Convenience and logistics. Is it worth yours (or Amazon's) time to pay for travel expenses, when applicants could literally be located anywhere? Evidently not, at least not in the early stages of the process.

When I was last in school I struggled with "networking your way into a company" and wound up landing my internship (and ultimately full employment) on the one company who offered a test before the "Fly you out to meet us" step.

Imagine you're hiring someone to do your taxes. Sure, you'd expect them to use a calculator to do all the hard addition/subtraction, or more likely spreadsheets. But if you asked them to add 5 and 3, and they said "I would use a calculator, this is a stupid question, I can't just tell you off the top of my head" then you're probably not going to hire them.

It's a super basic test of 'Can this person code themselves out a paper bag."

being able to solve problems is more important than how you solve problems. (generally speaking, yes i know there are exceptions)

That's a very long-winded way to describe a prescreening questionnaire. Are you saying that you think no one should ever take a job if there's a prescreening process?

I think I'd only consider doing this if I used a computer I could wipe completely before and after. Even then the amount of distrust is off-putting.

I can understand why ProctorU does what it does, but that process puts a significant burden on the test taker, one which is entirely different than taking a proctored exam in a classroom.

Perhaps most critically, it is a more subtle test for the prospective employee-- are you the kind of person who would comply with a ridiculous request that violates your privacy in the hopes that it will land you a job?

I dunno. If I were an employer and an applicant actually installed this without question, it would make me seriously reluctant to hire them-- this is the sort of unquestioning, docile employee who could be more vulnerable to social engineering,who would not be likely to consider consequences of their actions, who does not take security, privacy, and safety as a priority for even themselves (and is therefore less likely to do so for customers and clients).

These may not be qualities that some companies value, but from my perspective, I think the "nope" letter to Amazon shows strength in independent thinking, creativity, and moral character.

It's like those companies that required you to hand over your social media passwords so HR could dig through your history.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-seekers-getting-asked-fac...

That is horrifying. If Amazon doesn't hire you because of this, it says quite a bit about their company, fuck 'em. Their loss. There are companies out there that actually respect their employees.

Congratulations. You passed the test.

Without the secrecy aspect, I don't think you can say it's spying by the definition people typically use. If you went to an examination hall and took a real proctored exam [1], would you consider that the proctor was "spying" on you?

> Moreover, it is invasive and unsettling.

This, I can't argue with. It's hard to pin a definition on what makes things creepy or unsettling. Some people find clowns creepy. Why? I have no idea. But there's no sense in arguing about it.

Personally, I think it's a clever use of technology to streamline and scale a traditional process (exam proctoring) that avoids making you travel to an exam hall or interview.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exam_invigilator

I mean it in the sense of "I went on a blind date, but my parents sat at the adjacent booth to spy on me". I knew they were there, but it was inappropriate invasion of privacy.

> If you went to an examination hall and took a real proctored exam [1], would you consider that the proctor was "spying" on you?

If I was taking the exam on a personal laptop and was handed mysterious software at the examination hall to install on my machine... (along with images of the inside of my home), then yeah...

Asking this of you, before you're even working for them is presumptive and not a good sign that this is a place you're going to want to be. It's basically a huge flashing "We Fuck Our Employees!" right there on your job application.

This is also the company that requires warehouse workers to queue for bag searches on unpaid time.