Amazon vs Google: communication, product-focus
I did onsites at Google and Amazon (not US), and noticed two things: - The communication skills of interviewers at Amazon were better than at Google - not 'accents' or spoken English, but the ability to convey what they were thinking in a way I could capture. Amazon folks were also less socially awkward. - Google seemed like an uninspiring and 'sterile' environment to work compared to Amazon. At Amazon people were excited about their product, technical challenges and liked to speak about it, while at Google they all seemed a bit 'sleepier' (need a better word), spoke more about what they do and less about their product or their user - which I found a bit dull as it seemed like they weren't as aware of the user impact of their code. Are these skewed and one-off observations, or are they true (for some percentage of employees/team)?
Probably Google doesn't need to demonstrate excitement and therefore sell itself, because likely a candidate will pick their offer, not an Amazon's one
Yeah, that seems likely. Amazon folks generally seem better at selling stuff anyway.
I believe Amazon has team specific interviews too? So selling on a specific team is the interviewers job.
Ignore aholehunt, his description of Amazon bears little resemblance to my team. Clearly he had a crappy experience. Your description of Amazon vs Google SDEs aligns with my experience, on average. Individuals of course have a massive amount of variety. This is a reflection of the distinct engineering cultures and hiring processes in the two companies.
Yeah, possibly because Amazon has more variance across teams, from what I've heard. Do you find implicit politics in your team: e.g. unspoken expectations of not taking days off, a group of employees disapproving a lot of another employee's skills (or lack thereof), or do you think your team stays true to the "let's just deliver results" attitude and not care much about other non-relevant things? Asking coz I like Amazon's LPs, but values and vision are often just on paper and org politics often overshadows them.
No, people take PTO, just not during crunch times unless its planned well in advance. There may be some people whose skills are not as good as others, but I don't see evidence of people ganging up or anything. I think the LPs are real, not just some BS kool aid on paper. Politics affect things more at the L7+ level, honestly, when you are working on more org wide and cross org issues. The biggest complaint I have about Amazon is the comp philosophy and crappy refreshers. Make sure you negotiate hard for an offer - at Google your comp can go up over time from refreshers, at Amazon you are pretty much dependent on stock price appreciation and promotions/top tier ratings to drive comp increases.
Were you interviewing with a specific team at Amazon? At Google, you interview with random people and get team matched after you get an offer. When you talk to managers and engineers during team matching, they'll also appear to be super excited. As normal on-site and phone interviewers, we try to appear excited but so few of our candidates get an offer, that many people do interviewing as a chore.
Yeah, with a specific team at Amazon (an AWS team). And yeah, I can see why that may be the case. As someone mentioned earlier, the incentive to sell your work to everyone may not exist.
I agree with this. Team match is when you actually talk to managers and they will do just good a job as Amazon interviewers (if not better, since it's dedicated time to talk about their team and product). I also interviewed recently and had a similar experience where Google interviewers were more reserved/apathetic/quiet and Amazon interviewers more charismatic/vocal, but I chose Google in the end because the hiring managers I talked to knew what they were talking about and were also very charismatic and convincing. For Google, because of the name value, good compensation and WLB, they don't need interviewers to sell you the company. They have an endless line of candidates. So the selling happens AFTER you pass HC, when you are a real qualified candidate.
Best of luck at Cruises... what? Fk it, no one cares
@Cruise I'm sorry, but I don't think I deleted them - it says you did. I'd have thought it's best to leave it there, for posterity.
I think in Google people tend to work alone or just a team of 2 or 4. Hence, they seem to lack good communication skills or have low energy or lack of interest to come out of the bubble of working alone to interact with others. Totally my opinion. Could be wrong and should not generalize tbh
I had a similar experience. Except add that one manager in the interview loop at Google was ranting about how AWS was so far ahead of them.
Is this in reference to a specific team? Also, are/were you from Amazon? I spoke to a Europe-based AWS sub-team, and they gave me pretty good examples of results they were delivering, and work they were doing.