Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience

Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by riazrizvi on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:00PM (#13076532)

I think it's a bit silly to get so worked up about this. The test is simply to gauge programming skill in an online test, and they want to check you are not cheating. Though I think they could have worded it without freaking people out: "You are going to be video monitored during the test".

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by coldcode on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:01PM (#13076543)

What the heck is cheating in programming? Do people watch you on a webcam at work to see if you are reading stackoverflow?

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by flukus on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:09PM (#13076594)

Having someone else take the test for you. Even in sit down on site university tests this is somewhat common.

Although in this extreme case it does sound like checking stackoverflow is considered cheating.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by wutbrodo on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:09PM (#13076600)

Presumably you're aware that job interviews and the actual job are different things? At a real job no one cares if you use Stack Overflow because there's ample other data to assess your productivity (like...your actual productivity over the months and years that you're employed). The challenge with interviewing is trying to extrapolate performance from a much, MUCH shorter time horizon[1]. You're not testing the exact same environment, but you're using a different environment (the test/interview) to hopefully assess skills that are relevant in the environment you're optimizing for.

This is hardly a new concept: exams work pretty much the same way. There are other ways to assess candidates (like looking at their portfolios), but they have their own weaknesses, and testing skills in a constrained environment can still reveal things.

[1] And this is for the benefit of both parties: I've lost count of how many people I've heard complain about companies that have gauntlets of technical interviews.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by sillysaurus3 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:19PM (#13076650)

Presumably you're aware that job interviews and the actual job are different things?

This is the core problem with tech hiring circa 2016. The sooner this idea dies, the better. It's surprising that more companies haven't noticed the most effective interviews are ones that resemble the company's day-to-day work as closely as possible.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by nxc182 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:16PM (#13076928)

The latter part of the interviews do exactly that with a work simulation. Very cool.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by fullshark on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:12PM (#13076618)

In this scenario it would be things like having someone else answer for you, answer by committee, find the exact questions on a message board...

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by riazrizvi on Thursday December 01, 2016 @11:32AM (#13080647)

Doing the test with a friend? I wouldn't want someone who can't complete coding exercises on their own. Also I'd expect people to answer simple questions quickly.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by kafkaesq on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:09PM (#13076602)

I don't think I was getting "worked up" about it.

It's kind of like when you notice someone staring at you in the subway -- you note to yourself that it's creepy (which it is), and you move on.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by donatj on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:07PM (#13076579)

There is no cheating in programming. This is absurd.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by uw_rob on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:12PM (#13076621)

I think Googling the question exactly and copy and pasting the answer would qualify as cheating.

(Disclaimer: I completed an internship at Amazon and accepted a second internship)

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by jfoutz on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @11:16PM (#13077130)

I dunno man. I'd much rather see a well understood vetted email validation(or whatever )copied from stack overflow than some thrown together hack in production code.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by nommm-nommm on Thursday December 01, 2016 @10:18AM (#13079856)

being able to look things up is a different skill than being able to understand and properly apply what you looked up. Or being able to understand what you are looking up and why.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by YeGoblynQueenne on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:23PM (#13076961)

That's very easily caught by googling candidates' answers.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by prodigal_erik on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:28PM (#13076978)

There are definitely people who would hire an expert to pass the test for them if they could get away with it.

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by donatj on Thursday December 01, 2016 @01:28AM (#13077608)

I have a friend who outsources his job to India. It's not "cheating".

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Re:Software Engineering Internship Amazon Interview Experience by inimino on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:46AM (#13078550)

There is cheating in online testing, however.

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