[scarface_74]

First you got to get through the HR process.

Now when I interview you, I’m not going to ask you to reverse a btree on the whiteboard. I’m going to ask you questions to see if you can “handle ambiguity” and work at the scope I need you to work at.

I’ve spent the last decade mostly as one of the early technical hires for a major new initiative and then leading cloud consulting projects (3.5 years at Amazon and now at a third party company both full time). I need to know I can throw a vague set of business requirements at you and you can take the ball and run with it.

I actually did a thumbs down to a very smart guy who had been laid off from the AWS EC2 service team because when I asked him behavioral questions, I didn’t get a sense that he could handle the type of green field initiatives I was going to throw at him.

[sillysaurusx]

> First you got to get through the HR process.

You don’t, actually. People love to be flattered, and the trick is to go find whoever is making the decisions and to flatter them.

You’re not immune to this either. No one is. Again, competence is a requirement, but flattery plus competence is a very powerful way to distinguish yourself.

[scarface_74]

I am very immune to flattery at 50 years old. While like I said I don’t do coding interviews, I am asking behavioral questions to assess whether you are “smart and gets things done”.

I don’t hire ticket takers for the most part.