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Just wanted to share some thoughts about my recent interview experience at Amazon (East Coast). I haven't been looking for a job, but two friends work there and recommended I interview, so I thought, why not. Since I haven't interviewed in many years, I figured at the very least it'd be good to see where I/the industry stand in 2019. I interviewed for a L6 SDE, a relatively senior role when you're an outsider, from what I understand. I have a CS degree from a top school and 20 years of experience. I code every day and have had a good career, full of learning and working on completely different things. I had 6 onsite interviews, two of which didn't count (lunch and the one with the 50-person group overall leader, who I had no idea I'd be meeting with and was floored to have been given the time to do so). While I aced the leadership principle and system design questions, I definitely struggled through two difficult CS whiteboard questions. Unfortunately, my worst interview was with the bar raiser, so I wasn't surprised when I got rejected. As practice, I solved about 3 dozen practice questions on HackerRank/LeetCode, but in hindsight, I should have solved 300. Rust definitely plays a role... I would have done much better on these questions had I been I was fresh out of school, but then I wouldn't have done well on the leadership principles, so take your pick ;) As much as I dislike whiteboarding, I understand the top companies' point of view. They have a handful of hour-long interviews to see if you can do the work, so it was up to me to use this time wisely and impress them. I did my best on that day, but it wasn't good enough. Let's say it wasn't a good day for me and I can do better. They don't know that--they can only judge what they've seen, so the decision is fair on their part. I'm surprised at all the pushback from a sizable portion of software engineers on HN who feel "disrespected" by these interviews. I think about it this way--if you're a building contractor with some years of experience, shouldn't you be able to whiteboard the plumbing design of a multi-story building, the gauge of several electrical circuits that run devices with different loads, or diagram exactly where the fire/CO2 alarms are placed throughout a townhouse? You absolutely should, and if homeowners "interviewed" potential contractors like these companies interview us, there wouldn't be riff-raff doing shoddy construction work. The same way there shouldn't be shoddy civil engineers building bridges, etc. So, I believe fair is fair and even if I think I'm a "false negative," that's much better from Amazon's point of view than a "false positive." I remember my high school track coach telling me "you have the right to train harder than your opponent," and that still resonates with me. If you really want the job, study harder and go get it. That's what I will do if I decide to interview at a top company again in the future. And I am married, with a young child, so I do understand that it is hard. But a top job should not be easy to get. Because then it would be a common job. |