<story><title>I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months</title><url>https://benadam.me/thoughts/my-experience-at-amazon/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>__MatrixMan__</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never used Leetcode, but it keeps coming up here. I&amp;#x27;ve been interviewer a lot lately and I keep trying to find ways to filter &lt;i&gt;out&lt;/i&gt; the candidates that care more about interview prep than solving real problems.&lt;p&gt;Is this a nonstandard perspective?</text></item><item><author>colinmhayes</author><text>&amp;gt; Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles&lt;p&gt;Finding people who are willing to spend months in order to get the job is one of the biggest reasons companies use leetcode.</text></item><item><author>robby_w_g</author><text>&amp;gt; I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later).&lt;p&gt;Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then after going through the logic said &amp;quot;Wow I can&amp;#x27;t believe this actually works.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Personal grievances aside, I&amp;#x27;ve come to think that the Leetcode interview style has morphed from a &amp;quot;let&amp;#x27;s see how you handle problems at scale&amp;quot; test into an ego-driven hazing ritual. My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles. It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field.</text></item><item><author>sharkweek</author><text>Hey congrats on making it 10 months!&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn&amp;#x27;t immediately delivering on some insane amounts of work. Truly, he recapped it for me, the expectations were absolutely incredible and I&amp;#x27;d consider him a hard worker who has found a ton of success in his current role.&lt;p&gt;I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). But living in Seattle, a notable chunk of my social circle works there. I&amp;#x27;d say a few enjoy the scale of things they get to work on or perhaps the brand name, but overall none of them ever talk about liking the work environment&amp;#x2F;balance&amp;#x2F;culture.&lt;p&gt;One friend, at a director level, just quit on a whim because he came back from parental leave and his direct reports had all been put on a PIP while he was out. He told his VP to fuck off, left, and is now on sabbatical. I&amp;#x27;ve never seen him so happy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fnordpiglet</author><text>I’ve been doing technical interviews for decades and have gotten good feedback from candidates about my technique. I have a small number of questions that are nearly impossible to have prepared for - one for instance is finding the median in a large dataset using map reduce. The question is open enough there’s a lot of solutions that are expensive, a lot that are dead ends, and one that’s pretty clever. The key is I let them investigate different possible solutions and give them guidance as they butt against expensive or impractical solutions and guide them to the answers I’ve heard over the years that work best. Because I ask the same questions over and over again I can tell how people treat the problem and try to solve it. But since it’s not a typical interview question no one is prepared to answer it off the cuff. 
Ultimately my goal is to assess whether the candidate can understand the problem, understand dead ends when I point it out, understand how to pivot to another approach, and understand how to interpret hints in a positive direction. IMO these are the important skills for a professional problem solver working in a team.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn’t use automated screening tools. These tools select for irrelevant criteria in my opinion, and are mostly useful if as an interviewer you’re too lazy or too incompetent to formulate your own questions that tell you whether a person can solve problems and interact well in a group problem solving situation. But I’m an oldster so YMMV.</text></comment>
<story><title>I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months</title><url>https://benadam.me/thoughts/my-experience-at-amazon/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>__MatrixMan__</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never used Leetcode, but it keeps coming up here. I&amp;#x27;ve been interviewer a lot lately and I keep trying to find ways to filter &lt;i&gt;out&lt;/i&gt; the candidates that care more about interview prep than solving real problems.&lt;p&gt;Is this a nonstandard perspective?</text></item><item><author>colinmhayes</author><text>&amp;gt; Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles&lt;p&gt;Finding people who are willing to spend months in order to get the job is one of the biggest reasons companies use leetcode.</text></item><item><author>robby_w_g</author><text>&amp;gt; I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later).&lt;p&gt;Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then after going through the logic said &amp;quot;Wow I can&amp;#x27;t believe this actually works.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Personal grievances aside, I&amp;#x27;ve come to think that the Leetcode interview style has morphed from a &amp;quot;let&amp;#x27;s see how you handle problems at scale&amp;quot; test into an ego-driven hazing ritual. My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles. It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field.</text></item><item><author>sharkweek</author><text>Hey congrats on making it 10 months!&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn&amp;#x27;t immediately delivering on some insane amounts of work. Truly, he recapped it for me, the expectations were absolutely incredible and I&amp;#x27;d consider him a hard worker who has found a ton of success in his current role.&lt;p&gt;I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). But living in Seattle, a notable chunk of my social circle works there. I&amp;#x27;d say a few enjoy the scale of things they get to work on or perhaps the brand name, but overall none of them ever talk about liking the work environment&amp;#x2F;balance&amp;#x2F;culture.&lt;p&gt;One friend, at a director level, just quit on a whim because he came back from parental leave and his direct reports had all been put on a PIP while he was out. He told his VP to fuck off, left, and is now on sabbatical. I&amp;#x27;ve never seen him so happy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aspaceman</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty common at small to mid sized companies + startups. Your more &amp;quot;trendy&amp;quot; companies and your F500 companies do the type of Leetcode interview you hear everyone on HN complain about.&lt;p&gt;It typically looks like a 15 minute phone interview with HR, followed by a lengthy Leetcode&amp;#x2F; take home exam (that&amp;#x27;s auto graded, no humans), a computer form where you input your school, GPA, and courses taken (seriously). All of this info gets turned into a number and then HR takes a sample of the top X and hands it to the hiring manager: &amp;quot;Here are the &amp;#x27;viable&amp;#x27; candidates&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The hiring manager then has to (basically) interview the candidate themselves. Ensure they actually have the skills for the position, determine their interest in the role, etc. So this is probably what you&amp;#x27;re doing right now. Just imagine someone filtered a bunch of your resumes first.&lt;p&gt;Take with a grain of salt, but I have heard of some folks explicitly getting permission to do hiring outside of HR at said large companies. The kids they get out of undergrad and through HR&amp;#x27;s Leetcode process are apparently complete garbage. Don&amp;#x27;t understand C, pointers, memory, or Linux at all. Don&amp;#x27;t even know what files are.</text></comment>