Anyone wants to know about Amazon recruitment

xji

I will try my best to answer any questions. I hope more Chinese from Australia can work here. I may reply a bit slow and in English but I will try my best. Good luck.

NOTE: all I speak is from my personal understanding and experience. I do not speak for the company.

NoChoice

how was the interview process? what type of questions they ask?

hc9004

Terrific, always welcome someone stand up to do something for our fellows.

are you the employee of Amazon or HR?

点滴

what sorts of questions they normally asked and what kind of background requirement need to be matched?

xji

NoChoice 发表于 2012-11-28 09:37
how was the interview process? what type of questions they ask?

This is only true for Sydney recruitment for SDE roles.

They will fly you to Sydney for a whole-day interview. You will normally be interviewed by 4-5 different engineers. All technical questions from simple coding-on-paper tasks to algorithm descriptions orally to large distribution system designs. You may be interviewed by one HR but not necessary. Normally towards the end of the day you will get a sense whether they like you or not. Then there will be a manager phone interview on next few days. Not big deal. This is just for the manager to introduce the team and the role to you. Then you will get the offer.

You don't need to answer correctly for all of the questions in one go. But communication along the way is very important. Show them passion that you are keen to learn to eager to get onboard. Then you should be fine.

xji

hc9004 发表于 2012-11-28 09:47
Terrific, always welcome someone stand up to do something for our fellows.

are you the employee of  ...

I am just a SDE. So what I say is just from my own experience, what I got interviewed, what I see from inside the company. I don't speak for any formal HR or for the company.

hc9004

   

what's SDE

xji

点滴 发表于 2012-11-28 09:55
what sorts of questions they normally asked and what kind of background requirement need to be match ...

This depends on what role you are interviewed. Now they are extensively hiring people for:

1. AWS - right now the fastest growing team. Terrific learning opportunity. Great place to be.
2. Kindle - high profit product.

I am not sure how they filter CVs. You can from any background as long as you are smart and open to learn. But  CS and EE background is most common. For Sydney interviews, I think it is mostly for SDE roles so a CS background should be considered relevant. In Seattle, they are hiring various types, from finance to accounting to warehouse management to engineering.

xji

hc9004 发表于 2012-11-28 10:06
what's SDE

Software Engineering Developer. This is the most common technical role in Amazon. There are I, II, III levels and then principal and Snr principal. If you are not graduates, you should all get SDE II as the entry level. Then progress from there.

bmatt

好啊好啊。。请问.NET的有机会不~~

xji

bmatt 发表于 2012-11-28 10:11
好啊好啊。。请问.NET的有机会不~~

In Amazon, officially you can use whatever language your team chooses to use. So if you can find a team using .NET, I guess the answer will be yes. However, most teams here use open source softwares so you will find python teams, ruby teams, java teams, C/C++ teams but not many .NET teams.

In the codebase, C/C++ and Java are the languages for most code. However, C/C++ are mostly for the historical codebase. Currently Java is the most popular language here. Spring framework is widely used. Hadoop is the map-reduce implementation. Since Amazon is basically a giant web service company, so distribution system concept and map-recude are everywhere, no matter what team you are in and what feature you are developing.

acesoft

thanks for sharing...

screen168

Can I ask if you send your CV to them directly or via recruit agent or they approach you directly ?
thanks

DoubleU

西雅图气候如何？

whitecats

xji 发表于 2012-11-28 10:10
Software Engineering Developer. This is the most common technical role in Amazon. There are I, II, ...

good on you LZ,

Great team to work in.

Heaps of opportunities...

What about the remuneration? One of my friend joined lately, heard from him the local pay in OZ is not that good, so AWS has to give signing bonus to match.

xji

screen168 发表于 2012-11-28 15:23
Can I ask if you send your CV to them directly or via recruit agent or they approach you directly ?
...

You can send CV to Amazon's recruitment website. I know that they approach people in Australia via LinkedIn. So have a LinkedIn profile definitely helps. The biggest resource for new hires is actually internal referral. So if you know someone in Amazon, ask them to refer you is the best way.

xji

DoubleU 发表于 2012-11-28 15:29
西雅图气候如何？

Seattle rains! When it is raining, you will get wet and you will hate it! I promise. But when it is not raining, you will love the city. When it is sunny, it is even more beautiful than Melbourne (I am from Melbourne and I know how beautiful Melbourne is). Overall, the weather here is quite similar to Melbourne, but only more rainy.

screen168

xji 发表于 2012-11-28 16:09
You can send CV to Amazon's recruitment website. I know that they approach people in Australia via ...

Haha, can you refer me ?  Just kidding.
Do they have local office here  or need relocate to USA?

xji

whitecats 发表于 2012-11-28 15:43
good on you LZ,

Great team to work in.

I am not sure what your friend told you. Here in Amazon, you get paid from multiple sources and depending on your level, the proportions of different sources vary. For SDE II, the main income is base salary. It will be around $100K to $130K I guess. Then there is sign up bonus, around $30K, split into two parts, one paid when you are onboard, the other paid at 12th month. Then there is the Restricted Stock Unit (RSU). You probably will get around 100-500 RSU. You can cash out gradually within the first 4 years. Also, you get a generous relocation plan, which covers all you need very well. Amazon also gives you a free public transport card so you don't need to pay bus/tram at all. They give you private medical insurance, which you WILL NEED if you live in US. That is ALL you expect to get. Amazon doesn't provide free snacks, drinks, lunch, phone, Internet, childcare, et al. They save this so they can sell things to customers in low price and keep their business growing fast. It makes sense to me.

Then every April you will get performance review and they will promote you (not sure how this works yet) and they may give you extra RSU, which then again can be cashed out gradually (again, not sure how this works yet).

So if you are a SDE II, I guess in the first 4 years on average you will get around $140-150K all-in-all, very roughly speaking.

xji

screen168 发表于 2012-11-28 16:20
Haha, can you refer me ?  Just kidding.
Do they have local office here  or need relocate to USA?

I think if you google it, they do have some AWS people located in Sydney. But I have no idea how big the department is and what kind of people they are looking for. Other than AWS, I think you need to be relocated to US in order to join the rest of the team.

I am not sure whether they require Australian Citizenship or not. But I think they will do H1B as well as E3 working visa, which means you can be a Chinese passport holder.

Think twice when you want to apply. That does mean your husband/wife is going to give up his/her job and try to find new job in Seattle, which may not be an easy thing if he or she is not doing IT. To me, family income is more important, unless you get paid higher enough to cover his or her part.

whitecats

xji 发表于 2012-11-28 16:22
I am not sure what your friend told you. Here in Amazon, you get paid from multiple sources and de ...

Thank you for your reply.
Congrats again, good on you LZ, see ya at Amazon

回头望

美国工资果然挺好啊，物价又低，天堂啊

oldqin

美国干it的工资好太多了！

Emma888

Any job on purchasing or supply chain field in amazon.com

xji

Emma888 发表于 2012-11-28 18:44
Any job on purchasing or supply chain field in amazon.com

That I am not sure. You can go to the career page on Amazon.com and find out yourself.

audream

E3的话会问是否有移民倾向吗？

粤式烧鸭

3000 P/E rate, share price went up 4 times in 5 years - no, but thanks no, I will never send my CV to a company like this.

xxmplus

Emma888 发表于 2012-11-28 18:44
Any job on purchasing or supply chain field in amazon.com

有，内部网上贴的到处都是

chenzx

请问LZ AMAZON在墨尔本IT的工作机会多吗？ 谢谢

seabookf_91

xji 发表于 2012-11-28 09:02
This is only true for Sydney recruitment for SDE roles.

They will fly you to Sydney for a whole- ...

The interview is tough. Not that simple.