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+---- Thread: My job hunt progress - EC2! (/Thread-My-job-hunt-progress-EC2)
My job hunt progress - EC2! - phyrrus9 - 03-03-2018
So, my largest client is in the process of changing their corporate structure over to a 501C(3), and their new board abruptly decided to halt all contract work, which left me with a terminated contract and seemingly need to use litigation to get my termination fee from them. So short story, I'm currently in a pretty fucked up situation as far as money goes. Well, the very minute they informed me of this I immediately abandoned looking for new contracts and started applying to a bunch of jobs. I did this not because I want to kill the business, but because new contracts take a significant amount of time to work out and land with new clients, and I simply can't afford the pay cut for that many months.
One of the jobs I applied to was a kernel/distributed computing engineer at Amazon, one of their EC2 services. Within 14 hours they responded and said they wanted to schedule an interview with me. I nearly jumped out of my skeleton at this. I've applied to Amazon before, many times in fact, usually I never even get a response. I did get a single interview with them a couple years ago, when my cover letter was the text "For fucks sake guys, at least call me", they did. However, despite all this, I never made it past the first interview.
Well, this time they were extremely quick to set up the first interview, so to me that meant something. So I scheduled the interview, partly expecting to get halfway through it and have them point blank tell me they aren't interested (they've done this before). To say the least, that isn't how it went at all. They were amazingly interested in how I built my business up from the experiences I'd gathered over the years. At the end of the call, they seemed optimistic, but not quite as optimistic as you'd expect for a sure fire gig. I wasn't expecting much. Right at the very end of the call, when I'd have expected a "thanks for taking the time to talk to us" and then never hear from them again, they asked me if I would be interested in interviewing with the hiring manager for the team the job was placed in. I quite obviously (but humbly) said I'd love such an opportunity.
So, the second interview was scheduled, and I was pretty nervous. This guy is the hiring manager, if anybody is going to slap me down for not having senior level experience in this stuff, it's going to be this guy. The call comes, and the first thing I notice is the guy is speaking half german half english in a broken russian accent. It was different, I had expected an indian (we have tons of them around here, none are easy to understand). The first thing this guy says is how he likes my resume, and got a good laugh of my "named Time magazine person of the year, 2006" line. I knew right there the interview would go well, and it did. Up until the point where he mentioned that the team used Ruby for a lot of the services. I don't know a single scratch of Ruby, and that's probably what I'd be working on the most. I felt pretty fucked right there. Nevertheless, I kept going through the call, doing the best I could. At the end of the call, he gave me a hint to go look up Amazon's leadership principles and study them hard. The call ended, and that's exactly what I did.
A couple days went by, and I was certain that I'd not qualified for the 3rd phone interview. I had almost given up, but by the grace of God, another email came in. This one was different from the rest, it was much more professional, they wanted me to go through the 3rd and final phone interview. This one is a whiteboarding interview. I'd be on the phone with a couple interviewers and I'd be evaluated while writing code in real time. They were looking to see if I asked the right questions, could break the problem down properly, was able to structure and document my code, if I could solve the problems, if I could make the solution in the lowest time and memory complexity, if it could solve the problem on all input sets, and if I could identify my own bugs in real time and fix them. This scared me. I'm most proficient in C, and this team primarily uses Ruby (they do use C for the kernel stuff I'd be doing though), what were they going to think when I do the task in C? Should I try to do it in Ruby? Nevertheless I scheduled the interview, and when the call came in I nearly died. The interviewer gave me the problem: "Write a program that will find the top 5 numbers in an array of integers from -INT_MAX to +INT_MAX. The list can be size from anywhere between 1 and the maximum amount that will fit in memory, but the size of the list is also known at runtime. The maximum complexity needs to be less than (not equal to) O(nlogn), with bonus points for the best solution, and the memory complexity can be no larger than 64 bytes. Holy shit I thought. Getting the highest number is easy, it's O(n), and that would work fine, but the top 5? That means that I'd have to be aware of the rest of the list. I could sort the list and pull the top 5, but the best case scenario that would be O(nlogn + 5), which would be unacceptable. I found a solution that would be O(logn + 5), all I had to do was implement it, thinking out loud of course. So I did, I got it all done, thought through it, and then said "Ok, im done". My answer was wrong. The very first sample input was 1 number wrong. I thought I was fucked. But, I redid it, found my problem, and worked through a couple different versions (without submitting them as answers). Eventually I found one that worked with O(n * 2 + 5) and memory complexity of 18 bytes. It worked fine, and the interviewer seemed impressed with it. That was the end of the interview though, after only an hour. I expected 2 or 3 problems, but only 1, I was certain I was done for. Nevertheless I asked my trademark question at the end of the interview, got my answer and then ended the call.
So, here we are today, 3 days later. I expected that I was done for after that point, I bombed that last phone interview in my view. Today, just a little while ago I get an email, the first line reads:
Quote:The hiring team has really enjoyed talking with you and would like to set up a time for you to come to Seattle for in-person interviews!Holy shit, I actually got in! The phone interviews are basically 3 really in depth regular CS style interviews, the in person ones are all on site, with the team, and according to this email last from 5 to 7 HOURS!. So, maybe I should stop being so pessimistic about my interviews. Anyways, wish me luck! I on;y have to do a maximum of 4 in person interviews.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - mothered - 03-03-2018
After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
On a serious note, you've done extremely well. Just when you least expect It, all goes your way. Being certified (and of course relative experience) makes all the difference In a successful outcome. I had to laugh at this though.
Quote:I did get a single Interview with them a couple years ago, when my cover letter was the text "For fucks sake guys, at least call me"
Congrats, you definitely deserve It.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - sah4jt3 - 03-03-2018
All the best my dude, let us know how it goes
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - phyrrus9 - 03-03-2018
(03-03-2018, 04:06 AM)mothered Wrote: After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
On a serious note, you've done extremely well. Just when you least expect It, all goes your way. Being certified (and of course relative experience) makes all the difference In a successful outcome. I had to laugh at this though.
Quote:I did get a single Interview with them a couple years ago, when my cover letter was the text "For fucks sake guys, at least call me"
Congrats, you definitely deserve It.
Sorry it got a little rambly a few times. I wasn't expecting to get this far, or this process to be as complicated as it is.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - mothered - 03-03-2018
(03-03-2018, 04:49 AM)phyrrus9 Wrote:(03-03-2018, 04:06 AM)mothered Wrote: After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
On a serious note, you've done extremely well. Just when you least expect It, all goes your way. Being certified (and of course relative experience) makes all the difference In a successful outcome. I had to laugh at this though.
Quote:I did get a single Interview with them a couple years ago, when my cover letter was the text "For fucks sake guys, at least call me"
Congrats, you definitely deserve It.
Sorry it got a little rambly a few times. I wasn't expecting to get this far, or this process to be as complicated as it is.
No problem whatsoever, I was only joking.
I can Imagine how excited you are- and rightly so In creating a detailed thread.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - phyrrus9 - 03-03-2018
(03-03-2018, 05:08 AM)mothered Wrote:(03-03-2018, 04:49 AM)phyrrus9 Wrote:(03-03-2018, 04:06 AM)mothered Wrote: After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
On a serious note, you've done extremely well. Just when you least expect It, all goes your way. Being certified (and of course relative experience) makes all the difference In a successful outcome. I had to laugh at this though.
Congrats, you definitely deserve It.
Sorry it got a little rambly a few times. I wasn't expecting to get this far, or this process to be as complicated as it is.
No problem whatsoever, I was only joking.
I can Imagine how excited you are- and rightly so In creating a detailed thread.
Probably my favorite part of this compensation package (aside from the absolute minimum, like 0 years experience minimum pay is $96,000/yr), is that I'd get 6 weeks of full paid paternity leave. My daughter is due in less than a month, so that will help out a lot.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - mothered - 03-03-2018
(03-03-2018, 05:31 AM)phyrrus9 Wrote:(03-03-2018, 05:08 AM)mothered Wrote:(03-03-2018, 04:49 AM)phyrrus9 Wrote: Sorry it got a little rambly a few times. I wasn't expecting to get this far, or this process to be as complicated as it is.
No problem whatsoever, I was only joking.
I can Imagine how excited you are- and rightly so In creating a detailed thread.
Probably my favorite part of this compensation package (aside from the absolute minimum, like 0 years experience minimum pay is $96,000/yr), is that I'd get 6 weeks of full paid paternity leave. My daughter is due in less than a month, so that will help out a lot.
My goodness, that's an excellent (salary) package, Inclusive of the leave entitlement.
This just demonstrates It pays to be certified. I have zero certs, and zero education (attendance-wise) In the IT sector. I'm my own teacher and that's where It can be difficult at times. It's beautiful to read your bundle of joy Is Imminent, the excitement will be building towards the birth.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - zorrophreak - 03-03-2018
Congratulations on this! You certainly have the skills and qualifications. If anyone on here deserves this I'd say its you.
(03-03-2018, 04:06 AM)mothered Wrote: After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
And I don't even wear glasses.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - phyrrus9 - 03-03-2018
(03-03-2018, 06:12 PM)zorrophreak Wrote: Congratulations on this! You certainly have the skills and qualifications. If anyone on here deserves this I'd say its you.
(03-03-2018, 04:06 AM)mothered Wrote: After having to apply half a bottle of eye drops and get new subscription lenses, I've made my way to read your thread.
And I don't even wear glasses.
Thank you. I think so too, I've worked hard to get here.
RE: My job hunt progress - EC2! - MrSecurity - 03-03-2018
best of luck mate.........,