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Comment by rublev | Hacker News Reader

>We are taught in an internal interviewing class (which is not mandatory unfortunately) that making sure the candidate has a great experience is just as important as getting good data on the candidate.

That's funny. I don't know a single person who enjoyed interviewing at Amazon, and the one guy that did who got in quit a few weeks later and still won't stop talking about how bad it was until he's blue in the face. It was such a bad experience it seems to have partially fused with his identity!

Seems like every once in awhile there's some article taking a crap on Amazon, and then these types of green comments coming to the rescue.

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Ex-Amazonian here. Amazon is big enough that there are actually a lot of people in the org who enjoy their jobs, think the company's generally doing the right thing (albeit possibly with caveats), and don't mind defending it. The reason for the throwaway accounts is that the social media policy asks employees not to wade into discussions of Amazon, but rather to forward them to the PR team.

Addressing your experience directly - I really enjoyed my Amazon interview in Edinburgh eight years ago. Lots of interesting free-form problem solving, with the whiteboard there to jot down notes rather than to produce working code.

I'm guessing there are teams or entire orgs which just don't take interviewing as seriously, though - again, with Amazon's scale, it's not surprising.

I don't doubt what you say is true, but Amazon is the only big-3-ish company that I regularly hear some story like this about.

I think every company has a mix of horribleness and goodness, and based on the data I have, it seems like the mix at Amazon is more skewed towards horrible than other major companies.

(disclaimer: Amazon employee)

I've made the same observation as you, but I think there are other factors at play. It seems that Amazon has become the new "cool" company to hate, just like Microsoft was a few years ago. I've personally heard a mix of positive and negative stories from all the big 3, but Amazon seems to be the only one that makes headlines.

I'm not trying to say that Amazon is perfect, or even better than Microsoft or Google, I'm just saying that maybe it is better to trust the opinions you hear from people you know rather than what makes the front page of HN, wherever that happens to take you.

During my Microsoft internship, I watched a male coworker verbally harass a female coworker to tears while she was giving a presentation and no one batted an eye. A friend told me to come check out Amazon, and I've never looked back. I would never go back to Microsoft, but I don't fault people for going there because I know that it is a huge company and that my experience isn't representative of the whole.

Which other big company have you heard of using interview technique described in the OP? The fact that Amazon thought up the process as described here says something about the as a company which you can't explain away as the "new cool company to hate".

Many are doing it - see the rest of this thread.

Anyways the difference here is HR/recruitment was too "ambitious".

The SDEs have found out and we have put a stop to it.

Glad to hear that the practice has been stopped. The fact that SDEs can bring up such bad PR to the attention of management and get it rectified gives one good impression about Amazon.

My wife recently went through the hiring process at Amazon. She completed an online programing test, then went through an interview where a recruiter asked basic CS questions over the phone, and was then invited for an onsite interview. She took a day off from work, and spent about 4 hours doing the interview at Amazon's SF office. The interviewers had come from Seattle. This happened over 3 months ago, but she has not heard anything from her Amazon recruiter about the interview outcome. The recruiter had earlier promised to get back no later than 2 days after the onsite. My wife's emails to the recruiter were unanswered.

We understand why things are this way - the recruiter wants to utilize her time on candidates who convert; any time spent on a rejected candidate is time "wasted". But when a candidate takes a day off from their current place of work to attend an onsite to get treated without common courtesy is sad state of affairs. Imagine if the situation was reversed - once the interview was arranged, and my wife agreed to do it, how would all those interviewers who flew in from Seattle have felt had she not turned up?

You seem to be interested in fixing things at Amazon. I mentioned this incident to point out that recruiting at Amazon can do with much course correction. Take time to look in the mirror and understand why it is that only Amazon among large tech employers attracts such negative attention. Sweeping all of that under the "we are now the cool company to hate" category is dishonest. Again, I am glad that this particular incident posted by the OP has caused a positive change in the recruiting practices.

Glad to hear it!

Microsoft's hyper-aggressive culture has contributed to its organizational dysfunction IMO, and frankly I am still having to recognize and deal with its effects on my interpersonal relations.

>>>The reason for the throwaway accounts is that the social media policy asks employees not to wade into discussions of Amazon, but rather to forward them to the PR team.

Presumably so that said PR team can create throw-away accounts and defend Amazon.

Well, possibly. I can't prove that that's not the case :) All I can say is that I've always taken them in good faith, because they match up with the temperament of some of the people I know and like inside the company.

That's really the problem with the social media policy. On the one hand, it protects the company from the worst possible outcomes of letting untrained employees loose on social media - and given the size of the company and the diverse views held by its employees, I could imagine those outcomes being pretty dire! But on the other hand there's a chilling effect on positive impressions of the company.

I'd think they should have a few non-green accounts lying (no pun intended[0]) around by now at Amazon HR PR.

[0] that was a lye[1]

[1] removing the stain on my reputation

> The reason for the throwaway accounts is that the social media policy asks employees not to wade into discussions of Amazon, but rather to forward them to the PR team.

So, they are wading into discussions of Amazon, just in a way that's not directly linked with an existing nym? Following neither the letter nor the spirit of the rule?

Hi. Not a green comment, though admittedly I'm not using my real name here.

I worked at Amazon for many years and enjoyed it. Nice to meet you.

It's a huge company with a wide variety of teams and experiences. It's not for everyone. But I am still friends with lots of my former co-workers. Lots of them liked it and, believe it or not, many of them are still there. Some for over 10 years.

I've only heard bad things as well. I respect them as a company but it's clear they don't care about employee wellbeing. Everyone I know thats worked there said the hours and deadlines were unreal.

I interviewed at Amazon and it was fine. The questions were interesting (albeit maybe a few too many graph questions). One of the interviewers showed up in a bathrobe or something I think, due to a bad oncall the previous night or something.

Given that Amazon interviews by team, I think it depends on what team you end up interviewing with...

I didn't take the offer because it was like $20k or more less than another offer, but the process was fine.

There's also going to be selection bias, in that most people who have reasonable interview process aren't going to write blog posts about it...

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