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Comment by goostavos | Hacker News Reader

False.

Currently an Amazon employee. 40+ interviews + debriefs. Not once has "what did the lunch buddy think?" ever been uttered.

I've been a lunch buddy myself a handful of times. My goal is to have a good time, answer any questions the candidate has, and squeeze as nice of a meal (+ coffee) outta the process as I can. I've never been asked for feedback

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When I was younger and dumber, I did two full day interviews at Amazon, 9am till 4-5pm. No lunch, no bathroom breaks, wall to wall interviews completely unrelated to the initial reasons for my contact. Actually rude to the recruiter after the first day, I was convinced to return for a 2nd round of interviews. I never bothered to return any contacts after that incredibly poor and redundant treatment. The exact same thing happened on the 2nd day: no lunch, no bathroom breaks, tons of waiting, and unrelated interviewers.

Same here.

That sounds like amazon is wasting employees time then. That runs counter to my experience with other large tech companies.

It benefits neither the company nor the candidate to have the candidate be overly stressed out all day. Lunch also gives the candidate the chance to chat informally to a potential colleague and for that potential colleague to make a pitch for why it's cool to work at the company and live in the area. If the lunch buddy does their job well the candidate should leave excited to work for the company and in good spirits for the last half of the interview. On top of that both people get a free lunch. Definitely not a waste of time.

Agreed. About half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

I think it is worth it to the company for me to spend the 5 extra minutes of my time (since I'm going to eat lunch anyway) and $25 on lunch to defuse those concerns and sell them on the team. With the phone screen, the interviews, the feedback forms and the debrief, the company is spending a ton of time on each candidate brought on site. Loosing a candidate you make an offer to is the worst waste of time.

> half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

And what do you tell them / what do you think?

Yup, just like letting your employees eat during work hours is "wasting employees' time"... They have to eat anyway!

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