I have been in interview panel for like 4 years and today I’ve decided I’ll no more be taking part in the interview process at Amazon. It was the end of my patience today. Out of 5 all except the bar raiser were Inclined and the bar raiser vetoed to ‘Not Inclined’ because he felt candidate just Met the bar, where he should have raised it. Why do you have other interviewers on panel, if you are going to enforce your bias. Venting here because I am not allowed to that there. These people are like God here. Sorry Amazon, but you are losing out on really good people because of this so called ‘Veto’. Have been on atleast 25-30 such loops, where the final decision made no sense, and it has mostly been a no hire. TC ~350K
Amazon wasting people’s time? that’s new
What level was the loop for? L6/L7
It was a L4\L5
the thing where the company expects that you beat expectations is also comical
Google does this. Exceeds is normal, strong exceeds is promo candidate. Superb is very rare basically an underpaid L+1. Meets is the signal to leave unless you were a recent promo/hire or you want to rest and vest.
Unless there is a chronic shortage of sdes it sounds like they are doing their job? Or are you disagreeing with their assessment that they "only meet the bar"?
Should have been more clear. There were so many examples provided by the 4 inclined along with data but none for them raised the bar. Many BRs just stick to their assumptions and veto their own data points. 4 who are inclined rarely can be wrong. A reason why many people have stopped being on the loop now a days. Infact we disagreed with their ‘Met the bar’ but that went on deaf ears!
“Bar raiser” at Amazon isn’t necessarily a bar raiser. One is BR if he is experienced enough at interviewing and at coordinating pre-brief and de-brief.
I have to agree! Some are so odd that they expect the candidate to be perfect!
Wtf is bar raiser? Is it official role
Yes, specific role for interview loops. It requires additional training, shadowing an existing bar raiser, etc. supposed to be from a different team than the one doing the hiring so they don’t just grab a body and to help ensure the person is “better than 50% of everyone at Amazon”, which always struck me as silly. The concept makes sense but in practice it’s just annoying more often than not, as the OP describes.
... but the concept doesn’t make sense? why would you trust this special judgment to only a single person in the interview loop? why bother with the other 4 interviewers if one person has a veto?
While Amazon has one of the most methodical and standardized approaches to interviewing, that shit drove me bonkers when I was there. Usually some dumb inconsequential thing that could be easily overcome or was not so much a deficit that the person’s strengths would not have far outweighed it.
I think you did the right thing by not choosing to conduct any more interviews. When you feel your opinions are not valued and being vetoed you should no longer be party to it. Same thing happened to me in my previous role, and like you stopped conducting any more interviews.
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I guess they do raise the bar. It’s just that it’s directionally the other way.