Christian sent me a great article about a guy who got “bait and switched” by the Amazon interview process. The title of the article is My Interviews with Amazon. Full disclosure: Amazon has approached me three times. I made it through the first interview to the second time one time before I got feed up and told them to not call me back. I was smarter on the next two passes, telling them I was not interested at the outset. Amazon has a reputation as notoriously bad place to work. It might not be as bad as Apple, but it seems to be pretty bad. Even though I love their services and prices, I am rethinking how much I really want to spend with them.

My experience in the interviews I had with Amazon were very much in the same vein as that described in the article. The funny deal is that I have a good friend who works for them at a high level. He is good at his job, but the first product he worked on for them (a famous hand-held device they tried to make) failed miserably. The reason they interviewed me was because they knew I had the exact skills they wanted from the mouth of one of their most highly regarded scientists, but were willing to treat me badly enough in the interview that I knew working for them was something I would neither do nor advise any of my highly skilled colleagues to consider.