Inside My Interview At Amazon

Published by PolisPandit on August 16, 2020August 16, 2020

I recently interviewed at Amazon.  It was obviously exciting to get the call.  Not only is Amazon one of the top companies in the world by market cap, it is arguably one of the most innovative.  It competes in multiple sectors from e-commerce, cloud computing, and even the grocery industry.  Gone are the days when this titan was a small online bookstore operating out of Jeff Bezo’s garage.

The growth of its octopus-like tentacles into various sectors has generated intensive scrutiny, both in the court of public opinion and the courtroom itself.  Congress recently grilled the “Big Tech” CEOs on Capitol Hill.  Regulatory scrutiny and public demands for more oversight of these tech titans is stronger than it has ever been.  Which is likely why Amazon is seeking to expand their Legal and Compliance teams.

Given my legal background, I did not interview for one of the technical positions most people hear about when they think of Amazon.  The brogrammers, or “Amholes” as my native Seattleites moniker them as, are like the star traders of the finance world.  They drive business and transform ideas into reality.  Legal and compliance considerations often pose barriers or complexities to their initiatives.  When computer programmers or traders operate in a high-pressured environment where the bottom line means everything, it is understandable that certain employees may pursue profit at all costs.  The ends justify the means.  Compliance be damned.  What I did not expect from my Amazon interview was the sense that Compliance at Amazon was somehow in on the racket.  

Idea Heist          

Before diving into the interview details, it is important to keep in mind allegations surrounding certain Amazon business practices.  Allegations of anticompetitive conduct are nothing new to “Big Tech” companies, and I have written about them in the past.  In Amazon’s case, a recent WSJ investigative story described how “Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products.”  This Standard Oil style of corporate espionage took advantage of newer and weaker market entrants by leveraging Amazon’s size and scale, both as an e-commerce platform and technology developer.         

In some cases, Amazon’s decision to launch a competing product devastated the business in which it invested. In other cases, it met with startups about potential takeovers, sought to understand how their technology works, then declined to invest and later introduced similar Amazon-branded products, according to some of the entrepreneurs and investors.

More than two dozen entrepreneurs, investors, and deal advisors served as sources for the story.  The WSJ has also previously reported that Amazon allegedly used “data about individual third-party sellers on its site to create competing products.”  The way Amazon leverages its e-commerce platform to gain competitive advantages with various technologies (Alexa, Echo, etc.), is similar to how Rockefeller leveraged his control over railroads to gain competitive advantages in freight costs for his oil.  Amazon is merely replicating how robber barons of the past operated.  Instead of railroads, they use their vast e-commerce platform, which allows them to connect to and enter almost any industry.     

STAR Method Designed To Seize

When it comes to interviewing candidates to join its ranks of almost 850,000 employees, Amazon employs the “STAR Method.”  This behavioral interviewing technique is not novel by any means.  Many companies use it, but few execute it quite like Amazon.  By the time I was finished with my final interview – a six round marathon – it felt like I had been pressured for hours to divulge confidential information about my current employer.  

My Amazon interviewers applied this pressure via the STAR Method.  STAR stands for: (i) Situation; (ii) Task; (iii) Action; and (iv) Result.  The interviewer prompts the interviewee to apply it by asking a scenario-based question, which could include the following:

• Tell me about a time when you made a mistake and how you corrected it.
• Describe a moment when you were pressured to make an uncomfortable decision and how you handled it.
• Discuss a situation where you have disagreed with your boss.  How did you address it? 
• Tell me about a time when you either missed or were close to missing a deadline.  How did you handle it?

You get the idea.  In response to these questions, the onus is on you – the interviewee – to apply the STAR method by doing the following:

1. Situation.  Give background and context to the story you are about to tell here.  Set the scene.  
2. Task.  What was your specific role or task in the situation? Be specific!    
3. Action.  Explain how you executed the task, detailing accomplishments and challenges you faced along the way.
4. Result.  What was the conclusion?  What did you learn?  What could you have done better?  Any interviewer worth their salt will dig in here. 

The STAR Method is difficult in any interview situation.  It places the burden entirely on the prospective candidate, forcing them to tell stories about their past or present.  The candidate should also articulate these stories in a way that makes them appear desirable to the potential employer.  In order to answer these questions completely though, interviewees have to give details.  The interview format already straddles a gray line of mishandling confidential information related to current or former employers, especially if the interviewee is meeting with a competitor.  Amazon is in a unique situation because it could potentially (or suddenly decide to) compete in almost any sector.  Throughout my interviews at Amazon, the interviewers paid little heed to confidentiality concerns and instead pressed for more details, particularly those related to the processes and policies of my current employer. 

For example, when I described how I actioned a situation at my current financial services industry job, multiple interviewers asked not only how I performed, but ultimately what my firm decided to do.  At times I would emphasize that I could not go into too much detail.  Some interviewers acknowledged this fact, while others pressed to understand more about my firm’s control environment, explaining that they “needed” the information to understand how I acted in the situation.  

Each interviewer, even the hiring manager, ferociously took notes throughout the entire process.  The interviews were all conducted via videoconferencing virtually given our current work from home environment, so it was impossible not to notice the lack of eye contact and fierce typing or handwriting.  I would not be surprised if those notes eventually made their way to HR and potentially other departments across Amazon.  While it is impossible for me to know, I could not help but feel that I had succumbed to aggressive tactics designed to extract as much information as possible.  By the end of the interview I felt like I had betrayed my current employer, even though I also knew I had tried to safeguard confidential information.  

If I felt that way, I can only imagine what others experienced.  Amazon, for their part, makes no qualms about explicating that they expect detailed information from these interviews.  Under their “Tips for great answers”, their interview website even states: 

Specifics are key; avoid generalizations. Give a detailed account of one situation for each question you answer, and use data or metrics to support your example.       

Furthermore, they instruct applicants to “Be forthcoming and straightforward.  Don’t embellish or omit parts of the story.”  Nowhere on their website does it state: “safeguard the confidential information of your employer or previous employer(s)”, or “only give information that you are able to provide”, or “alternatively, choose a situation where you can give sufficient information.”  

Cult-Like Leadership Principles

STAR formatted answers must also weave Amazon’s Leadership Principles into each of the responses.  Reading over these for the first time made me think of Ray Dalio who literally wrote the book on “Principles.”  Dalio’s hedge fund, Bridgewater, is infamous in the financial world for employing principles of “radical truth” and “radical transparency.”  His “Principles” might as well be the Bible of Bridgewater.  Employees adhere to them like disciples with seemingly unconditional devotion.  Based on my interview experience at Amazon, Bezo’s shop is no different.  

The pre-interview instructions set the expectation that my interviewers would be assessing how I apply Amazon’s Leadership Principles to the situations I discuss through the STAR Method.  Amazon’s interview website states: 

All candidates are evaluated based on our Leadership Principles. The best way to prepare for your interview is to consider how you’ve applied the Leadership Principles in your previous professional experience.

So pepper your responses chock-full of references to the Leadership Principles, no matter how phony they sound.  Almost all of the interviewers mentioned the Principles in some way.  One even asked me which one was my favorite.  I thought it was a trick question, in the same way my Political Science professors used to ask which Constitutional Amendment was my favorite (hint: it’s always the First Amendment!).  So I naturally chose the first Leadership Principle of “Customer Obsession” because according to Amazon, “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.”  It’s part of the Amazon Day 1 mentality, after all.  

Who knows if that was the right answer.  I was really starting to question the Leadership Principles though once one of my interviewers described how integral they are to the daily life of “Amazonians.”  He went on to say, “It is not unusual for our teams to cite them in daily conversations and especially when we are working through issues.  In fact, I often encourage my colleagues to Think Big and have a Bias for Action.”  This was too much scripture for my heathen ears to take.

Throughout my interviews at Amazon, the interviewers paid little heed to confidentiality concerns and instead pressed for more details, particularly those related to the processes and policies of my current employer.

What was most concerning, however – particularly for a role in Legal & Compliance – was the forced application of the Amazon Leadership Principles to the situations I provided from my past work experiences.  If this was done at a 30,000 foot level, it would be one thing.  But when one of the Leadership Principles is literally Dive Deep, I guess I should have anticipated the interviewers to swan dive into the details and expect me to join them in the murky deep end of the pool.  They asked me things like: “How exactly did you Deliver Results in that situation?  I don’t understand.  How, specifically speaking, did it conclude?  What process change did it lead to at your firm?  How is that process working now?”

How can I answer those questions appropriately without compromising confidentiality obligations to my current employer?  The answer is simple: I can’t.  This principle-based cult was clearly not for me.  

The Interview Process and How It Played Out

Given the pandemic environment, Amazon made it clear from the beginning that all interviews would be conducted virtually via Amazon Chime, the company’s proprietary video conferencing platform.  The interview process played out as follows:

1. E-mail from Amazon Human Resources asking to set up time to discuss my application.  
2. Pre-Interview HR phone call.   
3. Video interview with team member of mid-level seniority
4. Video interview with hiring manager 
5. Six round interview with 5 other team members and a final interview with the hiring manager    

From start to finish, the interview process took a couple months to complete.  The final six round interview was the most illuminating.  During normal times, Amazon would have flown me to their headquarters in Seattle for a full day of interviews (where they provide transportation, lodging, and lunch).  Given the current pandemic, everything was virtual.

There were no brain teasers (e.g., how many tennis balls fit in a 747 airplane?), but there was an abundance of STAR Method, especially on this final day.  The hiring manager even kicked it up a notch, despite having already met with me for an hour a couple weeks prior.  All interviewers expected hard examples.  They were relentless with follow-up questions if I failed to provide sufficient detail.  And as previously highlighted, not one mention was made about safeguarding confidential information, unless I raised it myself.

As unethical as it felt, particularly in the hours following my final interview, I had to admit: the interview approach is genius.  What better way to understand the business landscape of an industry than by hounding unsuspecting interviewees (who want to impress) with questions designed to elicit as much information as possible?  Force interviewers to ask numerous specific follow-up questions; require them to take copious notes to record everything that was said.  It is effectively free business intelligence with relatively little risk.

While this plot for intelligence is largely conjecture, when juxtaposed against the current legal and regulatory scrutiny over certain Amazon business practices, it is hard to think it was simply a coincidence.  The excruciating detail expected of me in the interview process seemed less about my candidacy and more about my firm.  Given Amazon’s alleged appetite for any information on competitors (whether real or potential), it is unlikely that interviews would be exempt from any corporate espionage.  

Amazon is a capitalist goliath currently firing on all cylinders.  The company is an American success story.  Who wouldn’t want to work somewhere that constantly innovates and enters new markets, while paying its employees handsomely (outside fulfillment centers at least)?  After my interview experience, however, it was important to remember I would still have to look at myself in the mirror everyday.  As someone in Legal and Compliance, I am supposed to check the racket, not be a part of it.