I don't see the fact that this guy didn't get "his" job as the fail part. The Amazon employee from Vancouver at the end probably shouldn't have worded things such that everything sounded final, but maybe they simply interviewed someone the next day that they felt was a better fit for the job, or maybe something changed and the decision was made not to hire for the position they were considering previously -- it happens.
Having said that, I do think not getting back to him at all (even if that was with an explicit rejection) is a complete fail.
Based on anecdotal data, it seems to be increasingly common for modern companies (though I usually hear about it on companies that are much smaller than Amazon, which should have its HR shit together) to just go completely incommunicado with someone once the decision has been made to not move forward. Doing this is completely unprofessional (no matter how big or small your company is), especially in the face of explicit queries about the status from the person who was interviewed, and I applaud the guy for naming and shaming Amazon on that aspect of it.
Fix your shit, Amazon HR/hiring managers. Don't be jerks.
Not sure whats up with that last person in the interview, but the recruiter has really zero say in the hiring process. At least when it comes to AWS.
> The last interview was with the lead recruiter from Vancouver (apparently he flew from Vancouver to Seattle to interview me, a candidate that was in Vancouver and had to fly to Seattle for the interviews…).
The recruiter finds talent, schedules the interview and hassles AWS employees to interview the applicant. The applicant interviews with 6-7 people (like I did), that consists usually of your direct manager, a bar raiser (an article about this was just posted here the other day), and other peers.
Only after your interview day is over, and everyone has a chance to put your review info into MRT does everyone meet again and discuss if you are a valid candidate or not.
The recruiter has no say in this matter since they have no idea how your answer related to distributed systems lock coordination and Big O(n) notation work. It sounds like this person jumped the gun.
Amazon HR should at least get back to you with a "sorry we've decided on someone else", or "we'd love to work with you" letter either way.
As Portuguese I am more than used to this. You never ever get a reply back if you don't make it.
Companies only contact you again if you got the job.
I was astonished when I moved to Switzerland and later Germany, that companies would get back to me to say 'no' and send me back the application documents I had sent.
I've had good/bad experiences from all sizes of company. I chatted once with Microsoft, and they had a really great turnaround time - less than 2-3 days from start to finish (they weren't interested in a Linux nut, oddly enough ;-) ). I've talked with small companies who blackhole you after a discussion.
YMMV. But I try to remember the companies who drop you into /dev/null and avoid dealing with them again, either as applicant or with their products.
I think that missing the initial follow up with his interview result can often happen simply due to candidates getting 'lost' in the system (e.g. someone forgets to schedule the follow-up call).
However, not replying to any email inquiries does sound terrible.
It's probably a pitch designed to resonate with people who eventually get offers, with some subtle caveat that renders the whole thing moot if any aspect of the process fails to connect. That's not really a failure mode, just an optimization geared toward improving the experience for people who are presented with an offer, at the expense of those who are not.
The lead Vancouver recruiter could have screwed up, and might have accidentally dropped the "when I send you the offer" when he hadn't yet talked it over with everyone else. I know nothing about the OP, but maybe he just didn't make the cut.
This is my assumption too. It's typical for some recruiters to never close the loop with candidates who are rejected because they're no longer "of value" to them. A sad commentary on recruiting in general, but it happens.
It certainly wasn't anyone in the hiring pipeline who screwed up.
It's someone very high up in the Amazon food chain, responsible for failing to create a hiring process that emphasizes the need to treat candidates respectfully at all stages of the process.
And that means, for every candidate, having one person take ownership of the communication, start to finish (regardless of the outcome). You now -- "be respectful, be kind. And always, always close the loop."
It's like, really, really simple. But somehow Amazon and so many other companies seem incapable of wrapping their organizational heads around it.
