I Am a Recruiter (a.k.a Spammer) at Amazon

https://the.devway.xyz/i-am-a-recruiter-a-k-a-spammer-at-amazon-6520ea0b031#.4u67smfmh

by amirsaboury • 9 years ago

94 95 9 years ago

the.devway.xyz

PaulHoule2• 9 years ago

At my local startup accelerator I find that AMZN has contacted many other devs in my area. I talked to the hiring manager, they are a nice bunch of folks working on a revolutionary problem but, alas, I am not moving to Seattle either.

TylerE• 9 years ago

Not so sure about the "nice bunch of folks" bit either. Every story I've ever heard about working at Amazon is pretty much a nightmare tale.

praneshp• 9 years ago

I know at least 5 people (one of them is my wife) that work at Amazon and love it.

PaulHoule2• 9 years ago

At a big company different people have different experiences. Your manager and work group make a big difference.

I'm sure you can find somebody for whom working at Amazon is a living hell, and I am sure you can find somebody as happy as a clam.

As for the people I know there overall I have a positive impression but a lot of that comes from practicing vendor management (where it helps to have a PMA) An old Oracle DBA taught me the power of getting what you pay for from vendors thus I've invested a lot in getting good at getting service from AWS.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

I will give them credit for at least being up-front about it. A coworker of mine was pretty far along in the process (had done a couple phone interviews, was arranging to fly cross-country to do an in-person) when the topic of work schedule came up. He has multiple kids and is in his 40s, so he was expecting a sane 40 hours a week. His Amazon contact let him know that either Amazon would be his life, or they weren't interested. That's much better than telling him it'd be 40 hours then punishing him if he ever didn't work 80.

koolba• 9 years ago

I want to remind the Amazon human resource and recruitment team that you have many talented software developers in your company. And, these folks can create a database of do-not-want-to-move candidates for you, and you can ask your recruiting team not to spam them! A simple cross join!

That'd be an anti-join, not a cross join.

On a more serious note, there should be a "Do Not Call List" for email addresses. It'd be damn near impossible to implement for everything as I doubt Nigerian princes will bother checking it, but a "name and shame" campaign against companies and their recruiting affiliates that ignore it would work.

Course the other problem is that having such a list and such a service also provides a way to verify the validity of an email address.

taken_username5• 9 years ago

Interesting thoughts. At least they can have a blacklist. Like every other websites that you can unsubscribe, it should be a way to unsubscribe from Amazon recruiters.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

Actually, they probably DO have a blacklist... the question is... what would it take to get put on it? Asking doesn't work... perhaps being aggressively, crazily bigoted and abusive?

walrus015• 9 years ago

If you have your own domain and run your own personal smtpd (example: postfix) properly set up for SPF and DKIM validation with opendkim, plus spamassassin, it is pretty easy to write a custom spamassassin rule for recruiter spam.

lago• 9 years ago

humble brag, move along

chickenfries• 9 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by developers complaining about recruiter spam.

joshstrange2• 9 years ago

Being contacted by a recruiter is nothing special or anything to brag about unless you get a personalized email. I have gotten maybe 2 personalized emails ever from a recruiter and in that case they were internal recruiters (not outsourced). They took the time to research me and mention specific project I've worked on. In this case it sounds like he was getting "cold-emails" which I get (and my co-workers) every week or two. I sympathize with the author, it's annoying to tell a company (TekSystems in my case) that I don't want to move and I'm only interested in specific jobs and a salary equal to or greater than X and then have them continue to call and email me with jobs where I'd make 1/3-1/2 less than I currently make (and I've told them how much I make).

laddng• 9 years ago

I kind of like to look at these kinds of posts as if it were a very attractive person complaining that so many people are hitting on them. There are a lot of people who would do anything to be in your position having recruiters constantly offering them interviews.

tankenmate• 9 years ago

When in fact it is a nuisance, this isn't really the kind of problem you want. You can only have one full time employment or contract at once (this is what recruiters want 99.99% of the time); ipso facto if you get these offers constantly you will turn down almost all of them. For me I've always relied on personal connections to guide me on whether I want to take an offer (for interview or job), regardless of whether I have had recruiters chasing me or not. If you are relying on personal connections to gather this information and/or offers then the recruiter adds very little value.

taken_username5• 9 years ago

To be clear I, the writer of the post, got my current job through a recruiter, and politely respond to all recruiters that I am not interested. But, if the same company keeps spamming me, and I keep asking them to add me to their blacklist, that another story.

antisthenes• 9 years ago

This problem you mention is easily solvable by having a dedicated email address for a job process, period.

That way you can safely forget about the existence of said email once you find a job.

parennoob• 9 years ago

To refine your analogy a bit, it's like a very attractive married person who has explicitly stated "I'm not interested" complaining about a lot of people hitting on them.

It's not something that the person being hit on necessarily wants.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

Being hit on by people who very well might say "oh, actually, you're kind of ugly" if they were to reply with some interest to boot.

ffef• 9 years ago

If only there was a way to filter emails you don't want to receive.

CaptSpify• 9 years ago

What bothers me is the fact that, on average, every three months they approach to the same potential passive candidate for the same type of position!

This isn't at all exclusive to Amazon. I get these all the time from other places. Bad recruiters abound inside and outside of Amazon

joshstrange2• 9 years ago

People in this thread complaining about "humble bragging", "You're lucky to get recruiter emails", "People wish they were in your position" are missing the point.

This is NOT a "All these amazing companies are trying to throw money at me but I don't want it" it's a "These people keep offering me a job I don't want, given their requirements, and I'm not at all guaranteed it even if I do accept their requirements". This is akin to getting credit card offers in the mail IMHO. Getting recruiter "spam" (calls or email) is 99.99% of the time NOT an indication that you are a great developer but rather you have made some sort of an email list.

Sure if companies were contacting me with better jobs that I currently have or jobs that I'm a shoe-in for (ie. they've done their research on me and they want ME not just someone who has certain keywords on their LinkedIn profile) then I'd be super happy and a blog post about that would be humble brag but this is different. These recruiters spam thousands of people with the same form-letter so they can pull in a handful and get a percentage of their salary for the first 3/6/12 months they are employed at their new job.

majormajor• 9 years ago

That's still not the complete picture.

My first job was at a company with no visibility to mainstream tech firms, doing relatively uninteresting stuff, getting paid far less. I had to do hours of LinkedIn homework and cold-applying to get any single interview, and that's still no guarantee of a job either.

Now I'm at somewhere with a recognizable name and I get recruiter emails quite frequently. I could set up an interview with a five minute phone call in response. Sure, any of those jobs may still be a bad fit, or I could fail the interview, but it's about 50x easier to even get to that stage now.

So if you're complaining about getting recruiter contacts, don't be surprised when the people not in that world have little sympathy.

(Amazon does seem particularly messy and disorganized, though. I get quite a few contacts from them from various departments in locations I've told them before (for other positions) that I'm not interested in...)

hyperpape2• 9 years ago

My company is not recognizable, and I get Amazon and IBM emails like clockwork.

hocuspocus2• 9 years ago

I'm not contacted more often than my friends working at completely unknown shops. A recognizable name sure helps, but unless it is clearly above the pack (and in the eyes of Amazon, there aren't that many companies), it really looks like it depends mostly on keywords and location.

FT_intern• 9 years ago

So this is how girls on Tinder feel.

serge2k• 9 years ago

No, Tinder matches first.

This is how girls on OkCupid feel.

logicallee• 9 years ago

You were downvoted, but yes it is and if you want to use this analogy for dating then this is the most important point in your parent comment:

Sure if companies were contacting me with better jobs that I currently have or jobs that I'm a shoe-in for (ie. they've done their research on me and they want ME not just someone who has certain keywords on their LinkedIn profile) then I'd be super happy

is exactly right. (The following is from the perspective of a woman, though I'm not one.) If a better man you're more interested in and who really is a match for you and interested in you, does the same same thing it is not creepy anymore. You can take this analogy very far. Whether you're bothering a girl or she's happy to hear from you depends on how great you are, not what exactly you do to reach out to her. You can really learn a lot from the parent comment, and your insight shouldn't be downvoted.

wnevets2• 9 years ago

"You're lucky to get recruiter emails"

If people actually want these emails just create a linkedin profile with development keywords in it.

autokad• 9 years ago

i doubt thats the case, I never get any except from Philadeplhia companies (I am in Philadelphia)

iSnow• 9 years ago

The thing is, back when I was looking for a good job, I would have killed for getting recruiter mails from Amazon. Today, they arrive every three months and I don't consider them any more. It's when companies like Atlassian who don't spam write that I take note.

But I can fully understand those who are at a different point in their carrier get angry about posts like this.

ctrl_freak• 9 years ago

This is so true. When I first moved to the Bay Area after finishing college, I was astounded by the amount of recruiter spam I got, but at the time I didn't recognize it as such. To someone who's never seen these before, the initial impression when you see these types of messages is, "Wow, look at all these different companies that want to hire me." Of course you know it's not an actual job offer, but you sort of think in your head, maybe I'll just have to come into the office and have a brief chat with some of the engineers, and then they'll hand me a formal job offer. Because clearly they already recognize your technical aptitude, since they're reaching out to you!

In actuality, once you decide to respond to one of them, you quickly realize that you're not fast-tracked in the application process in any way. Really, the only step that was skipped was that you didn't have to manually apply on the company website. In fact, the application process is usually longer and more difficult in Bay Area companies than elsewhere (at least in my experience), where it's typical to have to do

1. Initial phone call with recruiter 2. One or two algorithm interviews on the phone with an engineer 3. "Take home coding challenge" which they claim only takes an hour or two but often ends up taking you 4 or 5 hours because you don't want to submit subpar code 4. "On-site" interview that can take 4 or 5 hours

Meanwhile the recruiter has no problem lying through their teeth about the details of the role. Like, I've had a number of applications where I tell the recruiter I'm looking for a role that's math/ML focused, only to find out once I get to the final onsite that, no this is just a pure engineering role. They don't care how well your experience or interests fits with the role; all they want is for you to do the interview so their numbers look better.

zython• 9 years ago

What is the problem exactly ?

Dont want to recieve emails ? Filter them out.

Dont want to be hired by Amazon, send a restraining order and what not, contact their HR directly, or what not but ranting on medium will not solve the authors problem.

This makes me question if the author is secretly just clickbaiting for attention

taken_username5• 9 years ago

This is the author. I respond to every single Amazon recruiters and told them my reasons why I am not considering to work for Amazon (specifically, relocating). I posted online, because I believe Amazon deserves a better process for head hunting. Maybe it solve the problem, maybe not.

chias• 9 years ago

If you are responding to the emails and are looking for a practical way to (politely) express your frustration, consider CCing every Amazon recruiter who has contacted you on your "no thanks" emails to new Amazon recruiters. It may get a message across when your recruiter receives a response that they can see addressed to 20+ of their coworkers which begins "As I have expressed to your colleagues, [...]".

mabbo2• 9 years ago

It's the bullshit that gets me. The lies.

"I read your profile and I think you'd be perfect for this role" - Amazon recruiter, who didn't notice I'd stopped working at Amazon 4 weeks before, as clearly indicated on the profile they 'read'.

They aren't even outside of the norm. Technical recruiters are about 90% bullshitters who would say anything at all if it meant they got you into an interview. I'm with my current company in large part because our recruiter is in the other 10%.

vaishaksuresh• 9 years ago

I once got an email from a recruiter while I was still in the same company and had been there for almost a year.

bcbrown• 9 years ago

I once got an email from a recruiter, a week or so after phone screening for the exact same position, through the exact same recruiter.

Aloha2• 9 years ago

Yeah.

I got this.. about once a month when I worked for a major telecom.

rrrx3• 9 years ago

A friend of mine at my last job has had this happen often enough that it's become a goal to set up an interview with himself.

tlrobinson• 9 years ago

My favorites are the ones that reference my joke GitHub projects (like evil.css https://github.com/tlrobinson/evil.css/ ) as if they're the pinnacle of my achievements (I have actually worked on notable open source projects, but they're not hosted under my personal GitHub account...)

Facebook:

I came across your Github profile and I noticed your long-stack-traces and evil.css projects have been gaining quite some traction on Github.

Fitbit:

P.S. Cool to see long-stack-traces and evil-css getting some love!

unnnamed venture-funded startup:

I found your profile on Github and I like all the work you've done with JavaScript and node (and especially evil.css)

This one actually seemed genuine:

Oh man, I remember evil.css. A guy I used to work with set it as my Safari user stylesheet, then forgot about it. I don't use Safari all the time, so it took me a while to realize something was wrong, and even longer for that guy to remember what he'd done to my machine. So uh... thanks for that. :P

mabbo2• 9 years ago

But look, look, they did read something about you! They aren't 100% full of shit! It's an actual, personalized message and not 'hey {candidate_name}!'

foldr• 9 years ago

I don't see how that's so bad. They took a bit of time to mention some of your projects. Obviously they're not going to study them in detail.

walrus015• 9 years ago

Facebook:

I came across your Github profile and I noticed your ipv6 enabled goatse steganography projects have been gaining quite some traction on Github.

shortstuffsushi2• 9 years ago

This makes it SUPER obvious when they're lying, for me. My profile, at the end, if you press "read more," specifically says no Amazon recruiters. None of them read it. Ever. Or if they did, they specifically overlook it and don't acknowledge it in their spam mail.

The funny thing is that I've had several smaller / more local recruiters comment on it and laugh. They get a small amount of respect / hold my attention longer than the first line of the email.

If it was less than once every two weeks, it wouldn't be such a problem. Heck, once in three months like in the article sounds like a huge improvement. They are seriously relentless.

xenadu022• 9 years ago

I just switched jobs 5 months back and a Pandora recruiter emailed me a few days after Pandora announced layoffs.

a) Emailing people that just switched jobs is a waste; most people will stay a year at least.

b) Who wants to go work for a company that is having layoffs?

Fortunately I'm happy where I am now but I was astounded at the brazenness.

walrus015• 9 years ago

""I read your profile and I think you'd be perfect for this role""

example: You're a freebsd/netbsd/openbsd sysadmin with a CCNP and some asshat is trying to recruit you for a front end HTML5/CSS UI/UX designer position. Seriously. Jesus christ.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

Just try actually going to one of those interviews and then turning down the job offer sometime. Recruiters go absolutely feral when that happens.

blazespin• 9 years ago

Do what I do. Just accept it, let them fly you in, enjoy a day of a nice hotel and some interviews. I'm not particularly serious about accepting, but they don't seem serious about listening to me so, hell, I just gave up and enjoy the ride.

Make sure you keep your receipts and bill them, though. Eat out at a nice restaurant!

And if you flub the interviews, who cares. It's great practice.

jcadam3• 9 years ago

I've discovered my secret to doing well on interviews is to not give a shit. No idea why it works.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

In-person interactions inherently come with a litany of drawbacks due to the fact that we're human beings. One of them is that confidence makes you look better than nervousness or any kind of desire (certainly better than desperation). That's regardless of your skills. Other irrelevant things like how tall you are, how symmetric your face and dress is, how charismatic you are, etc all take precedence. Even if you're aware of these flaws in yourself, and attempt to compensate for them, you will fail. Not giving a shit would be a great strategy. As would being tall.

walrus015• 9 years ago

This guy's a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

andrewstuart• 9 years ago

The reason they do it is because it works.

metaphorm• 9 years ago

but does it work better than any number of other strategies they might use? maybe the reason they do it is because they're not very good at recruiting and just go with an obvious method that isn't completely ineffective.

monster_group• 9 years ago

I don't mind getting such emails. Every now on then there's a free happy hour invitation in them. I try to attend as many as I can. Usually they are good opportunities to see what companies in town are up to (and of course free beer and snacks). Some manager at the happy hour ends up asking me 'Why are you looking for a change?' to which I reply 'I am not. Your company invited me so I came. Now it is up to you to convince me to interview for your company'.

otakucode7• 9 years ago

"Make game of that which makes as much of thee."

Words to live by. I am considering getting them as my first tattoo at 38.

anon987• 9 years ago

Recruiters are salespeople. Treat them as such.

b_t_s• 9 years ago

Yea, Amazon's the most spammy of any known company, but the one that really blows me away is Apple. They occasionally send me recruiter spam at my work email. The work email that they got from its team membership in my employer's iOS developer account. That's pretty brazen.

shortstuffsushi2• 9 years ago

To be fair, this seems like a decent idea for recruitment. Someone with an active iOS developer account is a good deal more likely to be a "real" developer than a random LinkedIn crawl. That's still pretty shady, though.

xenadu022• 9 years ago

I have had a developer account for many years. That account is a member of several teams. I also have other unrelated developer accounts. None of them have ever gotten recruiting spam. I have never even heard of recruiting spam via this channel.

I don't know how a recruiter got your email but I doubt it was by trolling registered developers. If so they violated Apple's policies.

cableshaft• 9 years ago

Weird. I've only been contacted by Apple recruiters once, and I've had a iOS Developer account with them for years. It seemed pretty clear that they encountered my profile on LinkedIn, too, based on the message.

I wasn't a good fit for that particular team at the time, but it would be nice if they ever tried again. I'm not in the valley, though, so that's probably why they don't contact me very often. Google and Amazon try to get in touch with me a lot more often than they do.

astdb• 9 years ago

From what I hear, Amazon and AWS have totally different cultures (AWS being much better)

andrewguenther• 9 years ago

This has been my experience as well.

pfarnsworth• 9 years ago

I've threatened spamming recruiters with the CANSPAM act. I have no idea if I have a legal ground to do it, but it certainly stopped these particular recruiters from contacting me again, at least for now.

porpoisemonkey2• 9 years ago

I've got a bit of a different tactic you might take if the CANSPAM thing stops working. I keep a copy of a form letter on Google Drive that I send back on any suggestion of a "job opportunity" on LinkedIn.

>> START FORM <<<

Hi <name>,

Thank you for thinking of me for this opportunity. In order to save you time, I've created an initial checklist of information that I’ve found to be useful for evaluating whether I’d be a good fit for your position:

* What is the pay scale for the position? (If the pay is based on the resume of the candidate - what is the highest pay scale that the company could offer?)

* What is the name of the company?

* What is the title of the position?

* Does this position allow for remote work?

* What technologies and tools do the company use? (If unknown, leave blank.)

* Is there a job posting I can refer to for required/desired skills for the position so that I can make sure I'm a good match?

With the additional context provided by these questions I can give you a definitive answer on whether I’d be a good match to your position.

>> END FORM <<<

It's a bit of an obnoxious thing to do but most of the non-affiliated recruiters will give up at the outset to avoid the chance of someone applying at the company behind their back (and thereby eliminating their hiring bonus payday) and corporate recruiters will often stop after they find out they can't satisfy my job environment requirements.

Aloha2• 9 years ago

I pulled this a lot - I just totally refused to move forward without the name of the company - if you want my resume, you need to tell me who you want me to work for.

lowmagnet• 9 years ago

You can turn on the gmail canned response experiment for even more convenient deploy of your message.

taken_username5• 9 years ago

Is your checklist copyrighted? Can I use it?

cwmma2• 9 years ago

Usually I ignore recruiter spam, but a while back I got this one that started off with the line

I recently came across your blog (one picture of your cat had me dying).

I'm fairly certain the recruiter did not read the whole blog post [1] because it is a eulogy for my dead cat. Normally I'm fairly calm and try to be understanding and empathetic especially for people just doing their job, but this put me in such a white hot rage. Not only did I email the recruiter back telling them off, but this was the kind of rage where you are no longer acting impulsively, but have come back around the other side to being calm and rational in your rage, so I tracked them down on google, figured out who their boss was and CC'd them on it. I felt a little bad about it, latter I've had shitty sales jobs too, but man rule 1 page 1 of bland icebreaker email openers has got to be 'make sure it's not a god damn eulogy'.

1. http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/94533627852/a-thousand-days-of...

ben174• 9 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something. Why did you get angry at the recruiter for complimenting a picture of your cat? The recruiter clearly saw you have affection for your cat and was trying to be personable and pay respect to your late furry friend.

DashRattlesnake• 9 years ago

The recruiter clearly saw you have affection for your cat and was trying to be personable and pay respect to your late furry friend.

No, I don't think the recruiter clearly saw anything. It sounds like it was sloppily added bit of personalization that anyone who wasn't carelessly hasty would have avoided.

I mean, would you cold call someone for a job and casually throw in a mention of their mother's death (to be a bit more extreme)?

eganist• 9 years ago

"had me dying" is usually an expression meaning something equivalent to "rofl."

So it's fine to say you found a picture of the op's now deceased cat to be amusing and adorable, but maybe don't use the word "dying" in the context of a dead cat.

cwmma2• 9 years ago

It didn't really come across that way, the choice of words in particular. Also remember, I had gone to the trouble of writing a blog post about my cat dying and it was (at the time) the most recent post on my site, that should have told her that it happened recently (or it was still raw enough that I had intentionally been not posting to my blog because I thought that bumping her off the front page would somehow disrespect her memory) and they also might have guessed that the cat this might not have been a case of the cat dying of old age considering it was entitled '1000 days of Kublai'.

Edit: wording

dennisgorelik2• 9 years ago

figured out who their boss was and CC'd them on it

The boss probably had a good laugh about that botched personalization of recruiter's message.

By the way, without reading your post it is hard to figure out that your post is a eulogy for your dead cat.

jaypaulynice• 9 years ago

Worst a recruiter can do is call your company's main line and ask to speak to you (found your name on LinkedIn). And then they're like: "Hi Jay, how are you?" like you're best buddies.

jcadam3• 9 years ago

I'll often respond to a recruiter with "Does this position support remote work? I don't want to relocate." You know, on the off-chance I can land me one of those mythical work-from-home jobs.

Most of them don't even bother to write back.

partycoder• 9 years ago

Well, the recruiting process is a funnel.

You will not have a big output at the end of the funnel if the input isn't big itself.

So they want as much people as possible going through that process. Each step needs to be cost-efficient enough as well.

cmpxchg8b• 9 years ago

I interviewed at Amazon once. A few months later, I was contacted by another recruitment agency completely unrelated to Amazon, using the custom email address I'd registered only with Amazon (I use it to catch people selling my email addresses).

I asked the recruiter contact at Amazon why they had sold my resume/details, or if they had a security issue. Of course they said they'd look into it (still waiting for that response a few years later...).

It is shocking that a company of Amazon's size with so much confidential information can't keep a hold on private recruitment data. I refuse to interview with them again based upon their complete disregard for my personal information.

joelgrus• 9 years ago

I interviewed at Amazon (bad experience), got rejected (long story), and then TWO MONTHS LATER got contacted by an Amazon recruiter: "We need people like you!"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Terr_• 9 years ago

Rejected after a full day of interviews, contacted by no fewer than six different Amazon recruiters in the next three months.

Honestly it makes Amazon look bad, because it implies they're both disorganized and desperate for warm bodies.

jorblumesea• 9 years ago

I really hate how easily they just waste your time.

Amazon recruiter: "Hey let's set up a call"

call happens, then they actually check into my background

Amazon recruiter: "uhh let me check on some things and call you back".

Never hear back. Just the blatant brazenness and stupidity of the entire exercise. You had time to coordinate and schedule a call out of my and your day, but couldn't even be bothered to look into my skills for 5 minutes? How does this help you recruit? How does this help Amazon? Like I get it, I don't have the pedigree of a Google background, cool, why even bother with a call?

otakucode7• 9 years ago

While Amazon has a lot of tech and Internet savvy individuals, and Bezos himself is quite sharp, they also have a large cadre of business executives who come from decidedly non-tech backgrounds like Walmart and similar. This is the case in a great many, if not the majority, of large "tech" companies. These executives are the ones who talk out one side of their mouth about wanting "the best and the brightest" and "doing great things" but out the other side of their mouth stick to "best practices" and "proven methods." They are the ones who block remote work. They're the ones who ignore the research and push open floor plans and put emphasis on the number of hours a person works rather than the fruits of their work, load days with meetings and interruptions, etc.

They're the ones who have a wealth of knowledge about business management practices. Business management practices developed for manufacturing. And never adapted to address thought-work. In Amazons case, this leads to them having a great deal of policies that are hostile to tech workers. A coworker of mine who has several kids was talking with Amazon and even considering the move to Seattle. But then he asked them about the work schedule. They were not coy. They let him know in no uncertain terms that he would be expected to work very long hours in perpetuity, and that if he desired "free time" to be with his family, he was 'not a good fit'.

These practices lead Amazon to churn through people very quickly, leading to their constant need for more people, driving their recruiters to become proficient spammers.

paxunix• 9 years ago

That is terrible. It's extremely team-dependent at Amazon, whether you get the "you have to work long hours forever" team or the "I don't care if you put in your timeoff, just live your life outside of work while still getting your shit done" team. There are many possibilities, and recruiters aren't trying to match on what's important to you as a candidate, they're trying to fill the square hole with any peg they can.

hocuspocus2• 9 years ago

I first interviewed with Amazon two years ago, and I got no offer. It was a good experience but it just felt (both to me and to the hiring manager) that I interviewed with the wrong team. One month later, a different business held another recruiting event in the city where I lived then, which would have been a much better match, but whatever.

Since then I've been contacted from time to time. I initiated the process with a team coming to Berlin in December. I should've known better and asked them right away about other teams coming in town later :) My mistake. Anyway the first message I got was slightly inaccurate about the job location, but I decided to give it a try. I took their automated online assignment (no, not the infamous proctor.io one they give to interns/entry-levels), did well (it was reasonable), then had a call with the technical recruiter and was left to set the interview date with the recruiting event coordinator.

A couple days later, not one, but two managers from AWS contact me on LinkedIn to tell me about an upcoming recruiting event in Berlin. I reply to the first one, tell him upfront I started the process with another business team already, but that AWS would be a better match (given the job location, and I'm not going to lie, AWS are the cool kids and I like their products). He says there's no problem, I can cancel my interviews with the other team, and just transfer the process to the AWS recruiting event. So I tried to do that.

The recruiting event is going on as we speak, I believe. I'm still waiting for the AWS technical recruiter to get in touch. I reminded the manager 3 times and eventually gave up. Sorry Amazon, I'm not that desperate. I'm not a fan of companies that have a generic interviewing process, no matter the team you're applying for. I think it makes sense that each business team is running its own recruiting pipeline. But come on, you can do a better job than that.

Chyzwar• 9 years ago

No, remote work would not work for Amazon. There is synchronisation cost that you need to pay when working local+remote. For large organisation it is already hard to get anything done (politics/security/bullshit/ego).

Cold email/call is really successful strategy. There nothing unusual about getting hundreds of emails. For requiters is better to send 40 cold emails than one crafted and build upon relationship.

Finally as a receiver you can still benefit. Because you can send cold responses. You directly ask about compensation. You can instruct requiters to search for specific technology/team/location. There is plenty of more shady uses.. baiting/bidding/spying etc..

zeveb• 9 years ago

I'm conflicted. OTOH I have no desire to move most places jobs would like me to move (I like the culture and people where I live, and generally don't elsewhere), and the best years of my life were spent on an all-remote team. But …

Y'see, the most productive years of my life have been spent with on-site teams. We've often had some remote teammates, and uniformly they have been less productive and less connected than the on-site folks (despite being excellent colleagues and hard workers). I think that digital connexion really isn't the same as analogue connexion, in much the same way that an ereader isn't as good as a book. I wish that weren't the case; I really do. But I think that it's true, regardless of my wishes.

Now, as an employer would I rather have the very best talent working remotely, and hence less productively, or not as good talent working on-site, and hence productively? I don't know the answer to that.

Should employers be flexible about remote working (e.g. WFH, even medium-term remote working)? Definitely. Should they bring full-time remote workers onsite regularly? Definitely. If you're saving $10,000/year on office space, you can spend $4,000/year on quarterly trips to bring folks in for a few days.

I Am a Recruiter (a.k.a Spammer) at Amazon

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