From the Amazon Interview Case doc
A question was posted on Quora.com, presumably in Dec. 2016[1], by a developer who had applied to Amazon and did not pass the on-site interview. They asked Quora readers for advice about what to do next. One of the responders was Matt Kellner, a software engineer from the Seattle area [2]. 1.5 million people have read his answer to-date.
Matt indicated in the follow-up comments that he previously worked for Amazon, and that he has been on both sides of the interview table. He notes that the line of questioning where an interviewee “locked up” is typical at tech companies. It’s deliberately ambiguous. It creates a mini-crisis to see how the applicant handles it. Read his response in full, below.
Also read the other replies, as there are interesting perspectives on tough interview questions. The bottom line is that companies are looking for candidates who can handle ambiguity. It’s not only for solving open-ended problems internal to the organization; often customers do not know exactly what they want and are not particularly adept at providing focused requirements. In fact, one could argue that in the realm of customers, whether internal or external, perfect requirements don’t exist. So handling ambiguity is fundamental to tech-related work.
Lecture 8 discussion:
And one of the things about the Amazon case was, this person had gotten that… they had basically failed the technical interview with Amazon. And they were given a question that couldn't be solved. I mean, that's the challenge of this. And what they want to do is see, are you going to freeze up? Or are you going to be able to talk about what your thought process would be? Are you going to ask questions, for clarification? Are you going to, be transparent and say, I don't see a solution to this, here's what additional information we would need. So, what you're being pushed to do is have the conversation about the thought process of what you would do next. And not, not view it as purely a problem-solving issue or problem solving that app. So, the conversation ends up becoming pretty important. So, that's what the responder in the Amazon cases is asking about.
So, this is the debate that you'll hear a lot. For those of you who have more of a technical background, you'll hear this debate between what are called hard skills and soft skills, right? Yes. And you may say, well, I'm focused on the hard skills, and I'm really good at that, I can do that well. But if there are two people interviewing for the same job, and both have fairly strong technical skills, the one that's going to be able to have the conversation with the business users, the non-technical people, is probably going to be the one who gets the job. Because that's the skill that's harder to find.
And then does what we call translation. So, the person who can translate from the technical skills and information to the non-technical, and then can translate the non-technical or business needs, into technology solutions. That translation function ends up being pretty important to most of the of the technology jobs. So, take a look at that Amazon case. And I think you'll find it interesting to wrestle with as you're going through the interviews. And this question, or this line of questioning seems to be getting more popular, asking the question about a problem that can't be solved, or is missing the information in order to be solved so. So, give that some thought. |