Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

Alternate Titles:

• Interviewing @ Amazon
• Disruptive Change
• Make Them Come To You So You Can Come To Them
• So That’s Why They Booked Me For Two Nights
• Sleepless ’cause of Seattle

So, a little eCommerce company in Seattle, WA found my résumé online. They decided they wanted to interview me. Though the word eCommerce is a little passé, I figured that since this was the granddaddy of all eCommerce sites, that I should humour them. At the absolute least, it’s, in many ways, an honour to have them wanting to interview me, and it’s good interview practice. Practice interviews are a great way to keep my interview muscles in shape and keep a finger on the pulse of my industry. On a more positive note, I’ve been in the mood for disruptive change… this is better than normal when I’m a bit stir-crazy with my life… I normally tend to like destructive change… maybe I’ve matured.

I figure, at absolute worst, I don’t get an offer, and my ego is taken down a notch or 50. Another ‘bad’ outcome is that we need to decide whether to keep our current, good life, or attempt to make another good life with the backing of an awesome job.

Thursday, August 11th, I did a phone screen with Scott, a Two-Pizza-Team Lead (TPTL). Apparently the company is organized around highly empowered teams of about 3-7 people… the number of people that can be fed with two large pizzas… I didn’t mention to them that I know some TPTs that could consist of one or two people. Scott asked me some technical questions relating to trees and dictionaries, as well as other questions relating to scalability. I think my main issue was that I wasn’t confident enough in my answers. Sometimes being uncertain yet confident is necessary.

Apparently, that went well, since I talked to Ann on Friday, August 12th. I forget what questions she asked me, but I remember that I quite enjoyed talking to her. It was one of the most relaxed difficult interviews I’ve ever had. She gave me homework: write an LRU cache. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be. In the end, I submitted 299 lines of code, comments, and whitespace.

Apparently, despite my lack of expertise in threading and locking (though, I’m used to non-thread speed race conditions working in the finance industry), it was good enough to take it to the next level.

I talked to the Talent Acquisition specialist, and determined that it would be worth making a visit.

Interviews were scheduled for Friday, August 19th. Flew out Thursday, landed in Seattle, and arrived at the hotel about 22:00. I’m scheduled to return Friday night. Impressively The W is a swank hotel. Stylin. The taxi ride was nice. Seattle’s a pretty city at night. I should note that this is my first trip to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been to Vancouver / Victoria before, but Canadians consider that the Pacific Southwest, so that doesn’t count.

Figured that it wasn’t worth trying to do anything with the remaining hours of my day other than unpacking, charging random devices, and getting a good night’s sleep before the interview the next day. On the topic of devices, buying an iPod Shuffle was well, well worth it. Having a soundtrack again is nice.

Back to the hotel. The bed was comfy. Probably the first bed that I’ve said that about since we splurged on a good mattress a few years ago.

Woke up. Not yet light outside. Decided that I should sleep more. Woke up a bit later. Now it’s light out, so even though my 8:00 alarm didn’t go off, I figured it was time to wake up. It’s 7:02. I’m lightly jet-lagged, but that’s fine. Gives me 3.5 hours to prepare, or fret, about the interview.

Put some classical music on the laptop, and slowly took a shower and prepared for the day. I threw caution to the wind and broke one of my cardinal rules for interview days, which is don’t unnecessarily deviate from routine (one of the others is not to flip off any drivers that try to run me over as I enter the company parking lot in case they’re one of my interviewers). Tried the lemon-sage body-wash provided by the hotel. The smell jolted me awake. Pressed a shirt for the first time in a long, long time. Reminded me of being in London… good times… good times. The main issue was that the retractable cord on the iron kept… well… retracting. Made it difficult to iron.

Breakfast provided me with one of the best dilemma’s I’ve had that early in the morning. Grand Marnier French Toast, Smoked Salmon & Truffle Egg Salad, Manchego & Chorizo Fritata… the list went on and on.

The hotel was on 4th Ave. Interview was on 12th Ave. Can’t be that far, right? The good news is that the weather was awesome. Sunny, mild, and dry. The bad news is that 12th and 4th are not actually 8 blocks away. More like a $15, 15 minute taxi ride. At least I got to see some of Seattle. Got to company‘s building about 20 minutes early. Thankfully, a block away was a park overlooking the city. Sat, relaxed, since by this time I was getting into full on fret mode, and looked at the city… very lush I must say.

Finally made my way to reception, and started filling out the standard employment history form. Except that I haven’t filled one of those out in ages. Worse yet, it required five… yes five… references… needless to say… I frantically emailed and called references after the interviews were over asking for retroactive permission, intending to call company and strike references from the given list were the requests denied.

On to the interviews. I have to say that I haven’t been through a set of interviews that hard since D.E. Shaw. These interviews may have been harder. Maybe I’m just slower, stupider, and out of practice.

My first interviewer was Joe King, a TPTL. Dina and I noted that his parents must have had a sense of humour. He asked me a question about how to set up the object model for a supermarket simulator. It had many parallels to an eCommerce site. Though an exercise in determining how I thought, I wasn’t happy with what I came up with.

Next, Eileen, another TPTL. She asked me more user-centric questions on how to design an online restaurant reservation system. I think part of the problem with this part of the interview is that I was having too much fun with it. I wanted to add too many fun and interesting features, adding complexity both to the UI and the underlying system. Lots of fun. Unfortunately, I had another boatload of features I wanted to mentally implement but would have overwhelmed any reasonable development team. I have a feeling that Jim would have enjoyed her interviewing style.

Dan asked me some more coding-level questions centered around counting the number of occurrences of words in a file, trading off time and space. I blocked on one part, but eventually determined how to do it in constant space with a little prodding. I guess one of my issues is that I’m used to problems being time constrained but having lots of available space. Apparently company has both issues.

After that, lunch with Scott with a great view of the city, then back to the interview room and a question on how to aggregate and retrieve data. Given a list of reviews (id, product, category, stars), find the top 50 products in each category. I think I did decently well, other than the fact that I wanted to sort in the end instead of searching for the best items. O(n*log(n)) instead of O(n). Oops.

Brian asked me a question about implementing a master-slave relationship in order to throttle tasks to prevent them from over-consuming scarce resources. I think I did quite, quite badly on this. I constantly didn’t know where to go next.

Chetta, the Talent Acquisition specialist, talked to me a bit about relocation and Seattle. I think I was so fazed by the session with Brian that I seemed a lot less enthusiastic than I actually was.

Finally, Al asked me three different questions. The first, converting an integer to roman numerals was a problem I’d heard before but never tackled. It proved to be easier than I thought it would be. The second was how to efficiently slot luggage into lockers. I only realized that this was heavily related to memory managers a day later. Finally, the object model for a deck of cards. I think I did best on this interview. Maybe my mind was finally in gear. I also had a lot of fun.

I hear back from them Monday the 22nd, which probably means late Monday given the time difference. 72 hours of fretting!

It’s 16:30. I’ve got about 7 hours to kill before my flight takes off. I head back to the hotel, change, and walk down to the concierge to ask for suggestions for a three hour walk before dinner.

The walk is nice, and even more fret inducing. I realize that I quite like the city. Walk to the Pike Place Public Market. Nice mixture of Camden town and Faneuil hall. Mmmm… smoked salmon. Then on to the Monorail, a 90 second ride to see the Space Needle. Once up on the observation deck, I listen to about 30 minutes of information about Seattle. I think I’m liking the town more and more… which is making me fret more and more about getting the job.

Monorail again, and back to the hotel via a different route. The wonderful restaurant with the vexing breakfast choices is full. I’m pissed off at the concierge who told me that I didn’t need a reservation since I was dining alone and staying at the hotel. I go to a brew-pub and eat outside instead. Read some of the Seattle free newspapers. The beer sampler was good. The Hefeweizen had hints of banana and bubble-gum. Yummy.

Check out of my hotel. company had booked me for two nights, which I thought was weird, given that I was leaving on the red-eye. I guess they were being extra-nice and giving me a place to de-stress after the interview.

Head to the airport, and have a nice chat with the taxi driver. Everyone seems to be chatty and friendly. Even the barrista at Starbucks at the top of the Space Needle had a 3 minute conversation with me. She noted that it’s easy to strike up conversations in Seattle, but hard to make friends.

At the airport, the lady at the desk can’t find my reservation. Uh-oh. I look at the printout of my reservation. My flight leaves at 23:00 on Saturday, not Friday. So that’s why they booked me for two nights at the W. I manage to change my flight for a small charge. The upgrade to first class is a mere $50, but alas, first class is full. It’s difficult to sleep on the flight since the pilot is constantly announcing that we need to stay seated with our seatbelts fastened.

Apparently, company has the concept of a bar-raiser. This is an interviewer who’s job it is to make sure that the interviewee is above company average. I knew this going in to the interview. I didn’t think of it during the interview. I only remembered this the day after, and, in retrospect, cannot identify who the bar-raiser was.

So, now I’m nervous and I fret ’til late Monday. I sit on this post, since I know they know about my web site, since that’s how they found me.

Monday passes… I fret. Tuesday the 23rd starts. About mid-day their time, I send a quick email to Ryan, asking for an ETD. He says he’ll get back to me. Wednesday comes and goes. Meanwhile, I’m sleepless ’cause of this Seattle thing. I’m actually nearing the point of frustration, and the lack of timely response (or even meta-response) is slowly being marked as a negative against company. I’m trying to convince myself that a negative doesn’t take this long, so they’re ironing out offer details. I’m also telling myself that because of the uncommunicative wait, it will have to be slightly better with every additional fret-filled day and sleepless night that I put myself through.

I’m also nearing the point where, as usual, less constructive courses of action enter my head. I could stop my fretting, and tell them that I’m not interested. I could publish this article now. Instead, it’s Thursday noon, August 25th. I edit it a bit, and put it back in the drafts folder. Meanwhile, Daniel, sensing that I need a change, and possibly wanting to keep me in Boston, has put me in touch with some people looking for a developer for a startup. The world is my oyster. I wait for Serendipity or the Lady to guide me.

It’s now around to Sunday the 28th. 9 whole days have passed. Other alternatives enter my head. Maybe they are interviewing other candidates (I was under the impression that it was hire-if-you-fit as opposed to hire-to-fill-position). They didn’t mention which Monday they’d make their decision. Chetta noted she’d be out of town this week, though one would assume she had a backup.

It’s now Monday the 29th. I ping both Ryan and Chetta in the early afternoon. No response. To add insult to injury, I learned that Miss Universe visited our offices the day I was interviewing (her father works at my current company). There are pictures on the intranet of her posing with the staff.

Thursday, September 1st comes around. It’s been a whole freakin’ month… well… the name of the month has changed, so it’s the same thing, right? I’m quite a bit more relaxed about this. But today I decide that I’m frustrated enough that I’m just going to call them until I talk to a person, no matter how obnoxious I come across. Leave a message for Chetta on her office line, as the cell number she left me has a gruff man’s voice on the voicemail prompt. Call Ryan, no answer. When I get home, finally call Resa, the person who first emailed me about the position. She looks at the file, is confused by the delay in handling it, and pings both Chetta and Scott. Unfortunately, this is her last day at company.

Chetta phones me on Friday, September 2nd around 19:00, a full 2 weeks after my interview. She was out of town one week and sick for a few days the next. The group isn’t interested in me. Oh well. On the other hand, other groups are, and will be contacting me to set up more interviews. Jim notes that a possible contributing factor to the delay is that they may have been shopping me around to other groups after the initial group determined I wasn’t a good fit. The way he put it picked me up quite a bit.

So where are we now? It’s Tuesday, September 6th. Haven’t heard from company‘s other groups yet. The two week delay severely damped my enthusiasm for company. Chetta said they wanted to fly me out again for interviews with one or two other groups. I’m not sure how that fits into my schedule. The fact that I’m worried about how I’ll be able to play a poker tournament, go square dancing, or be at my current job is probably telling of my current state of mind. I think my going in position will be to ask to have Dina flown out also, sometime in October. This time, we’ll take advantage of the Saturday.

In case you haven’t already guessed, the interview was at Amazon.com. I’m currently too lazy to go and back-edit the whole post.

Stay tuned for “48-Hour Sponsored Vacation” in a month or so.