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Comment by lazypenguin | Hacker News Reader

Yes this was not my experience in recent interviews (past few weeks). I suspect that maybe this is only the case for the select few with “gold-plated” credentials (I.E. FAANG on the resume).

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I have coming up on 10 years at Google, and a 20 year career total, and the few times I've dipped my toes into the interview water in the last couple years I've pulled it out promptly after being told I'd have to do one of these "leetcode" style interviews.

I won't do them. Not worth the stress, I already get paid handsomely and treated with respect. If I'm going to go somewhere else it will because it's less stress or more interesting, and I expect I will get paid less anyways. So jumping through hoops and practicing skill testing algorithm stuff and coding on a whiteboard in front of some disinterested arrogant 20-something-year-old... Not going to happen :-)

Hopefully you are enjoying the position you are in because most people, myself included, have no other choice if we want to find better salaries. It is an awful experience in my opinion.

I have FAANG on my resume and this is definitely not the case lol. Then again, it’s Amazon which most people regard to have the dumbest engineers so…

It really should be FG. Facebook and google pay way better than any of those other companies.

Amazon is absolutely a red flag on the resume.

Many hiring managers (like myself) do not want to import the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into our org.

Also I’ve noticed the quality of Amazon engineers is lower, on average, compared to Google, ByteDance, FB, Stripe, etc.

My advice is to work somewhere not-Amazon for a year or two. Then you’ll get more bites.

> the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into our org

I don't think it's fair to blame this culture on individual line engineers.

I don't think most people at the IC/engineering level would choose that culture, but once they're in and inundated into that environment, how many are going to propagate it out of habit? That's the risk.

I agree, however you do end up participating in it, you get used to it, and you bring it with you. That's the fear anyways. I think it's a little bit true. Facebook has similarly nutty PIP ("PSC") culture, and you see it from ex-Facebook folks who run other organizations once they leave.

I have seen recruiters red-flag FB/IG managers, depending on why they're leaving FB/IG for this reason. Engineers less so but it definitely comes up in the interview process. It comes up the other way too, when I interview - particularly senior - FB engineers, their first question is "tell me about your PSC culture."

I think that is pretty much all big companies at this point

I've seen recruiters red flag Uber engineers as possibly sexist (and to a lesser extent racist).

This almost seems like a trolling comment but I’ll respond to add some info from a different POV. FWIW (and as an ex Amazon manager) I haven’t seen this at all for many of the engineers who are my friends and former coworkers. Good engineers from Amazon are in high demand and are getting offers frequently. If you’re an Amazon engineer, you can have a lot of experience running live services at massive scale and that’s invaluable. I also haven’t seen any recruiters who mark Amazon as a red flag, but hey, maybe there are some very particular companies I don’t know about who have a vendetta

What's your company? Just to save time for those who might apply if not for this comment?

Yes, would love to know the company. Happy to help steer Amazon engineers away during the current engineer shortage so they don’t waste your recruiters’ time

Apparently I'm not plugged into all the industry chatter.

All of the big, well-known companies have imperfect reputations. (And I suspect my own ideas about which companies are better wouldn't quite fully agree with an HN sentiment index.)

When interviewing someone from a company that you believe to be a concern/ambiguous, it might be very valuable to ask, "So, why did you first go to ___?" "What do/did you like about it?" "Why don't/didn't you like about it?" That might answer any concerns pretty quickly.

(But if they give interview-prep-book answers, or seem to be trying to tell you an answer that you in particular will agree with, that's also valuable information, IMHO.)

Is this true?

Since joining Amazon 2 years ago the rate of recruiters hitting my inbox has increased around 3x and I regularly get contacts from Google, Facebook, and MS recruiters, plus recruiters from random small shops in the Bay Area.

I suppose you are exaggerating.

These HM's here and there that hate Amazon engineers are just a rounding error compared the number of companies trying to specifically poach Amazon engineers. Despite the sense that Amazon is a lesser-FAANG or whatever to some (so annoying people even think like that - like the snobs who say "lesser Ivy").

I mean they do think Amazon engineers are dumber though. If they didn’t I’d get interviews at Stripe and Pinterest etc

Sorry but... nicest way I can imagine to put this is that you're generalizing something that might be more of a local phenomenon.

I've never heard a Googler or FB'er think Amazonians are smart or talented, ever. They look down on people like me.

“lesser-FAANG or whatever” I’m a tad amused that you’re not specifically opposed to the notion of FAANG, but find the notion of a lesser FAANG unpalatable. If you’re okay playing the elitism game, then it’s hard to sympathize with you when you’re the victim.

Most companies' hiring processes don't vary on per-candidate basis though.

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