BrandonWatson

It being 2 pages is a cultural vestige - that was my point.

When you think about the resume, it's a terrible representation of you and what you can do in a work place. If a human is to look for a summary, sure, 2 pages is great, but when developers have things like github repos, what do other workers have?

The sum total of work for a marketer or ops engineer etc is harder to contain in a resume, much less an easily shareable thing.

We can do better. This is a space I care about deeply.

It's slightly different than that.

It's the low "cost" of publishing a job post to various boards, and the low "cost" of applying to jobs that are posted.

The combinatorial math has exploded the number of applicants per position, but the talent pool has not expanded by that much.

The net result is companies are abdicating agency to ATS systems in an effort to filter the "best" resumes.

Candidates are responding by feeling disillusioned by the ghosting, non-responses, and 400 applications within 24 hours to any new job posting.

There's a huge difference between objective measures and skill sets, and how effective someone is in performing work. This is why leet code tests often fail to truly identify the best talent. Working in teams, problem solving, etc are harder to suss out with leet code test or checkboxes. This is why person to person interviews are so effective (caveat: when performed by trained interviewers who are held accountable by a good process)

I've built tech around this. Spent a ton of time here. It's shockingly good, provided your process of using the LLMs is sound. I had built demo tech to solve the problem of helping candidates improve their answers. Turns out that's a narrow and difficult market to reach.

That said, the workflow and analysis is still live with a demo site:

https://www.loopalla.com/demo

Have a look at two interview analysis reports. The interviews were actual Q&A from a free coaching call I did. I have a very large video library of mock interviews that I have been using to fine tune and test.

I have long said with my customers that the #1 job of the interview loop is to answer the following question: can this candidate do this job at this company and likely exceed expectations?

It's surprising how many companies are bad at the interviewing process. How bad they are at the eval process (resume and interviews). It's still giving vitamin and not painkiller vibes though.

I have been working in this space for the last few years as an indie hacker solopreneur. I'm currently working through customer discovery on this exact problem (eval candidates more effectively) and if you (or a delegate) could make time, I would really appreciate it.

Me. I am building and releasing in this space.

I have a tool that I "shipped" as demo-ward (loopalla.com) but pivoted to HiredUpon to focus higher in the funnel.

I want to rejigger the tech I built for Loopalla. I would love to do a customer discovery call with you if you would be willing. I am an ex-AMZN director. I have a AMZN style working backward FAQ doc ready to go to drive the call. I want to humanize hiring, ironically by using tech. :)

I have already built HiredUpon and InterviewAt. I have been focused on this space as ex-AMZN, ex-MSFT, ex-startup, etc for the last 3 years.

My experience with ATS systems shows that there is room for improvement.

If there are any decision makers on this thread with whom I could do a customer discovery call, I would appreciate it. Please raise your hand and I will schedule.

I have an AMZN style FAQ working backwards document already completed. I want to humanize hiring and change how candidates and companies meet in the marketplace.

Here's a fun fact: resumes are limited to 1 page (2 front and back) because of the staple. Candidate's didn't want to risk losing a page on submission, and HR departments hated removing the staple when they shredded docs.

So, because of the lowly staple, we still have the high information inefficient resume as a digital representation when applying to jobs.

We can do better. I want to build something to do better.

I've worked with Dave before. He will in fact implement ask the things in a very short period of time. We used to talk about him as the master of spinning developer plates.

I for one would love to see a $$ breakdown of what is being proposed here. This is the one thing I find always catches people out. That, and some of the default aws options which aren't necessary but can really run up the $$ intentionally.

This is very helpful - thanks for taking some time to respond.

Do you mind if I ask follow up question? Are the feedback/forms internally developed or part of an ATS?

Are you having these forms filled out post interview, and discussed in the room/driving the meeting?

Do you mind if I ask a follow up? Do you feel that the breakdown with recruiters is because there is not an easy way to present as "suitable" for a role?

At the risk of leading to an answer, do you think that this is related to the information density constraints of a resume and linkedin profile, and the additional risk that a recruiter cannot do much to parse a GitHub repo?

Also, when these recruiters are reaching out to you, what is your experience of split between external firm vs internal FTE at target company?

I have been doing free mock interviews for the last 2 years at InterviewAt. My free calendar is booked out to end of June, but I do have a ton of mock interviews available on the YouTube channel. These have my inputs as to how candidates can perform better through the lens of a former senior exec from AMZN, MSFT, ORCL and multiple startups. I want to help.

I'm going to do all of you a favor - this is one of the greatest stories ever. EBUG from just 2 years ago.

Here's the incident as it happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0JTRm-wf2E&ab_channel=Slick...

The EBUG was the zamboni driver for the home team junior team. And also a practice goalie. He comes out in helmet, pads and breezers (pants) of the home team, and even skates to the wrong goal because...wrong team. And plays half the game.

Then Steve Dangle melts down. He's on Sportsnet in Canada. He's a die hard Leafs (home team) fan. He's even written a book about how the Leafs have ruined his life. His video is epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnQ0dcaBUI&ab_channel=Steve...

I don't have time to look for it but David Ayers's wife (the EBUG) was on twitter and live tweeting the experience. It was nuts.

Here's a 1 year later retrospective on Sportsnet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsjBr6rKEuU&ab_channel=SPORT...

This will be a very underappreciated observation.

Impacted iOS Kindle users ... We had an oopsie.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/bug-i...

Customer fears were far worse than reality, but my management team (up to and including JeffB) we're not amused.

To the extent that this is helpful for those looking - I am still doing COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE interview prep. Go to InterviewAt.com to sign up. I also have real mock interview questions with answer analysis on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2iE212r3dOKTfnOdNGboig

To the extent that I can be helpful, I've been doing FREE behavioral interview prep through InterviewAt[dot]com. I'm ex-AMZN ex-MSFT executive and have run many large teams and been on hundred of hiring loops at all levels. I have a YT channel under that name as well with examples. Happy to help out.

Yeah, I'm wish it were that simple with the Bezos emails. :)

We've all been there. You do the loop and the feedback you get from the recruiter/hiring manager is binary Yes || No. And when it's a No, you get one of the two types of feedback:

1) Sorry, you didn't get it 2) None

This has to stop, and I'm trying to solve this problem. I stood up InterviewAt at the beginning of the COVID pandemic as a way to help folks who were being displaced. The service is up and running, and I'm still doing the mock interview sessions free of charge.

I already knew that there is no great feedback mechanism and I wanted to improve on that, but I also discovered there is no great resource for learning from actual interviews for professional roles. How many of you have actually sat in on a VP Engineering interview? Or seen a great Sr PM interview? These are real interviews for people preparing for interviews for real roles.

I've also started a YouTube channel where I will be posting interview segments with analysis and assessment. I've been an exec at MSFT, AMZN, and ORCL, and have run my own startups with exits. I'm doing this as a new company I've started this year because I feel it's really important so that we can all learn and get better from the feedback that you wish you had received when you looped for a role.

Feedback is welcomed, but if you have an upcoming interview or what to get real, executive level feedback on how you show up in an interview, please give us a look.

(posted this on ShowHN last week)

I was on track to have this paid service offering launched in the coming weeks, but the economic uncertainty brought on by COVID caused me to rethink the go to market plan.

I iterated quickly on something I could offer to those in need now and in the coming weeks. This is one way I can give back.

If you have been impacted and will be, or is already scheduled to, interviewing soon, I want to help. If you know someone for whom this would be helpful, please share.

https://www.interviewat.com/prep-service-special-offer

Any and all feedback welcome

I was on track to have this paid service offering launched in the coming weeks, but the economic uncertainty brought on by COVID caused me to rethink the go to market plan.

I iterated quickly on something I could offer to those in need now and in the coming weeks. This is one way I can give back.

If you have been impacted and will be, or is already scheduled to, interviewing soon, I want to help. If you know someone for whom this would be helpful, please share.

Any and all feedback welcome.

I'm an ex pretty sr level exec at a few of those FAANG companies (we'll add an M on there to make that true). I transitioned out in 2016 to redesign my path and optimize for my quality of life. It's been the best decision I could have possibly made, though I'm not sure I could have made it earlier since the hindsight afforded by being in my 40s allowed for a far greater understanding of what was important than if I had tried the same thing in my 30s. That's a data set of 1.

I wrote about this transition (9 min read): https://medium.com/@brandonwatson/designing-the-life-you-wan...

I ended up in a very unexpected work situation which I am finding is exposing many interesting opportunities related to the potential for ex-FAANG folks that they may never have considered. If we all agree that software is eating the world, imagine what an unbelievably unfair advantage a FAANG-capable tech leader (or product leader) could have working as a leader inside of traditionally non-tech, smaller companies in industries not yet assaulted by tech workers.

This is the entire premise of why I joined the private equity firm at which I now work. To find people like me and get them plugged into our portfolio companies as leaders and support the hell out of them as the control investor. To innovate with our portfolio to give their employees unfair competitive advantage in their industry.

Chasing unicorns is all fine and good. The growth equity companies we target are already making money and we want them to grow faster. The risk of company failure is much lower when you have profits, and the risk of dilution to the employees goes way down when you aren't constant chasing funding. Many of the companies that we would target for investment would have no idea how to recruit an ex-FAANG, much less fully utilize them. That's my role across our portfolio.

To any FAANG-capable mid and senior leaders who want to learn more, reach out to me. I'm easy to find, eager to talk to you, and have a very heavy belief in the notion that you can design the life you want while working on interesting companies and still achieving the financial outcomes that are commensurate with your potential in FAANG.

There's a great scene from the show Modern Family where one of the parents threatens to ground the kid by taking away their iPad. The child's response was perfect: "that's going to affect you way more than it affects me."

Back in 2006 I cofounded a company called IMSafer. My co-founders went on to be S09 class with Y!Combinator.

We grew up as hackers and thought we could end around the problem of kids removing safe guards to our software. What we quickly found was that (surprising no one at all, least of all us) kids have way more time on their hands and are willing to expend way more energy to remove blockers than parents do to enforce them.

It's a tricky issue - kids and online. We actively encouraged parents to have dialog with their kids about what they were doing online. The issue we were attempting to solve was keeping bad people out of the child's social networks. All of the other solutions were, and still do, focus on keeping porn off the computer. That's a doomed system. Parents need to be involved and have a on-going dialog. I believed it when we founded IMSafer 13 years ago, and I believe it now (as a parent with 3 kids, two of them teenagers).

Our service did a lot of very novel things for the time (machine based analysis of chat conversations looking for patterns of predation), but I continue to be amazed at how much energy we put into the "but my kids keep uninstalling it" problem. We came up with some pretty good solutions, which were P95 effective, but (again, surprising no one on the technical team) the kids who figured out how to circumvent came up with some pretty amazing solves.

The most impressive was this one kid who basically took over their parent's account, gave themselves admin access, set their parents to minimal access, but then changed specific .exe file pointers to give the parents the perception that they still had admin access to their machine when they were trying to run applications.

Sorry for the late reply. The template is more formatting than anything else. The core questions:

1) What is in this doc? What decision do we need to make? 2) Why is this important? 3) Who is the customer for this solution? 4) How have others tried to or solved this and how were their solutions insufficient? 5) How are we planning on solving this? 6) specifics 7) What options have we considered and thrown out? 8) What resources are required? 9) What are the one-way doors in this plan? (meaning: what decisions cannot be undone) 10) Timing?

If you come prepared, it's not as bad as you think. Being stack ranked +you're not in the room for that) can lead to stress though. I would say my experiences at MSFT under Gates and Ballmer for stack ranking felt far more capricious than at AMZN.

Always appreciate the reminder. I'm answering questions at a high level and hoping to share the learning from my time at AMZN. Anything confidential will remain as such.

Genuinely added value. I was firmly in the "NO" camp when I got to AMZN. Writing was something that people who didn't understand hustle did. :)

What I found, over time, was that the exercise of writing forces critical thinking. PowerPoint is corporate theater. Very easy to convince with your voice instead of facts, logic, data, and insight.

There were certainly times where I felt that the doc process was used unnecessarily as a blunt cudgel, but for the big decisions, and the planning process, it was incredibly helpful. As I have transitioned to working with companies as an investor, advisor, and board member, I have continued to use the templated FAQ docs for driving decisions. I am starting to get my teams to use them for board meetings.

I ran Kindle software Product Management for 3 years. Left in 2014

AMA about the memo process or OP1/OP2 process.