Amazon Interview

I interviewed at Amazon for their Cloud Storage Associate position. The job description states the following:

• Experience with Linux or Windows system administration
• Experience with web-based services and applications
• Knowledge of client/server and distributed systems / Cloud architecture patterns
• Strong analysis and troubleshooting skills and experience
• Experience scripting (i.e. bash, Python, PowerShell etc.)
• Understanding of Content Delivery Networks
• Experience with AWS S3, SES, CloudFront, Storage Gateway, Elastic Transcoder, Glacier, and Snowball.
• Knowledge of large-scale storage architectures and backup/DR strategies
• Experience troubleshooting filesystem, block, and object storage
• Experience operating and troubleshooting email services and SMTP
• Detailed knowledge of networking protocols and troubleshooting: DNS, HTTP, SSL, TCP

This reads as a basic system administration position. Is it? no.

After passing the phone interview, they invited me to the onsite interview, where they mostly asked the same questions from the phone interview. I asked them, what exactly does the Cloud support associate do. Their answer in a nutshell was provide a solution to clients’ issues with S3/glacier/SES using their tools while not actually implementing the solution. In other words, not a linux administration role that certainly does not require scripting knowledge. I was disappointed. Maybe they could sense this, and as a result, I didn’t get an offer. Or maybe it was due to my blunt answer to a silly question as follows:

Interviewer: “how can you improve yourself?”

Really? Is this an IT position or counseling?

Me: “Perhaps I shouldn’t waste so much time on dating sites.”

Interviewer: “…(*confused/perplexed*…I’m going to mark that down as time management…”

I asked the recruiter twice for my interview results: he hasn’t replied.