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On Amazon cultures and practices

I joined AWS a while back as an engineering manager. I had fantastic opportunities to learn from Amazon’s unique culture and wanted to write something about it. My first attempt is to share some of the Amazon culture from my onboarding.

  1. Customer Obsession

Every company on earth will say that.

Everyone will say that the customer is central to everything we do.

But Amazon stands out by embedding this leadership principle into everyday work: Want to make a product proposal? Write a PRFAQ, like a press release, describing how customers will use and benefit from this product when it’s released.

In another aspect, I remembered this scenario during my manager onboarding :

What amount can an AWS customer claim back from a $16,700 accidental bill?

a) 50%

b) 65%

c) 80%

d) 100%”

This is a real-life example.  Ans: You got the correct answer, didn’t you? It’s d) – 100%!

  1. Dive Deep

Amazonians circulate this serious joke: “In God we trust; everyone else brings data.” Not that we don’t trust each other, but we value facts as much as beliefs.

One outstanding example is the COE (Correct of Error) review: We list a detailed timeline, the actions we took, and the impact we observed. We ask ourselves five Whys, peeling layers of the onion until we can find the root cause. More often than not, the root cause and the best solution are not trivial, but the effort is worth it.

Here is one example of the importance of asking 5 Whys:

Problem: The Abraham Lincoln monument in Washington, D.C., is deteriorating.

Why #1 – Why is the monument deteriorating?  

    • Because harsh chemicals are frequently used to clean the monument.

Why #2 – Why are harsh chemicals needed?

    • To clean off the large number of bird droppings on the monument.

Why #3 – Why are there many bird droppings on the monument?

    • Because the large population of spiders in and around the monument are a food source for the local birds

Why #4 – Why is there a large population of spiders in and around the monument?

    • Because vast swarms of insects, on which the spiders feed, are drawn to the monument at dusk.

Why #5 – Why are swarms of insects drawn to the monument at dusk?

    • Because the lighting of the monument in the evening attracts the local insects.

The best solution is to change how the monument is illuminated in the evening to prevent the attraction of swarming insects.

3. Peculiarity 

Yes, you read it right. Amazon values peculiarity—doing things differently, sometimes strangely. Amazonians are proud to be different and do things uniquely.

Ever go to large meetings and nod off? Amazonian fixed that with a brilliant, simple idea: use a spin wheel in the meeting to randomly pick one of the audience members to participate. Everyone suddenly stays engaged!

Are you going to a review and unsure what everyone is talking about? Amazonians counter that by spending silent time at the beginning of a meeting to read the materials.

These are indeed peculiar practices. And they work beautifully!

That’s a wrap for now. As I learn more from my journey, I’d love to share more cultural practices.

 

 

Interviewing tips for interviewers

As a manager, one of the most important tasks is to hire the right talent for the team.

Well, it might be the most important one.

Yet almost everyone dreads interviewing.

How can we avoid asking the type of “tell me about yourself” question out of habit? Or how we can get to the real point instead of asking “tell me about a time you struggle”?

Well, after having two coaches, being mentored by 4 industry veterans, 15 years in this industry, conducting over 110 interviews, I had a few tips for effective interviewing to share.

Technical screening round

The goal of the screening interview round is to ensure we have the right candidate when it comes to onsite interview rounds. The screening interviewer should filter out unqualified candidates as soon as possible. Your time is valuable, and so is everyone on your team.

With that, here are things you should do:

  • Do the homework:
    • Research candidate before the interview: use your 360-degree lens, dig in LinkedIn, scan the CV to find patterns: is she a fast learner? Is she pushing her out of her comfort zone? Was she a team player or a solo? See if she can show her potential to grow in this position. Don’t ask superficial questions such as “tell me about yourself”.
  • Go hard on the technical side with a nice tone:
    • Don’t settle on easy questions. It won’t help. Remember: “A player attracts A player, B player attracts B, C, and even F player”.
    • Push the candidate until she said, “I don’t know”. Great people know their limits, they don’t try to show that they know everything. You need to push to see what her boundaries are to set her up for success if you hire her.
    • Don’t stop at the first solution:  A solid candidate always tries to improve, even if she found a solution. She would find a working solution, lean on that, improve for certain dimensions. Need to trade memory for speed? Or readability over coding speed? Ask the candidate if the algorithm can be further optimized in terms of time & memory usage? Will that work with +100 million items, or with just 1MB of RAM?
    • Provide assistance and support when the candidate is stuck. Give reasonable hints, coachable talents pick up hints very fast.
  • Be open-minded and look for room for improvements
    • A phone interview is not easy for both sides, if the candidate has trouble understanding, offer help. The goal of the screening interview is to measure candidate problem-solving and communication skills.
  • Make it an open conversation: 
    • The interview doesn’t have to be one-way, and ideally, it should be like an intellectual conversation so give open suggestions, listen and give feedback appropriately.  Don’t impose your opinions and knowledge on the answer: if the candidate chooses Python even though we code in .NET / JavaScript, that’s fine. As long as she demonstrates solid data structure and algorithm expertise, the choice of language and style differences can be ignored.
  • How to start a Problem Solving challenge:
    • Start by asking what’s the general algorithm? Does it “sound” like a solution, is it working?
    • Start to draft an optimal algorithm then proceed to implement

Onsite interview round

Firstly, the onsite round is to ensure the candidate will be a good culture fit, with solid communication skills. Secondly, it is to have a broader assessment of the technical skills. It is also about presenting our team, our culture, our people. It is to find a colleague that we’d love to work with on a daily basis.

Onsite interviewing is a chance to leave good impressions on the candidate so that even if she won’t get the job, she will be an ambassador for us. Remember interviewing works both ways: candidates evaluate interviewers at the same time so find your way to create an uplifting experience.

  • Sync up beforehand:
    • Discuss with the hiring committee the type of questions and topics which each interviewer will cover.
    • Try not to have multiple interviewers interviewing on the same topic – unless it is critical for the job. Your hiring committee should be representative so that each person can probe the candidate on a dimension.
  • Ask open-ended questions: 
    • Ask a problem that has multiple solutions so that we can see how the candidate handles ambiguity and unknowns.
    • Aim for the problem that the candidate never solved before but can be solved with additional data and help.
  • Separate well-practiced answers from real ones:
    • 5-whys: keep asking why. A great answer is one that can go deep through multiple layers of that onion.  Sometimes, great people will throw their hands in the air and say “I don’t know why”, but by then you would have enough data to consider.
  • Share feedback as soon as possible: 
    • Ideally, once the hiring committee finishes interviewing, everyone should meet and provide feedback when the memory is still fresh. Every hour passing by, the quality of the feedback degrades.
    • The trick to avoiding herd mentality is to have everyone put down their vote before they meet: it’s either Yes or No – do not accept Maybe! If one needs to switch the vote, there must be really strong reasons.
  • Be professional, move quick
    • In case the hiring committee cannot meet soon, keep the candidate posted about when she can expect the output. If the team can meet and agree this is the right talent, make a case with your decision-makers.

Well, thank you for reading this far.

This post is by no means a complete list, it rather serves as a starting point and hopes it spark your interest in interviewing. And the Aha! feeling when you find that great talent? It’s totally worth it!

Have other opinions? I’d love to hear from you in the comment section.