I had written to almost 150+ recruiters at Amazon asking if there was a right fit for me at the company. After applying to several positions over several months, I finally get a call for this position. Looked glossy from outside, but soon realized it was rotten inside. A recruiter, out of nowhere emails me and asks me to pick a date for a tech interview with their Product Manager. I give him/her a date and I'm hooked up with a Product Manager from my hometown, back from my country. Viola, must be my good karma I thought. The day comes, and I interview. I speak about myself and what I've been doing and I receive an "hmmm, gotcha" reply from the other end. Later I am asked to write a query on the fly. He/she never even bothered to write the query on the Collabedit screenshare tool. While I try to gather my thoughts, the Product Manager kept interrupting me and changed the question itself many a times. I make a few mistakes and he/she tries to bog me down with "do you think this works?" and "is this what I had asked?" kind of comments. Asked why I did not use JOINS, while my query worked right even without using JOINS. I did not sign up for this. A few generic behavioral questions like "Why Amazon", "Why BIE", "What projects had you done that corresponds to the work that you'd be doing as a BIE" later, I ask him/her- How's the work-life balance at Amazon? He/she says *in a not-so-energetic voice* that it is rigorous and not good. I gave up there. I had a bad vibe from the beginning of the interview. I truly believe that the energy from a person/place is important when you are interviewing. After the interview I researched about the position, the company, its work-culture and found that it is terrible. If you want to be treated like dog poo, Amazon is the place.
I am yet to receive the decision of this interview, and I'm less likely to go ahead in the process even if I'm successful.
