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Comment by utnick | Hacker News Reader

The worst part for me is how long the process takes, and how much time is invested for an interview process where the success rate is so low.

My recent experience with AMZN was:

- get contacted by recruiter, schedule a call with recruiter a few days later

- take a take-home coding test a few days later

- talk to the recruiter again a few days later to tell me I did well on the coding test

- talk to another recruiter a few days after that, get scheduled for an all-day in person interview 4 weeks in the future

- cram cracking the coding interview for 4 weeks

- go to the interview all day, hear at the interview that I was close but didn't pass, they recommend I should try again in 6 months.

All in all thats a pretty big time & mindshare investment

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I remember doing a phone screen with a company who shall remain nameless, but it was a phone company that has a three letter name and two of those letters are the same :-). It went pretty well, and I predictably got not response back from them. A month or so later I accepted another job, moved my family across the country, and started on the new job. About 2 weeks into my new job, Three Letter Company's recruiter calls back and said the phone screen went great! Can I come in for a round of in-person interviews?

I LOLed over the phone, it was a riot.

EDIT: On the other extreme hand, it's a HUGE turn-off when a recruiter makes an incorrect assumption about my time availability in the initial contact. Stop me when you've seen this one: "Your background looks great! Please tell me what time slots today would work for you in order to discuss this role." Wow, really? You're assuming I have time to call you RIGHT NOW?

May be not for many people here on HN but for very large number of engineers job opportunity Google/Amzn/MS/FB etc are once in a lifetime type. I have not met people in my circles who would balk at interview process there.

for very large number of engineers job opportunity Google/Amzn/MS/FB etc are once in a lifetime type

Meh. Being a developer is being a developer. Not to say that certain specific companies don't sometimes have specific challenges or perks that would be of unique interest to somebody, but by and large, there's no real reason to think if Google/Facebook/Amazon/$anybody_else as a "dream job."

I used to think that way, and after working at two of my "dream job" companies, I've realized that it's pretty never what it's cracked up to be.

Really, the world is SO much bigger than just GoogBookHooSoftCart... I'd encourage people to NOT put those companies on any kind of pedestal.

Your best opportunity as a young engineer is always with a startup with smart leadership. You'll get to do far more and learn far more. Google/Amazon/FB/MS etc are full of smart people and offer a more 9-5 type job, but you will find it much harder to do interesting things.

When I graduated, Google/Amazon/FB/MS, I knew people were smart and the job would be okay at the very least. How should I have gone about figuring out which ones are "a startup with smart leadership". I remember being overwhelmed by everyone, everyone came across as smart.

So I counter your advice by saying the best opportunity for a young engineer is likely a large company that is well-known for having generally smart people. At least I learned what I wanted and didn't in the rest of my career.

Interviews are a two way street. For most companies you should be able to talk to the hiring manager and other developers that you would be working with. Ask yourself whether as a junior developer if you will be able to learn from them. This includes technical skills, soft skills, and personality.

From my own experience I interviewed with a small company right out of school where I would have been the second or third developer (I forget now). One reason I did not pursue it is that I seemed to know more about development best practices than their existing developers; for example they did not use source control at all. While I would have had the opportunity to make a big impact on the product, I don't believe I would have grown much.

Other than the obvious ageism problem you could just cross out "young".

This is assuming that smart leadership equals no deathmarches. Deathmarches are for the young and gullible.

From my experience, either your profile is deemed interesting and you'll get contacted by these companies from time to time (Amazon being the most aggressive) or they'll never get back to you, even if you try pretty hard.

There isn't really a "once in a lifetime" email from a recruiter. Once you interviewed with them you'll have plenty of opportunities to interview again.

If Amazon (or probably anyone for that matter) has some reason to believe you have a short timeline, you can expedite all this. Both times I interviewed with Amazon (I boomeranged and worked there in two separate stints), I had other loops/offers from other co's, and went from initial contact w/ Amazon to an offer in ~4 days.

Wow you're lucky they even tell you in the interview that they were close. Google can take many weeks to get back to you, from what I've seen.

My last interview loop I got the feeling that some companies just say it's 'close' to get you to apply again in 6 months. Unless they give actionable, solid feedback (FB always does, at least with me), I consider it a binary.

Story time: At <X>, I knew after the culture fit round that I wasn't getting an offer. I had middling coding rounds and a terrible culture fit round with the hiring manager. The recruiter claimed that it was close and the team was arguing about the hire, while the person that referred me let me know that they were passing because the hiring manager vetoed everyone with a 'no hire' about 2 hours after I left their building. I had no qualms with the reject, I truly felt a misfit in the interview, but the recruiter play was funny. Someone reached out to me 4.5 months later asking if I wanted to interview :)

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