mean "to prepare: minors for sex when they are older". Obviously this second definition came later.
I don't think so - they're saying you could work for them if you wanted to and it's an achievable goal. For a lot of people the idea of working at somewhere like Amazon probably seems an insurmountable challenge if they don't have access to quality education. Try to see the good in things and not be a cynic.
I helped a friend out with his Amazon application. I had never applied for a position there before. I thought I was a competent engineer, but their questions were crazy and made me realize that there's a lot I still have to learn.
I don't see anything wrong with the title. It's a harder interview than most.
And so you believe web developers are like the paragon of critical thinkers this country really needs a massive influx of?
You know a vast majority of us can’t critically think our way out of using cookie cutter bleeding edge stacks right? Frontend development alone is chock full of people that use flavor of the month tech without critically thinking about why. We are not this elite group of critical thinkers just because we do a perceived ancillary “science” related profession (as in it’s not related to science at all, it’s just technical).
I do not believe web developers are the paragon of critical thinking. The state of web dev tech stacks is a total shit show, and I'm glad to be no part of it.
That’s sort of my point. I am of the web developer tribe, and I am suggesting we are no better at this critical thinking stuff than any other group. We have tons of our own idiosyncrasies. Creating more of us isn’t the solution (just go make more of those computer people, they are pretty smart! - not exactly :p)
This whole thing is interesting to me because denial is inherently a form of critical thought. Whereas to simply agree with whatever authorities are around you don't need to think critically at all.
Any group of "deniers" is naturally going to have more critical thinkers than a group that would use the term "denier" for those who disagree.
Man, let me introduce you to Roswell truthers, 911 conspiracy theorist, racists, cryptonazis, biblical biologists/geogrpahists, phrenologists, freudians, climate-change-is fake theorists, anti-vax activists, and flat earthers.
All of them have deniers, and that is the core function. When your core critical thought relies on denial of all evidence or outside data 'my falsehood is as good as your truth' then it isn't critical anymore.
But it looks like critical thinking. Often with an elaborate scientific pantomime built around it.
One of the hardest of modern things is separating the mimes from practicioners. You cannot have sufficient knowledge or reasoning in most domains, the language is tricky, and there are liars, unknowing mimes, and bad actors everywhere. And our brains are actively working against us much of the time.
The underlying issue with those people is the unhealthy focus on cultivating a personal identity. You’re right, this stops all critical thinking. This can be true for say, I don’t know, a self built ‘modern developer’ identity, one who fashions herself a meetup-attending, tensorflow hacking, data science following, kubernetes using, graphql building, etc.
Once you commit to these identities, you’re fucked. The conspiracy theorist will never think critically, and neither will this developer as they are too invested in keeping up the image. The conspiracy theorist is just gonna deny everything and apply some theory to it, and the developer will suffer similar patterns.
Anyway, back to my original point. Don’t think technical people are not susceptible to the same shit most of the society is susceptible to. Our profession doesn’t better create critical thinkers.
"History is written by the victors" is not merely for the physical but for memes as well. The only alternative histories that remain must be the ones most open to ridicule for our enjoyment _and_ initiation. Initiation is much easier when the only alternative narrative is literally insane.
In many 'conspiracy theories' there are often curiosities, contradictions, or straight up open questions.
Roswell was an actual conspiracy to hide Project Mogul. [1] The US government conspired and lied to convince the public it was just a 'weather balloon', when it was very obviously something else to witnesses. This truth was only revealed to the public (relatively) recently.
Your other examples are very current and are politically difficult if not dangerous to address with an open mind. Would you allow someone to challenge any of your _beliefs_ on racism, nazism, climate-change, vaccines, etc?
I'll give some examples of wrongthink questions: "What other pogroms did Zionists instigate? [2][3][4]", "Was Stalin the real 'Hitler'?", "Other than Katyn, what else did USSR try to pin on Hitler?". "How could there have been _no_ atrocity propaganda during WW2? [5]". These questions (and more!) might make you a racist anti-semitic nazi sympathizer.
Does anyone remember vaccine enhanced RSV? Nope, lol crazy anti-vaxers with crazy theories of government mind-control or something.
That's lacking in critical thought. A denier isn't necessarily a denier because they contest common wisdom. They may easily be deniers simply because they have other authorities they adhere to more.
And why do you think a free curriculum of abstract CS concepts from a self-interested megacorp is going to change that?
How does that improve critical thinking among people compared to say, education about a country's history, governance structure, civil rights and legal system?
Frankly, reading HN comments on stories that aren't purely tech-related reflects something completely opposite to critical thinking; often the conversation is just variations of "I could build a software that solves this over a weekend".
STEM programs seek to eradicate disciplines more associated with deep thinking: physics, mathematics, philosophy, history, literature, other arts, design, etc. STEM programs seek to entice people to become a software commodity. that's it.
Maybe you might remember from your CS education (if you took one) how about 1/3rd of your coursework had to be outside of your major and you most likely had to take within your major some "Scientific Writing" or "Scientific Communication" classes.
It's not the schools fault that you didn't get a minor in Philosophy. STEM fields are not trying to marginalize the humanities. The lack of profitability and job opportunities for humanities majors do a great job of that without some form of conspiracy against them...
i have advanced degrees in mathematics and have interviewed for plenty of "STEM" jobs, so my take (pathetically wrong in your words) is from my direct experience. people do not value mathematics, whether they say they do or not. they want software engineers and data scientists already trained for what they're specifically working for. my mathematics experience has been completely marginalized because people do not value it and/or understand it. that's simply been reality.
> Maybe you might remember from your CS education (if you took one) how about 1/3rd of your coursework had to be outside of your major and you most likely had to take within your major some "Scientific Writing" or "Scientific Communication" classes.
this doesn't address anything that's at discussion here.
> The lack of profitability and job opportunities for humanities majors do a great job of that without some form of conspiracy against them...
so profitability is now the measure of whether a field is worthwhile or not? and i wasn't just talking about humanities fields. STEM marketing absolutely does affect the status quo, whether you think it does or not. we need people in those fields.
it doesn't matter what it literally stands for. (actually, it does matter but not in the way you think because it is a diversion really.)
there are more than enough math ph.d.s, and i can tell you that as a person who has advanced degrees in mathematics, interviewing for "STEM" jobs will generally get you nowhere without also having taught yourself computer science and programming (in the way that the company wants). most people do not care about the skill set, much less understand it. people just want software engineers and/or data scientists, and they do not want to train. people would generally rather hire a new grad who just came out of machine learning and algorithms courses than someone with advanced mathematics degrees (which creates a much higher ceiling that's ignored) and even experience.
so like i said, STEM is just a way to get more software engineers trained outside of companies before they hire them.
I'm sorry, but that's really embarrassing on your behalf. This is a lowly tech recruiter that has absolutely nothing to do with the warehouse and retail staff, and you're asking them questions that are suited for Amazon executives. Do you ask McDonald's cashiers what they're doing about humane slaughter and plant-based alternatives before buying a McFlurry?
How else would like expect potential candidate feedback to make it to execs if not by way of their front line recruiters? If candidate feedback isn't making it's way to execs, that's a serious problem in Amazon's hiring processes.
If you're expecting less dialog between candidate and recruiter, just pipe LeetCode participants right into an automated onboarding process, no recruiter required. This would be a very Amazon thing to do!
Recruiters are trying to convince you to work for the company therefore they should know a lot about the company since they need to be able to sell it to you.
When you go to McDonanld's to buy some food you have already been convinced to go there through some other means. The cashier only needs to know how to take your order. There's no selling that needs to be done besides maybe asking you if you want to supersize it.
And calling someone's comment embarrassing is embarrassing. See, I just did it and now I'm embarrassed.
Recruiters expect applicants to know about their company even if it's unrelated to the job, why should the reverse not be true, ESPECIALLY if it's topical, which the response to COVID is.
If that were true, most recruiter emails wouldn't start with "hi, I'm [name] from [company] and your profile looks like a great fit. [Company] is a company that [description of company]."
Sure, you're aware of FAANG companies, but you're not aware of their HR practices, their healthcare, etc. In other words your knowledge is likely shallow, and that's what first line contacts expect.
I think you're misunderstanding (or I am), the context. I'm assuming we are talking about an interview scenario, as you are asking questions about possible employment - not receiving a "cold call" email from a recruiter.
In an interview, you are expected to know what the company is about.
It's about sending a message dude. If enough people do this the recruiters will take it back upstream. I applaud the parent, and seriously you gotta stop thinking so much about potential embarrassment. Fear of embarrassment is one of the most effective ways to keep people disempowered.
Unless this happened to a high percentage of perceived strong candidates, the likely internal note from Amazon would probably be, "we dodged a bullet on this one".
You don’t think a recruiter should have an answer to a question a lot of people are asking about the company these days? I would 100% expect something from an in house recruiter, or one of the better third party recruiters.
So you’re testing the recruiter? The recruiter would have an answer probably no more insightful than the NYTimes. Do you ask Google recruiters about their ethics and AI? Or Apple recruiters about factories in China? Or Tesla recruiters the long term impacts of batteries on the environment? In theory all potentially fair game, but a better question might be “I’m interested in this. Can you set up a call with someone who could address my questions on it.”
And once the recruiter gave an answer are you then done and ready to talk about the role? This seems like a setup more than a sincere question.
It's not testing the recruiter. It's trying to get information about how the company works. That's exactly the sort of question I'd expect a recruiter to be able to answer, at some level. I would gladly accept "I don't have a really good answer for you, but I can set you up to talk to someone who does." If they don't have an answer better than the NYT, and they're willing to do that, I'd be satisfied with the recruiter on that point.
As far as being ready to talk about the role, asking these questions is talking about the role, so I don't understand what you're getting at here.
The thing is, they don't have any information that you don't have access to, and they're not going to be able to set you up with anybody who does (e.g. a director, VP, or CEO). Any information they do have is already publicly available. The company has 800K+ employees and any non-executive emails leak as soon as they're sent, if not simply made public immediately. Essentially, you're testing their ability to regurgitate corporate policies, which is completely pointless.
If $COMPANY finds themselves losing a significant number of candidates (at least some of whom they presumably need to hire), because they can't answer $QUESTION, and that information gets reported up the chain, what do you think $COMPANY's rational response is?
Maybe $COMPANY just expects their candidates to be able to use a search engine rather than quiz their recruiters on it, and anyone who can't do that is a non-regrettable loss.
Corporations doesn't allow you to comment on those by yourself publicly, unless a given statement is already given to them. The recruiter is doing the right thing protecting his/her own job.
A recruiter supporting one group probably won’t know a whole lot about other groups. I’m sure they can recite how all customers are supposed to be treated from the employee handbook, but I think you’re looking for something juicer.
Why do you think Amazon has stopped shipping everything but essentials?
It's not because they don't think people don't want all these things stuck at home..
Its because the entire warehouse process has been turned inside out and expanded with constant safety measures, wipe downs, disinfectants, etc. This slows down everything.
Amazon is doing a ton, and not out of altruism, but because it's the pragmatic thing to do.
The workers need to be safe so they don't quit and so they don't get sick.
We are just not bragging about it (internally or externally). And neither am I, I just feel the need to defend it from the narrative that the company is sitting on its billions while letting the mass of warehouse staff get sick and die, or whatever you are implying.
Not true. They are still shipping non-essentials just with longer delivery times.
Now, objectively speaking, Amazon could have done far better in prevention when this started. Why is it that just recently they introduced temperature checks? That’s should have been a -day one- (pun intended) measure. They were doing that in China months ago.
Unlike the downvoters here, I applaud the fact that you have ethical and morals standards and can afford to stick with them. If more engineers did that, the world would be a better place.
It's asking a question and already knowing the answer to someone who has almost no ability to impact it.
That's like going to McDonald's and asking the cashier if the hamburgers used killed cows in them. And when they say yes, say, "I'm not eating here then!". It's a show.
Dude, Amazon is going to have this candidate sit through hours of phone screens, and faang level interviews, it’s not like they lower their standards.
Sure, it’s a tad pretentious (honestly it’s the most pretentious thing I’ve read all day lol) on her part, but whatever, no one is perfect. It’s all part of the game.
I for one am glad that you took this action. I do something similar for Amazon specifically: I politely decline the offer to interview up front stating that I take issue with how Amazon treats its employees across many of its departments and I link the FACE
of Amazon website here: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ .
I was not always this way. I interviewed there twice and was rejected both times. It was disappointing at the time, but I consider it a blessing now because I know that I am not ambitious / competitive to the necessary degree I would need to be to do well there.
I still buy things on Amazon, and I consume a lot of content on their wholly-owned subsidiary Twitch, but I do not believe that a ruthless focus on the customer necessarily means ruthlessly treating employees and contractors to as close to the breaking point as permitted by law. For Amazon specifically, I’ve started looking more towards companies like Costco and NewEgg for what they carry. I’ve done the same with other tech companies too: I only have Google for Gmail, and a silent Twitter account that I do nothing on besides update passwords and 2FA if I see the day where my voice counts for something.
The less fortunate employees still have to pay rent. With your approach, now there's just less people in the company who could have fought for them from within.
Yeah, they have to fire him and then hire someone else. That costs time and money. Then he can make some noise about it and get media attention on his firing.
If this happens enough times, perhaps corporations may be incentivized to change how they do things.
This is why, if we software folks were going to organize so we could do things like effectively support less-fortunate workers, the time to do it was any point in the last ~8 years when times were good. Oh well, maybe next boom. We'll have little ability to affect corporate and government behavior in this downturn.
I'm certain Amazon has no shortage of developers who want to work there, so all this does is cause their hiring pool to lean toward the kind of employees to further entrench the culture you're opposing.
Does Amazon have hordes of dev outside the gate willing to take a job? Yes. Do those hordes get smaller if Amazon not doing the right thing? Absolutely.Look at what happened to Facebook with all the scandals,the pool shrank by 25,% or so..
I have problems with most tech companies on some level (Microsoft includes too much telemetry, Apple is monopolistic on the app store, Google owns half the internet, Netflix's autoplay is an anti-pattern). Amazon's feels like "company treats lower-wage workers poorly", which is true of every company I know of except Apple.
That's analogous to being proud of grilling a supermarket checkout clerk over their employer's policies, over which they have no say in or even knowledge of. I'm unable to fathom the logic behind considering this a sensible thing to do.
It’s more like asking a public-facing representative of the company whose job partially consists of answering questions about the company a hard question. Not as pithy as your cashier analogy, but closer to the truth. Your cashier is more analogous to an Amazon warehouse worker, or a literal Whole Foods cashier.
