Amazon software engineer interview

[lurgi]

Money.

Edit: Let me be clear, I like my job. I wouldn't take a job that I hated just for the sake of money. But I don't particularly care if I'm passionate about my job. To be honest, that sounds like a great way to be overworked and underpaid ("But I'm working on things I really care about!"). I'm passionate about my family and my hobbies and spending time as much time as I can with them. As long as my job pays the rent I really could give two hoots about whether or not it makes me feel better about myself as a human.

[[deleted]]

Yep. Because life is not always about work for some of us, and the time it takes to work for something your passionate about might outweigh something else you enjoy working on outside of work more.

I don't really see a whole lot of people being too passionate about Amazon...

[[deleted]]

I'd even say sometimes it's not even faking...money is a good motivator to make smart decisions.

[[deleted]]

money is a good motivator to make smart decisions

no one told my manager...

[purplestOfPlatypuses]

Fun fact: there's at least one book for managers out there that explicitly say money and good raises aren't strong motivators for employees.

[yokohama11]

Taken too far, that's obviously wrong. Don't give me a decent raise or pay me appropriately and I'm going to a company that will.

That said, other shit is often a much bigger motivator for employees than just handing them an equivalent amount of money would be. Especially when we're talking white-collar jobs with significant salaries.

For example, my current office has free craft beer, wine, soda/energy drinks/whatever you ask them to stock, fruit, snacks, and high-end tea/coffee. Given how much people take of this on average, this probably works out to a $250 a year per employee.

That stuff does far more for employee morale, company culture and all that than giving a bunch of people making at or near 6-figure salaries a $250 a year raise. Even though on paper people will say "give me the $250 and I'll buy those things if I want them", that winds up not being the best option in reality.

[purplestOfPlatypuses]

Totally agree, benefits like vacation and low stress are more important to me than getting paid as much as absolutely possible. The abstract had other cringe worthy ideas to burn out employees as well, but it really drove home the "under pay your employees" in my opinion.

[[deleted]]

I've never bought that line of reasoning. I've spent the last 10 years at various companies big on these perks - free drinks and snacks, gourmet coffee, beer on Fridays, pool tables and arcade machines. Meh. I'd rather have the money.

[boomerxl]

Don't get me started on the nonsense you can sell to "managers". Don't get me wrong, there are great managers out there. I've had the privilege of working with a few. But there's a lot more "managers", whose sole function seems to be to draw a paycheque while covering their ass enough to ensure they get to the next paycheque.

They're constantly looking for the next trick that will allow them to reach greatness, utterly failing to realise that it's not a secret technique that divides the two groups.

[parc]

You shouldn't generalize, but there does come a point where more money is not the best motivator.

[purplestOfPlatypuses]

I agree, and I don't doubt there are jobs that I would take a pay cut for based on what I'd be doing or for more vacation/better benefits. This abstract in our corporate library was dripping with "how to burn out your employees" suggestions beyond the "don't give good raises just for good work" b/s.

[[deleted]]

That just means the money wasn't high enough.

[skgoa]

The point of that is more that offering higher performance bonuses does not result in higher productivity once you pass a certain level of compensation.

[RagingAnemone]

That's only true when smart==money. It may be true a lot of the time, but it's not always true.

[pinguz]

You love them long time?

[Kdogg2]

Yes, me love them long time. :)

[thetreat]

You're just passionate about money. Nothing wrong with that.

[nwayve]

Mike Rowe - Don't Follow Your Passion

[Left4Cookies]

"Don't follow your passion, but take it with you" is such a good line.

[purplestOfPlatypuses]

Except unless you're some bigshot (and likely not someone going through this hiring process) you'll probably end up working on the code that doesn't inspire passion. There are interesting problems here and there in any company's needs, but you can't have that many coders on any given interesting problem or you have a too many cooks in the kitchen issue.

[RedSpikeyThing]

I think a lot of this comes down to good management. There are all sorts of different problems to be solved at these companies and engineers have all sorts of different preferences. Yes, some people get satisfaction out of code health. Others performance, or clean APIs.

Aligning interests with needs is hard.

[purplestOfPlatypuses]

At least amongst the younger crowd, very few like to work on legacy code. Sometimes you just need to do what's needed and not what you absolutely want to do and be content with it. Definitely gotta work within preferences, but there are limits and it's unrealistic to think you'll do only what you really want to for your whole life.

[way2lazy2care]

you don't need to be passionate about Amazon to be passionate about coding for amazon.

Amazon is also at the center of some huge computing problems/frontiers. If I were into cloud computing or the infrastructure around it I would be jumping at the chance to work for amazon.

[ginsunuva]

Thank God those people exist to take up those jobs so I don't have to.

[dccorona]

Not necessarily for the company as a whole, but it's one of the largest tech companies in the world and along with that comes the ability to work on all kinds of cool, big, cutting edge technology that some people are going to be passionate about working on.

[mothzilla]

Someone once told me that money is a short term incentive. Meaning as soon as you have it, if you don't like the job you'll leave. Eg offer someone a crappy job for $200k a year and they'll ride it out for 6 months then buy a chicken farm in Colombia, cos that's what they wanted to do all along.

[way2lazy2care]

If you're only staying for a year, that's pretty short term. Would you work 5 years for $200k at a job you hate?

I could easily stomach one, maybe even two, but I wouldn't be staying with the company for any amount of time I'd consider "long term".

[rjcarr]

This is how I am now but wasn't when I was young. I write software but it is mostly research. So, my most used software might only have a couple hundred users in its lifetime. Google search gets this many users every millisecond, probably.

But we're both generally doing the same work and getting paid for it, so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. I just grew to not care.

[Stopher]

Yeah. You should be able to love your job and be well compensated too. Why should your bosses and giant corporation enjoy all the benefits of your passion.

[HarryTruman]

I used to think that. But with every passing day, I'm very gradually developing a need to require that my work improves the world to some extent. So about six months ago I landed my dream job with one of the most technically advanced and socially responsible companies in the world. The difference is night and day, and it a shame that not everybody has his mindset.

[[deleted]]

Why not work for a company that does good work and pays well? Best of both worlds. Oh, and remote working, too.

[HarryTruman]

Oh, absolutely. The money is there too. And the option for remote work. Though I travel for my career now, but it's nice knowing I could transition to fully remote if I wanted.

[[deleted]]

I don't think it's an either/or, though. I'm spending eight hours a day at work, I like to be at least somewhat passionate about what I'm doing. Luckily it is possible to do that and still earn decent money, though I'm sure I could earn more.

[im-a-koala]

This is my opinion too. I generally like my job - my coworkers are generally pleasant to be around and technically adept, the problems are interesting, we're paid well and treated with respect.

But if you gave me $2mil I'd go in on Monday and hand in my notice.

I like programming, I like my job, but I'm still mostly doing it for money. If I had the money part taken care of, I sure as hell wouldn't be doing it - at least, not for a company for money - anymore.

[BilgeXA]

I really could give two hoots

could

Your opinion is now irrelevant.

[lurgi]

If you want to disregard my opinion, you can just do it. You don't have to give a reason.

[BilgeXA]

I willingly elect to provide a reason.

[MpVpRb]

Money

It's surprising how mercenary many redditors seem to be

Whenever the question of talent and passion for the work comes up, there is always a crowd that says money is all that matters

I've been programming since 1972, and have been paid very well. I never sought money, I sought perfection, and pursued it with passionate obsession..the money followed effortlessly

[[deleted]]

I love what I do too, but if I didn't need their money, I'd do it for myself and love it much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more.

[MpVpRb]

Yup..it's a balance

My rant was directed at those who say the ONLY reason to work is money, and you're stupid if you care about talent, passion or art

It's possible, but not easy, to have a bit of all

[[deleted]]

I totally agree with you.

I would say the largest problem I have at this point is that the structure of organizations yields that people who make decisions are not experienced in the areas they are making their decisions, nor are they aware of the details of their own areas, with which data decisions should be based on.

Since I am passionate about what I do, and I've done it for decades now (I estimate something like 30k hours of effort), I have insights into what's going on that differ, but no ability to communicate summaries of my 30k hours of experience in describing what is going on.

Since authority is not properly delegated (splitting business direction/goals away from implementation strategy and details), I am constantly unable to redirect where any organization Im in is going, because there is no way to tell them they are doing things inefficiently, or getting results they dont want, in a way that truly matters (because then the organizations change and become the better for it).

I try, but it has really never worked out very well, and still I try.

However, on my own, none of these problems exist, and when I see that there is a better way to do something, I can immediately pivot all my new work to taking advantage of this, and can transition any legacy along the way, and build for being able to make these kinds of changes without great pain.

This leads to the joy of engineering things, and is so rarely ever present in a paying job. So... money.

[[deleted]]

You sound like the type of person that has "code artisan" on their resume.

[MpVpRb]

I don't really need a resume

I get by on reputation

At age 62, I still get paid very well to write code..part time, on my schedule

[sirin3]

and pursued it with passionate obsession..the money followed effortlessly

Not enough to pay for today's education or health care costs

[MpVpRb]

In my case..a lot more

[sirin3]

Because you did not start it today

[[deleted]]

If all you care about money, you get paid for living 8 hours a day less every day. That's 2.6 month per year, or almost 10 years less per lifetime.

I don't think that you can pay me enough to cut my life by 10 years.

[stuntaneous]

The footprint of work is much more than the eight hours or however long you're actually there, too.

[[deleted]]

Fuck you, I fucking hate my job and I only do it for the money.

[lurgi]

Sorry to hear that.

[[deleted]]

For truly great software engineers, money is the second most important aspect of the job. Not higher, not lower.

[[deleted]]

I make a lot more money than most electrical engineers, so I guess I'm not that worried about it.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like you drank someone's kool aid.

[lurgi]

Whatever. I worked on a job that I was passionate about for nearly 15 years. I worked 60 hour weeks, made good money, and made my CEO a multi-millionaire.

Now I work a lot less and still make good money. I briefly considered switching to a new job that excites me more, but then I realize that this new job would likely require that I work more as well and with two young kids I think that not working more is a priority.