The One Company Everyone Should Interview With: Amazon

I have been at the job search for a month or so now and I thought I would share how things are going. While it can be an ego boost to have quite a few companies reach out and ask you to interview with them, it is more depressing to have them come back and say they are not moving forward with bringing you onboard. As I am more interested in finding the right opportunity than just landing a job, I thought I would share some tips I am learning during my own job search. My first tip is that everyone should try to get an interview with Amazon.

Why Amazon? Well they have a very formal job interview process that requires you to do a lot of homework before what they call the "Interview Loop." That homework helps with the interview process with other companies. It forces you to put your job-related stories in a format that flows well and highlights your career.

This morning I had an interview with a very interesting company. I think I did a great job sharing information because of my interview with Amazon. I may not get either job but I do feel significantly more prepared for future interviews. I'm sure you will too.

Technology Debt

This morning I was up skiing at Snowbird and it was rather cold. I had a friend coming up to meet me and so I stopped in one of the lodges to warm up and wait a bit. There was someone working on her laptop computer and it looked like she was writing code. I can't be sure that is what she was really doing as I try not to be one of those nosy people that reads other people's computer screens. However it got me excited to do some coding of my own.

One of the things that is fought in a high-tech job is that of technical debt. Sometimes we spend so much of our career specializing in one technology or another and ignore new ones coming out. If we do it too long then our own skills become irrelevant. That is why it is good to periodically look at one's technical skills to see if they should be enhanced.

I used to have a developer on my team that would never create a second version of any software he wrote with the same technology. Instead he would look at other computer languages and see if it could be done faster with fewer lines of code or in a more efficient manner. That can be a bit drastic, but constantly looking for better ways to do things is something we should all strive towards.

Seeing someone coding at the ski resort got me excited about the coming year and the new projects I will be working on for my job as well as my personal edification. It also has me focused on my own technical debt and what I can do to move forward with the industry so I don't get left behind. Nobody likes being left behind, especially me.

Catching Up With Friends

One thing about spending time in the Bay Area and working in high-tech is that it is pretty easy to run into old work acquaintances. This morning I got a text from the former CEO of a company I used to work for. He wanted to get my opinion on a new project he is working on and so we met this afternoon for 30 minutes. It was good to catch up.

Last week, I was riding from my office back to my boat when I passed someone walking that I recognized. Amazingly we worked together at a company in New Jersey, yet here we were in California. Naturally I stopped and talked to him and it was good to catch up. Coincidentally, this friend worked with me at the same company that shared the CEO I met with today.

There are a number of old coworkers from my days at Oracle that reside in the Bay Area and I will often get together with them to catch up. After today I am glad that I make sure never to burn any bridges with those I have worked with in the past. You never know when you will run into them again. When you do, you want it to be a happy reunion and not an uncomfortable one.

So You Want to Work in Video Games

When people find out that I work for a video game company, they always ask me how to get into the industry. This may be for themselves or for one of their kids. I get the question often enough that I thought I would take a stab at answering that question on this blog.

It is important to understand that in my current company, there is no middle class. There are either well-paid employees or low-paid employees. Nothing in the middle. So that means I have to answer the question twice as there are different standards for each class of employee.

The low-paid employees are the game testers. Some of them are really good at what they do. Unfortunately there are so many people trying to become game testers that we don't have to pay them very much. The job is also very short term and lasts between 8 to 18 months. Then we let them go and hire a new crop of video game players. If you want to be a tester, start looking at video game companies right after high school. You will also want to have fairly good writing skills as there is a lot of reporting associated with testing. The rest is just being at the right place at the right time. It is a great summer job that will look good on any aspiring software developer's resume.

The high-paid employees have corresponding educations to match. It is rare, not impossible, but rare for someone to join my department without a college education from a top-notch school. Looking at the current list of people we are trying to hire, there are a lot of requests for people with Masters and PhD degrees. You will need a good math and stats background as well as very strong computer skills. It also helps if you are passionate about video games.

Would I recommend a career in video games? Definitely. It sure beats going to work every day.