Just when I thought I was getting myself straightened out and toughened up with the proper contractor mindset, along comes something like this:
“Amazon.com is delighted to announce the launch of a new software development centre in Edinburgh. The new centre offers a unique opportunity to be a part of a rather unusual start-up — one which will serve 41 million active customer accounts around the world.
“We are now looking for outstanding individuals across a number of different areas of expertise to join the start-up team.
“The Centre will be imagining and building new and innovative features for our global family of web sites. Deciding exactly what we’ll do is in no small way up to you, but it will certainly involve the building of scaleable distributed systems which offer superb performance while operating over huge datasets, and will require us to stretch the frontiers of e-commerce and our creative talent.”
If I had to choose a company I would really like to work at, there would be two on the shortlist: Microsoft and Amazon. I know that I have slagged Microsoft in the past for some dodgy business practices, but the fact is that they a) create some excellent products, b) have thousands of smart, interesting, and creative people working for them, and c) are almost universally acknowledged as being a great employer. Amazon may be an independent bookseller’s nightmare, but there is no other company that has done as much as they have to make web commerce work. They are ruthlessly focused on making web shopping not just a simple experience, but an interesting, pleasureable, and satisfying one.
Me, I’m all about the User Experience. Interaction design, information architecture, web standards compliance, accessibility, semantic web–that’s where I’m at, baby. That designer job they’ve got going? It’s mine. Hands off.
PS: to any Amazon HR staff reading this: hi! My CV will be with you shortly!
Three years industry experience in C++ or Java according to the news report on the BBC website.
Not for the Designer position. The C++ and Java is for the Engineer/Senior Engineer jobs.
Don’t believe everything you see in the press 🙂
Hey, go for it. They’d be lucky to get you!
I scurried around looking for the delete comment option after I wrote that – d’oh. Thanks for referring back to the original post on amazon.
I think it might be a bit along the lines of technology shown in entertainment situations – hacking into banks with a single click etc. Whenever our business gets covered in the mainstream press I get all indignant about the lack of detail or over simplification of the underlying points being made.
As you say, don’t believe the press – I was quite disappointed at the efforts of the Scotsman and BBC Online.
After all that – go for it – we all want the insiders view of the amazon recruiting process blogged for all to see 🙂
Keeping my fingers crossed for you! Looks great 🙂
Go for it, and the best of luck. However, I couldn’t help but notice the ad for the Executive Administrator job:
http://careers.amazondc.com/viewjob.html?optlink-view=view-303&ERFormID=newjoblist&ERFormCode=any
The fifth listed skill is [“Proficicient user of Microsoft Office tools (word/excel/outlook)” … so apparently being a proficient user doesn’t include the use of a spell checker, then. 🙂
Well OK, it made me laugh.