Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

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I don't see the fact that this guy didn't get "his" job as the fail part. The Amazon employee from Vancouver at the end probably shouldn't have worded things such that everything sounded final, but maybe they simply interviewed someone the next day that they felt was a better fit for the job, or maybe something changed and the decision was made not to hire for the position they were considering previously -- it happens.

Having said that, I do think not getting back to him at all (even if that was with an explicit rejection) is a complete fail.

Based on anecdotal data, it seems to be increasingly common for modern companies (though I usually hear about it on companies that are much smaller than Amazon, which should have its HR shit together) to just go completely incommunicado with someone once the decision has been made to not move forward. Doing this is completely unprofessional (no matter how big or small your company is), especially in the face of explicit queries about the status from the person who was interviewed, and I applaud the guy for naming and shaming Amazon on that aspect of it.

Fix your shit, Amazon HR/hiring managers. Don't be jerks.

Not sure whats up with that last person in the interview, but the recruiter has really zero say in the hiring process. At least when it comes to AWS.

> The last interview was with the lead recruiter from Vancouver (apparently he flew from Vancouver to Seattle to interview me, a candidate that was in Vancouver and had to fly to Seattle for the interviews…).

The recruiter finds talent, schedules the interview and hassles AWS employees to interview the applicant. The applicant interviews with 6-7 people (like I did), that consists usually of your direct manager, a bar raiser (an article about this was just posted here the other day), and other peers.

Only after your interview day is over, and everyone has a chance to put your review info into MRT does everyone meet again and discuss if you are a valid candidate or not.

The recruiter has no say in this matter since they have no idea how your answer related to distributed systems lock coordination and Big O(n) notation work. It sounds like this person jumped the gun.

Amazon HR should at least get back to you with a "sorry we've decided on someone else", or "we'd love to work with you" letter either way.

I would say this is a culture thing as well.

As Portuguese I am more than used to this. You never ever get a reply back if you don't make it.

Companies only contact you again if you got the job.

I was astonished when I moved to Switzerland and later Germany, that companies would get back to me to say 'no' and send me back the application documents I had sent.

I've had good/bad experiences from all sizes of company. I chatted once with Microsoft, and they had a really great turnaround time - less than 2-3 days from start to finish (they weren't interested in a Linux nut, oddly enough ;-) ). I've talked with small companies who blackhole you after a discussion.

YMMV. But I try to remember the companies who drop you into /dev/null and avoid dealing with them again, either as applicant or with their products.

When I interviewed with amazon they let me know their decision within two days.

I think that missing the initial follow up with his interview result can often happen simply due to candidates getting 'lost' in the system (e.g. someone forgets to schedule the follow-up call).

However, not replying to any email inquiries does sound terrible.

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