News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too. Parent comment

Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by rdtsc on Monday August 24, 2015 @11:06AM (#10110319)
I was actually interviewing with them. Had a laughably bad experience talking to one of AWS teams ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065631 ). I kept making excuses for them "Oh it is a big company", "Scheduling conflicts happen", "It is ok if they forgot about me during lunch". But now I feel like a dodged a bullet.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by odonnellryan on Monday August 24, 2015 @12:39PM (#10111078)
I was asked a really crazy question from their AWS SRE team!

Basically, PHD-level question. They knew I was a junior, but they asked me a very high level math problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by lqdc13 on Monday August 24, 2015 @01:23PM (#10111465)
To play a devil's advocate, it's not like you get better at math while working as a SWE.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by nostrebored on Monday August 24, 2015 @01:52PM (#10111705)
What constitutes a hard problem varies wildly between schools. Especially considering the wildly varying math standards in CS at different universities. By my junior year, I and everyone I knew doing my track had been taking senior/grad school level math courses, especially re: numerical methods.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by rifung on Monday August 24, 2015 @02:12PM (#10111849)
Do you remember what the question was?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by rockinghigh on Monday August 24, 2015 @01:22PM (#10111458)
What's a PhD-level question?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by codeonfire on Monday August 24, 2015 @01:48PM (#10111676)
The only thing I would consider a PhD level question would be something that one would see on a qualifier exam. Usually they require specific and deep knowledge that goes beyond what one could get out of textbooks in the field.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon's 401(k) Plan Is Pretty Brutal, Too by odonnellryan on Sunday August 30, 2015 @07:59AM (#10143086)
Well, there was a PHD thesis written on it that concisely answered the problem.
[ Parent | on HN ]