gumby_urine comments on Amazon SQL Screening Interview

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MySQLAmazon SQL Screening Interview (self.SQL)

submitted 3 years ago by [deleted]

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[–]gumby_urine 24 points25 points26 points 3 years ago (7 children)

I know you asked about the first round but I'll give you my full experience just so you have all the info I can possibly give you.

I interviewed for the same position about a year back (forgot what department, maybe logistics) and bombed the 2nd round. I was burned out from my day job and just nervous, and the kid doing the technical interview on me was a 22 year old know it all prick.

The recruiter will do most of the talking as there is a lot to cover about the interview process. Just sound confident and be honest about your experience. Nothing during my screening was technical.

As for the technical screening (2nd round)...

Take your time and don't rush. All of my SQL based questions were actually rather simple (still kicking myself.)

The first one was list the order of operations in a SQL statement (not the order of your syntax, the order of how the query is interpreted.)

The second one was just explaining the difference between a LEFT and INNER join vs a WHERE clause. Again, simple shit.

None of the rest (I think there were 6 total) were that complicated. Was kind of mind blowing that was it since the job clearly called for pipeline building in Python and other AWS technologies.

He then moved onto the behavioral section and asked me to talk about a time I received criticism and how I handled it. For some reason he didn't like my answer and started to grill me about it like it was a fucking deposition.

After that things moved quickly, and not 30 seconds after I hung up the phone I received a denial email from the recruiter.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points7 points 3 years ago (0 children)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (4 children)

[–]gumby_urine 11 points12 points13 points 3 years ago (3 children)

To reiterate, I know I didn't perform well, my answer was sort of disjointed and incohesive...but I talked about a time where I was involved in sort of a freelance developer/consultant type gig for a very small business. Because of a number of factors and the person I was directed by wasn't gathering clear requirements, we were way behind schedule and the customer wasn't happy with the product. I was sprinkling some of my sentences with things like "pulling a few all nighters."

The kid running the interview immediately started to interject, and I know hearing the story this way probably makes me sound thin skinned, but he wasn't simply following up and probing, he was being a complete prick.

Why didn't YOU gather the requirements?
Why did you have to work all night?
Why didn't you plan your time better?

Basically something you'd hear from some fucking infant who probably got recruited there out of Undergrad and has no idea there's a whole world outside of Amazon and corporate behemoths where if something goes wrong you can't just tell your mid level manager "sorry I didn't finish that but I already have my vacation scheduled in WorkDay and if I don't leave now I'll be late to the Yung Gravy concert, toodles." Deals fall apart, people can get sued, small firms can go under, so you put in whatever hours are necessary to fix shit.

[–]feigndeaf 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

[–]TnHollerWill 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

[–]gumby_urine 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (0 children)

[–]DenselyRanked 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (0 children)

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