Student complains about Amazon's intern application

[Independent voter]

He says he's not going to continue the interview process. My guess is Amazon gets thousands of intern applications and they might even make it difficult or uncomfortable to weed out applicants.

The internship likely pays $50K and you're likely to get a job at Amazon making 6 figures after you graduate.

He posted some questions from the online application





much more at link

https://rajk.me/amazon-interview-experience/





He also wrote them a note

Hi,

I received an online assessment from Amazon for a software engineering internship interview. However, this assessment raises extreme privacy concerns:

The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam:

Your microphone
Your webcam
Your physical location
Your clipboard
Your mouse location
Your browser size
Your browser tabs and windows
Your head movements
Your eye movements
Your mouth movements
Your entire screen
Any website you visit
Any other applications running
Number of display screens connected


These are unacceptable requirements (along with the 'must use Google Chrome' requirement).

I can suggest alternatives: I am available for an on-site interview <during these dates>. I am also available for a video chat at any time.

Are either of these possible?

Thank you for your time,

[serenka]

Some intern applications are extremely long and have so many stages that a lot of people are not prepared for, i get why they are long though. most internships only have 3 to 4 places at most and probably get 1000s of applicants, they need some way of weeding out people wouldn't be a good candidate. Complaining is just stupid, you're not forced to apply for these.

[zenkai]

I would turn him down on this shit alone.

[caervek]

The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam:

Your microphone
Your webcam
Your physical location
Your clipboard
Your mouse location
Your browser size
Your browser tabs and windows
Your head movements
Your eye movements
Your mouth movements
Your entire screen
Any website you visit
Any other applications running
Number of display screens connected

Isn't this normal for a digital test lol. I'm sure the CompTIA exams I have sat had the same anti-cheating precautions.

[TwoNineMarine]

Meh.

Their company their rules.

If you don't want to jump through their hoops then you won't get hired.

[ItachiZaku]

He should probably be sued for posting that stuff.

And why would he get 50K for an internship, those are/should be for experience and from my experience, go largely unpaid.

[GennGreymane]

And in other news

Old lady has granddaughter write Yelp review because she waited 5 minutes longer than needed in line at McDonalds.

[Deleted]

Internships are unpaid

Wall Street banks used to pull this stuff with interviews for decades, some still do from the stories I hear

I remember my first interviews at investment banks, they were insane, full of trap questions and downright nasty tricks designed to put you under stress and see how you did

Looks like the tech industry of 2016 is the new Wall Street

[Independent voter]

He should probably be sued for posting that stuff.

And why would he get 50K for an internship, those are/should be for experience and from my experience, go largely unpaid.

I looked it up cause I was curious

Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,231/mo
Amazon Software Development Engineer Intern - Monthly $6,380/mo
Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,230/mo
Financial Analyst Intern - Hourly $20.57/hr

[Deleted]

I looked it up cause I was curious

Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,231/mo
Amazon Software Development Engineer Intern - Monthly $6,380/mo
Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,230/mo
Financial Analyst Intern - Hourly $20.57/hr

So they're calling entry level positions "internships?" Dick move there, but AMZN's culture is a little cut-throat, part of Bezos' success story

[GennGreymane]

Internships are unpaid

Wall Street banks used to pull this stuff with interviews for decades, some still do from the stories I hear

I remember my first interviews at investment banks, they were insane, full of trap questions and downright nasty tricks designed to put you under stress and see how you did

Looks like the tech industry of 2016 is the new Wall Street

Never worked on Wall Street or law it seems?

[ro9ue]

Sounds like he was trying to outsmart the application and appear to live "outside the box". Like that Will Smith scene in Men in Black where he drags the chair. Unfortunately, he just looks like a tool.

[ItachiZaku]

I looked it up cause I was curious

Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,231/mo
Amazon Software Development Engineer Intern - Monthly $6,380/mo
Software Development Engineer I Intern - Monthly $6,230/mo
Financial Analyst Intern - Hourly $20.57/hr

Oh, fun stuff. My school wouldn't let me be paid for my internship in college. My "boss" didn't like that I was billable but couldn't be paid.

[rogueMatthias]

The internship likely pays $50K and you're likely to get a job at Amazon making 6 figures after you graduate.

LOL WHAT? Just for an intern for Amazon? 6 figures doing what exactly after you graduate?

I remember back when I was a college lecturer my students would go on about things like this and i'd be like "LOL You'll be lucky if you earn 30k after graduating mate"

[Sengel]

go largely unpaid.

Actually illegal in many states.

And in any tech industry the competition to get high-grade Comp Sci majors (3.0+) for internships is so high that they can't afford to be "unpaid" since most will just go to another company. That and Internships are the best way to get those high-grade candidates back since you show them "how great it is to work at our company".Short them on pay or benifits and they will find another job. ~1 million computer science related jobs are CURRENTLY unfilled in the US alone.

All of my friends working for NASA and Lockheed and even me at the federal Government were well above $20 an hour. All computer science interns.

Remember that a good Programmer will be in 6 figures by the time he/she is in the job about 10 years if they're good enough. Faster if they're Cyber Security.

- - - Updated - - -

LOL WHAT? Just for an intern for Amazon? 6 figures doing what exactly after you graduate?

I remember back when I was a college lecturer my students would go on about things like this and i'd be like "LOL You'll be lucky if you earn 30k after graduating mate"

Computer programmers earn about 58k on average entry level; my entry level position paid 67k. That's what happens when you're in high demand

[Deleted]

He says he's not going to continue the interview process. My guess is Amazon gets thousands of intern applications and they might even make it difficult or uncomfortable to weed out applicants.

The internship likely pays $50K and you're likely to get a job at Amazon making 6 figures after you graduate.

He posted some questions from the online application





much more at link

https://rajk.me/amazon-interview-experience/





He also wrote them a note

I find it funny that they could ever measure all of these things and get something useful out of it. But yeah, that amount of information and invasion is not acceptable.

- - - Updated - - -

Isn't this normal for a digital test lol. I'm sure the CompTIA exams I have sat had the same anti-cheating precautions.

Ah yeah, that might be it. That would explain it.

[twiddler]

He should probably be sued for posting that stuff.

And why would he get 50K for an internship, those are/should be for experience and from my experience, go largely unpaid.

Agreed on the first statement. $50K, on the other hand, depends. If you're the typical UW student interning at a top Seattle tech firm (comparable to other tech hubs), $60K/year doing FT summer and PT in terms is common. Being that the student in question is from Berkeley, I suspect he's going after a summer position which will net him close to $20K off ~3 months work.

Oops, should have read the first page. Anyways, to those skeptical of the amount CS/E interns are paid, it can be ridiculously high.

[Sengel]

Isn't this normal for a digital test lol. I'm sure the CompTIA exams I have sat had the same anti-cheating precautions.

What's weird about those is that 99% of programming is looking shit up. No programmer can memorize every small portion of, say implementing a linked list in C; That's why we have retartedly huge reference books on the subject. We'll be able to pseudocode it in a flash but implementation isn't off the top of one's head especially when you get to 3-4 programming languages under your belt. Which is completely normal for a fresh out of college CS Major (usually C, C++, C#, Java,Assembly and Python). "Cheating" is part of the job lol.

[twiddler]

LOL WHAT? Just for an intern for Amazon? 6 figures doing what exactly after you graduate?

I remember back when I was a college lecturer my students would go on about things like this and i'd be like "LOL You'll be lucky if you earn 30k after graduating mate"

They pay to be competitive with the best candidates and hedge it with high turnover. I wouldn't scoff at the demands of a top tech company. Their expectations after year one make most SEs blush. After your first 6 months as a junior dev, you're against the block to produce. Most people probably aren't mentally cut out to work at Amazon.

[nalvaudi]

I fail to see why this guy was complaining other than the security issues. Those questions are about logic and reasoning skills. I read his full post and he complains "Clearly this isn't about programming skill", but he couldn't be more wrong. I'm a software engineer for an aerospace company. I make planes fly. Identifying patterns and solving simple logic problems is important. If he struggled with these questions, i'm sorry but he likely wasn't a very good programmer.

The only legit thing he could complain about was the tracking of all that unnecessary stuff on his pc. But I completely understand the "why" behind them doing it. To prevent cheating.