<p><pre><code> The following information will be collected during the duration of the exam:
Your microphone
Your webcam
Your physical location
Your head movements
Your eye movements
Your mouth movements
</code></pre>
Creepy as all get-out. By all means, lets have more leaks like this.
By all means, this is not unique to Amazon - not that it makes it any better.<p>I did a post-grad interview for Epic (epic.com - healthcare software) in a similar fashion, that was at least as draconian.<p>After passing a 15 minute phone screen, they sent me a link to a service that:<p>* Installed their proprietary software on my Mac<p>* Connected me to a real person who verified my DL against who they were expecting<p>* Had me swing my laptop 360 degrees around the room I was taking the test in, to make sure there were no notes or people assisting me on the quiz<p>* Took remote control of my computer and force quit any programs in Activity Monitor that were on their 'blacklist' (including Dropbox, etc)<p>* Gave me what I imagine amounted to a three-hour SAT style test with English proficiency, math, logic, etc.<p>* The whole time, had that same person watching me through my webcam and watching my screen, to make sure that I was not cheating.<p>I passed, and during my in-person full-day interview in Wisconsin, they had me do a few more of these tests (that were slightly harder and more about communication skills), as well as some interviews with people in person.<p>It was an interesting experience for sure - definitely a different side of the coin compared to what a lot of HN is probably used to. I ended up getting an offer that was very good considering they are based outside of Madison, but ultimately decided to go somewhere else.
> You will not be able to open any tabs or windows<p>If I had to code purely from memory, without the benefit of language or library docs, I would not be able to write anything of use.<p>Personally when hiring, I'm not interested in a candidate's memory recall, but the ability to use resources when faced with a new challenge.
As a developer at Amazon who does interviews, what the fuck?<p>I imagine part of this is a response to the very, very large amount of time we spend interviewing interns every winter (I know I typically do 2 or 3 sessions of 3 1-hour interviews in a row). There's just too many interviews to do.<p>Someone wants to innovate and find ways to sort the good from the bad without SDE time spent, I would guess. I hope this isn't the new system for everyone. Then again, if it saves me hours and hours of phone screens...
Wait, I see nothing wrong with any of this. Obviously Amazon is trying to curb cheating on remote coding/compatibility tests. They don't actually care to collect any info about you beyond what you do during the test. They don't care which websites you visit before or after the test. Or how you use your clipboard - after the test. But during the test, it's not so unreasonable. People do cheat, especially if they can get away with it and when the payoff is potentially huge.
I went through Amazon's two online tests in October 2016 while interviewing for a full-time position.<p>I took the first test just like the OP, the logical reasoning part seemed kind of irrelevant and a waste of time for me. That was nothing compared to the second online test.<p>The environment of the second test was like a scenario out of Black Mirror. Not only did they want to have the webcam and microphone on the entire time, I also had to install their custom software so the proctors could monitor my screen and control my computer. They opened up the macOS system preferences so they could disable all shortcuts to take screenshots, and they also manually closed all the background services I had running (even f.lux!).<p>Then they asked me to pick up my laptop and show them around my room with the webcam. They specifically asked to see the contents of my desk and the walls and ceiling of my room. I had some pencil and paper on my desk to use as scratch paper for the obvious reasons and they told me that wasn't allowed. Obviously that made me a little upset because I use it to sketch out examples and concepts. They also saw my phone on the desk and asked me to put it out of arm's reach.<p>After that they told me I couldn't leave the room until the 5 minute bathroom break allowed half-way through the test. I had forgotten to tell my roommate I was taking this test and he was making a bit of a ruckus playing L4D2 online (obviously a bit distracting). I asked the proctor if I could briefly leave the room to ask him to quiet down. They said I couldn't leave until the bathroom break so there was nothing I could do. Later on, I was busy thinking about a problem and had adjusted how I was sitting in my chair and moved my face slightly out of the camera's view. The proctor messaged me again telling me to move so they could see my entire face.<p>The whole experience was degrading. If you're wondering why I did it, well, I've been using various AWS services for five years and I admired the work that the AWS team had done. Furthermore, I need the income to support my parents and Amazon was the best chance I had at the time. I got invited to do an on-site interview but I declined once I had another offer, and I'm glad I did.<p>EDIT: Small detail I forgot to mention. When I was showing them my desk, I had the monitor for my desktop (I was using my laptop for the test) and they asked me to turn the monitor so it was facing backwards.
Wow, can't believe I'm seeing people justifying/defending this--on HN of all places! This is unacceptably invasive, and if this is a glimpse of the future of getting a job, we're all in for a lot of trouble. If you think this kind of information is acceptable to monitor/record during an interview, what on earth do you think is off-limits??<p>Justifying this as "just to make sure people aren't cheating" is like justifying the police putting a camera in everyone's living room "just to make sure people aren't criminals" or putting a GPS collar on your spouse "just to make sure she's not having an affair". Totally unacceptable.
Have you ever done lots of remote interviews in a big company?<p>The scamming is unbelievable. I've personally seen outright fraud... the guy in the video was a redhead with freckles, his name was an ethnic Vietnamese. Somehow they brought him in for an in-person interview, a Vietnamese dude shows up.<p>- Clueless. Guy was literally reading a manual.<p>- One guy offered me a bribe.<p>- one guy asked if his status as an illegal and conviction for hacking a phone company back home would effect things.
A firm similar to Proctorio, HireSuccess, says this on their website:<p>> <i>Hire Success does not offer nor provide any option where an Applicant is required to submit a photograph or video response to questions because we believe it violates EEOC Guidelines.</i><p>I wonder how Proctorio + Amazon reconcile that viewpoint.<p>Furthermore, if you read the EEOC, some of Proctorio's questions seem to really push the rule: <i>If an employer requires job applicants to take a test, the test must be necessary and related to the job</i>. How is 27:24::64:X related to the job, again?<p>[0] <a href="http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm" rel="nofollow">https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm</a>
I find this funny, stupid and creepy at the same time.<p>Creepy - recording a dude's facial reactions, eye movements, mouth movements.. All this for a remote interview screening?<p>Stupid - I believe quickly Googling for some documentation, or even better solutions can save loads of a developer time in this day and age with StackOverflow. I would instead consider a person that was smart enough to cheat in a code test like this as a great choice. This reminds me so much of schooling system in India where the kid who memorizes essays verbatim scores higher than the kid who actually understood it and reproduced in own words.<p>Funny - Did they really think no one would object to this and post this on social media or HN?<p>My current manager who hired me right out of Grad school tells me, "Interview is a two-way process. A candidate need to be tested whether is talented and is a good fit for the team. Equally importantly, the candidate should be sold on the idea of working for us(company)."<p>On that case, Amazon has even tougher job of convincing a candidate. Not all sane people would want to work for above average pay while putting up with ridiculous work pressure [thinking about that guy who jumped off of Amazon work place].<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-wo...</a>
Why would anyone want to ever work for Amazon? Their culture is terrible and they are not innovative despite their claims to the contrary. They are simply a technical sweat shop that tries a lot of random things.<p>There's more to life than working for a big tech company. Big tech companies are the worst. If you value your life and you're a creative person and good at what you do, find yourself a (good) medium size company that pays well.<p>They're out there.
As much as I would like to bash Amazon for their draconian and insane interview loops -- which I've been put through once.<p>The post clearly states these clauses were part of an exam taken on <a href="https://proctorio.com/" rel="nofollow">https://proctorio.com/</a> for the Amazon interview. So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses.<p>I would happily bash Amazon interview loops all day long, but in this particular case, I would also need to criticize anyone else that uses <a href="https://proctorio.com/" rel="nofollow">https://proctorio.com/</a> for these practices.
Reiterating the questions posed at the end,<p>To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work? What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)?<p>It is true that it'd be pretty easy to circumvent the tracking, by placing paper over the webcam, running the browser in a virtual machine, spoofing data to the browser, and so on. However these are infeasible for most non-technical people, so I don't think it's a real solution. Freedom shouldn't be only for those with extremely technical knowledge.
I don't really care much about amazon because I hear they monopolize your life and have an aggressive culture. However, I do like me some puzzles:<p>1. The passage is about the good and bad of fanfiction which is posted on the internet. I pedantically disagree with the exact reading of response 2, but it's the correct one, I believe.<p>2. Only conclusion 1 is necessarily true, because of the transitive property of inequalities; X ? Y and Z/Y can be rewritten as X < Y <= Z. However, we cannot relate any magnitude information to V and it is not necessarily true that a number becomes larger when multiplied by another number (if we assume X is zero and V is positive, for instance).<p>3. These kinds of spot-the-pattern questions are incredibly arbitrary. However, the most obvious thing to associate with the alphabet is a numerical association with the letters based on it's placement in the common (but not universal) ordering of the Latin alphabet. When you do that, you see that UVS is the only sequence of letters that aren't "descending" even though letters can't truly be ordered.<p>4. The No Free Lunch Theorem says that no statistical method can find a pattern on the set of all possible inputs, which is why these questions are all bullshit, mathematically speaking. The only thing that makes 4 a better next step for the sequence 1, 2, 3, is that our own personal experience tells us that counting is fairly common, but enumerating the squarefree numbers isn't. You could also make the case that 27:24 has the pattern of 3^3:3^3-3, so maybe 64:x is 4^3:4^3-4 making it 60, but this doesn't feel in any way obvious to me, so I have no idea what they're thinking.
I suppose this explains why some companies simply use universities to do their filtering for them.<p>It's been a while since I took the GRE and LSAT, which I tutored for a while, but they have questions much like the ones listed here. Some of these tests take place on a computer now, others are still large proctored exams. I'm pretty sure I was fingerprinted before taking them.<p>I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. I'm not so cynical as to believe that universities don't impart valuable knowledge and critical thinking to some of their student. However, the quality of education doesn't vary nearly as much as people claim between a very very elite university and a strong state school.<p>The real value is largely in the filter, high standardized testing scores, along with (at elite privates) a number of students admitted because they come from powerful and wealthy families.<p>Supposedly research shows that people who post these kinds of numbers but attend less prestigious universities do about as well as the people who post these numbers and attend a prestigious university (I'm figuring this is because they almost always attend a reasonably good university, and the quality of teaching doesn't really drop off much).<p>Anyway, I think that companies can't ask for SAT scores, but maybe they can just administer their own SAT? Having an outside company do this is probably valuable from a liability point of view. My guess is that some kind of end-run is going on here...
I can somewhat understand this kind of crazy monitoring if the stakes are high and the score on the test is the only or finally-deciding factor. But online tests for interviewing candidates are never that. So in this case I don't think this level of invasiveness is justifiable in the slightest. It's just a screen. Cheaters will get filtered out at the next stage in the hiring process.
When I interview people, I give them a question and tell them to google whatever they want and use whatever libraries they want that will make their lives easier: I'm not asking a trick question.<p>Even then only about 15% of the people pass my question. I'm sure there are plenty of fair interview questions you could ask where you don't have to care about cheating, and just see if they can come up with an answer.
Ok so lets say i get this job at Big Brother Amazon. They give me my first assignment. I find a way to 'cheat' such that i finish the project in record time and it is perfect. You don't want that?<p>What the hell does cheating mean in software development.
Other companies aren't so draconian, and don't tend to treat potential talent so poorly.<p><a href="https://careers.mozilla.org/university/" rel="nofollow">https://careers.mozilla.org/university/</a>
It's official. We now need burner laptops, TOR routing, secure enclaves, faraday cages, and EM spectrum analyzers just to apply for jobs.<p>But serious question: Who's the fucked up creep that decided to sell this idea? And who are the fucked up creeps that went along with it?<p>Why is this okay?<p>Have people lost their minds?<p>Whatever happened to Scantrons and a #2HB pencil?
I would love if someone built a Chrome extension which highlights comments from folks self-identifying as working at the companies mentioned in the story.<p>For one, the general radio silence around ethical issues from the same folks who jump in with gusto on technical issues is both the most fascinating and the most creepy thing I have seen recently, and I am guessing the signal (people debating ethics) over noise (people debating technicals) ratio is low when you consider the implications of people taking these things for granted.<p>I guess someone will be asking if the signal and noise should be the other way around, given that HN is mainly for discussing technical issues. Maybe, but it emboldens the general attitude from these folks, which I will sum up thus:<p>"We have more insight into this issue than you because we are on the inside. We are probably smart enough to know what we are doing because we are working at these companies in the first place. And no one really knows the answer to these questions anyway, so what is the use discussing them endlessly?"<p>Another way to rephrase the above is: "We know what is best for you, and if you are questioning this assumption, you are just hating".<p>This reminds me of Eric Schmidt's comment on privacy:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew</a>
I recently interviewed at amazon and was rejected, the reason I think is that as a senior developer I should have picked up the coding books and do some practices before the interview, for 5 coding questions I only made 4, I misunderstood one of the requirements and failed that, still it's my fault.<p>What surprised me are two things:<p>1. the hiring personnel emailed me a few times saying she will call me on the results, it is a 1~2 minute call actually but it took her a few days calling me back saying I was not selected, not sure why this practice is preferred and I would appreciate a simple email or a quick call after the decision was made.<p>2. more importantly, during the interview, I feel all of them(6 of them in total) are reciting the amazon principles all the time, it made me feel the employees are totally brain-washed, yes I understand company cultures and such, but Amazon just made me feel weird, I somehow sense I'm talking with a group of robots who all repeat the same "principles" with no soul, and they're proud of that.<p>The second item made me concerned, honestly if I got an offer, I won't go anyways.
Just a few days ago I did a fun and completely ridiculous exercise and compared Amazon to a country, and then wanted to see how it would look like. I ended up with Stalinism.<p>(I'll just paste it here and add some more to it):<p>* Personality cult: Bezos = Stalin<p>* You sing praises to the great leader: the 14 leadership principles.<p>* Officially they have a zero-tolerance policy for harshness. But I bet if anyone complains to HR they get sent to Siberia (i.e. put on performance improvement plan) or shot (terminated). <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-contacting-jeff" rel="nofollow">https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for...</a><p>* The top management is the Central Committee. They wield massive power. Officially it is a meritocracy but it is all about gaining favors with the ruling party.<p>* In the warehouses I hear they do these group exercises: Stalin loved public performances<p>* They like to monitor your microphone, eye, head, and mouth movements : NKVD (the secret police is watching you)<p>Who wants to add more?
Anyone who has seen Adam Curtis' documentary, "The Trap," will find this familiar.<p>Our society has become so obsessed with quantification that we have become blind to any other ways of understanding the world around us, and made us poorer in our analysis, instead of being more informed with more information.<p>It is like saying that if something cannot be measured, then it does not exist.
Amazon - just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do something.<p>Not to mention... this is just the <i>interview</i>. Imagine what it must be like for the people who actually <i>work</i> there.
I think stuff like this is only acceptable, morally and perhaps legally, if they tell you what they uncover / discover about you with this. That way we can verify it's all above board.<p>Imagine they put the "eye movements / mouth movements / head movements" through a machine learning system and discover that certain head movements lead to poorer results (or maybe not poorer results, but slightly slower results). Only it turns out these particular head movements, etc. are due to a disability protected by the americans with disabilities act. They may not have fed this into the system directly, but if the decision was made based solely (or primarily) on these things, are they not breaking the law?<p>And how could it even be traced in this case if the person doesn't yet know they are going to have said disability, but the ML algorithm somehow learned that the person is likely to (for example) become deaf within the next few years.
I'm curious why he didn't just disable/disconnect/cover the microphone & webcam. I realize this doesn't address the principle of the issue, but it does address the practical issue of applying for the job without giving into much of the creepiness here.<p>That said, with employees literally throwing themselves off of buildings to get away from Amazon [1], I'm not sure how much nonsense I'd put up with to get a job there anyway.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-wo...</a>
I took this test last month. Nobody is pointing this out but this is test is here because Amazon is either lazy or don't care enough to create tests. They reuse every single programming question in their interviews, online tests and group assessments. This leads to high chances of people simply copying readymade solution. The solution, it looks like, is to spy on everything you do. It was pretty intrusive. The proctor closed all my tabs on all windows, all the notepad/sticky notes, all windows, and background processes. (of course people can just 'remember' solutions, but then they are also getting fired is not too hard. )
Big company interview processes are great and by great I mean just terrible and dehumanizing experiences. I applied to Amazon at some point and then completely forgot about it. I hear back from them like 6 months later and in that time I had interviewed at more than a dozen companies in the bay area with much more pleasant interview processes.<p>The cycle times make no sense to me when it comes to big companies. I don't know how Amazon hires and retains programmers.
Unrelated to the main point of the post, but claims that math and logic questions "have nothing to do with programming ability" are a little strange.
People who are saying the webcam monitoring is a equivalent to spyware are over-reacting. This is no different than an in-person interview.<p>I think if anything the logic portion is the biggest travesty here. It doesn't have to do anything with programming and it boils down to a reading comprehension test that does not bode well with non-native speakers. But I guess that is there goal.
As someone who has first hand experienced cheating in interviews I think this is an extremely good move.<p>I know some people in bay area who are making > $100k in cash (no taxes paid) just by answering screening interviews on other people's behalf.<p>This is called "interview by proxy" and the person generally takes first month's salary as remuneration in cash.
I did go through the entire process (3 tests in total, the first 2 were as he mentioned and the final test was a couple of coding questions - pretty basic stuff tbh)<p>However, I was disqualified for being out of the frame for less than a second (I grabbed a bottle of water and it was a bit further from my laptop)<p>I don't mind getting disqualified but I'd have appreciated either of the following:<p><pre><code> 1. mentioning that you should be in the frame at all times (this was not mentioned what so ever)
2. displaying the frame so you knew you were going out
</code></pre>
Either one complements the other but there is no way to know what's being seen from the camera apart from the fact that it's recording (based on the camera light)<p>oh also, I think the author will have issues getting hired by Amazon again (when I took the test, they made me accept an agreement that basically stated that I could not share the questions with anyone - online or otherwise)
I can see why they might do this, anyone that can land a job with similar benefits somewhere else probably doesn't even apply, leaving them with the worst to choose from. Their climate gets even tougher because they "can't hire enough good engineers" and the cycle repeats.
> To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work?<p>A significant one, surely.<p>> What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)?<p>Look, sometimes you can compromise for practicality. But even then there's pretty much always more than one option. Almost anyone can get a low wage job at department store/grocery store/restaurant/whatever so they can eat, guilt-free, and there are still degrees. You don't have to immediately go for the extreme of selling your soul to the devil, you have other options. (To bring it back to the concrete, especially as a tech intern; there are tons of companies that aren't Amazon.)
So I know this was posted a bit ago, but I feel like this would be kinda funny to mess with. 1 - Can it detect covering the camera? If so does different color coverings allow it to procede? If not I would put a funny video on my phone and hook that in front of the video.<p>You could always just see how it is contacting your webcam and then just change the stream of data to some other source that is not hte webcam<p>Mic -> maybe mess around with how it is contacting your mic and (ports? idk) and load some really annoying music to pipe through to it.<p>Physical Locaiton -> do laptops have built in GPS or is it just off your ip address? if so could you just use VPN? Have it come from like some random place.
I'd be concerned about OP if he/she signed an NDA,
but I guess he/she is smarter than that.<p>I participated in the interview as well.
5 hour long face to face interview. Hour each with 5 different engineers
Did not get an offer.
This is one of those cases where I am slightly appalled by the violations of privacy, yet do kind of understand why they'd want to do this.<p>But as other's have pointed out, these are not restrictions from Amazon, rather from the third-party they have decided to hire. I guess there might be alternatives that could restrict some of the access that is not needed.<p>Either way, you need a way to determine who is playing fair and who is not. Flying someone out for an on-campus interview will be significantly more expensive (considering as well how many people apply), and there is only so much you can achieve with a skype interview.
I wanted to try the assessment, but when I got to install proctorio app, I see that "This extension needs access to: All data on your computer and websites you visit" I didn't wnt to have a extension knowing it supposedly needs access to "All data on my computer". But did it anyway, as I wanted to try to get this job. I hand issues and called. They took control of my machine and restarted it with me doing anything. Not go to apply for this position or ever take test using this proctor.io app.
Interviews and recruiting is a two-way street. Legal / ethical or not, this kind of lock down sends a "we don't trust you" message.<p>Why would you interview someone you don't trust?
For anyone else curious, I got the following answers:<p>1) Fan fiction websites have pros and cons for the authors<p>2) Both the conclusions are true<p>3) UVS (the only one not in reverse alphabetical order)<p>4) 60 (because 3^3=27, 3^3-3=24, 4^4=64, 4^4-4=60)
I wouldn't say these tactics are good, but they're understandable. The issue is cultural differences, where the pressure to succeed and a different value system leads to people to gaming the system to succeed. The alternative is hiring people who have used deceptive methods, rather than competence, to succeed up to that point.<p>If companies hadn't been burned many times, they wouldn't resort to such drastic measures.
>> Your eye movements<p>Presumably they have a cunning plan to use eye movements to decide which candidates are better programmers because eye movements suffice to tell apart the expert from the novices, in programming:<p><a href="http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-1539-9/u...</a><p>(...allegedly)
I think I would be okay with this, if it was on their premises with their computer. that being said, I find these practices repulsive. but I feel like the SNL/west world skit. [0]<p>[0]<a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-cooper-360/3428579" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/anderson-coope...</a>
What's the privacy issue? If you go to an on-site interview they'll look you write in the eyes and see your eye movements. They'll know where you are, if you're browsing the web for some reason, etc. It's just a test they don't you cheat on. Are you thinking they'll sell their interview data to advertisers? Seems preposterous.
Let's say if this would not be just for interns but for everyone. Then there would be this second order effect where they filter candidates who don't mind this happening to them. If they keep at it long enough, they'll end up shaping the culture of the company in a certain way. Which may not be the way they'd want.
> (I'm not sure how this [accessing other tabs] works with Chrome's sandbox, though).<p>Just fine. The "tabs" permission is a blanket perm across all tabs in all windows. Extensions run at a higher level of trust than Joe Random Blog's JS and accordingly have access to more powerful APIs.
Why not agree with the terms and boot up an Ubuntu live CD, install chromium and do the tests<p>That way they only get the microphone, webcam and physical location which is annoying but not as worst<p>If you cancel the microphone and the webcam, will they still let you do the test? What if I have a desktop computer with no webcam?
Hmm could you just record a loop of you sitting motionless at your computer and feed that to the camera input? Maybe some incredibly loud high pitched noise to the audio?<p>Not suggesting these as feasible solutions, but something like this deserves to be trolled.
> To what extent should personal ethics play in deciding where a (software) engineer should work?<p>I believe you should use your personal code of ethics as a compass to guide you in your life, including where you work.<p>> What if the engineer has no other choices for a job, and needs to (make rent/pay the bills/eat food)?<p>You're describing a clash of personal ethics and social ethics. Social ethics are saying this kind of tracking is alright, your personal ethics no. So, how strongly do you believe in your conviction? Would it be worth going hungry to stand up for what you believe?<p>Sort of a sliding scale, huh? The more you are pushed towards survival, the less options you have to exercise your personal ethics. On the other hand, maybe this point isn't as important as it seemed at first thought and you'll decide you're willing to be subjected to monitoring for the duration of the test (but not before or after of course)
i was wondering why facebook and google acquired eye tracking companies.<p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-tracking-startup-gazehawk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-acquires-eye-tracking-...</a><p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye-tracking-startup/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/24/google-buys-eyefluence-eye...</a>
They sometimes use a similar locked down browser (respondus) for in class assessments at my university. Never used it myself, so not sure how similarly fine grained any tracking is.
Though I agree these requirements are unacceptable, I'd like to point out that you've refused on grounds of privacy infringement and then leaked Amazon's private information.
You should have done the test in a virtual machine and disabled some features (cam, microphone) and record the screen (outside the virtual machine obiviously).
I recently accepted a position at Amazon (have not started working there yet) and I have a similar experience.<p>The first part of the interview was exactly like the linked experience. No coding questions just reasoning. The second part I had to use ProctorU instead of Proctorio. Personally I thought the experience was super weird but understandable, I'll get to that later, somebody watched me through my webcam the entire time with my microphone on. They needed to check my ID before the test. They needed me to show them the entire room I was in (which was my bedroom). My desktop computer was on behind my laptop so I turned off my computer (I don't remember if I offered to or if they asked me to) but they also asked me to cover my monitors up with something which I thought was silly after I turned them off so I covered them with a towel. They then used LogMeIn to remote into my machine so they could check running programs. I quit all my personal chat programs and pretty much only had the Chrome window running.<p>The proctored section involved a work simulation and coding questions. Before the coding section started they opened up the Java 7 and 8 docs, C++ docs, and an online calculator in my browser so I could use those for reference. I could take a break in between the two parts but I didn't need to. In total it took about 3 hours for me to finish everything but they said to block out 4 hours. After that I got an offer.<p>I didn't talk a real person who actually worked at Amazon (by email or through webcam) until I received an offer.<p>I can understand why people would be bothered or disturbed by these practices but I just thought that Amazon has a ton of applicants and it would take more time for engineers to talk to applicants. In total it took about a month from when I first applied to when I got an offer. I was then flown out to visit Amazon (not for more interviews because I already had an offer) and I actually got a chance to talk to people and learn about teams and ask questions. Yes, I asked multiple different people about Amazon's problems and they all said that their personal experience has been fine but a few said that they know of people who have had bad experiences. Seems like it's dependent on your manager. I know somebody who works there now (not in engineering but works in Seattle) and they love it. I found a team I liked, I talked to people who worked on the team and they all greatly enjoyed it so I accepted after my visit. Everyone who I talked to seemed very passionate about what they do and all take ownership over their projects.<p>I also applied to other large companies at the same time as Amazon (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter). Microsoft and Facebook haven't sent me anything. There was a mixup with Google's emails so that delayed my interview process but by the time I started talking to them I had already pretty much made my mind up about Amazon. I didn't go through any real interview rounds with Google, just preliminary screening questions. Twitter sent me a coding challenge but their email also said that they wouldn't get back to people until mid December.
just in case:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/amazon-interview-experience/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20161201024953/https://rajk.me/a...</a>
><i>"Hopefully these should convince you that this test has absolutely nothing to do with programming skill."</i><p>It's a rather blatant IQ test, though of course they would never call it that because that would open them up to disparate impact lawsuits.
I guess they have interesting problems to work on but I can't believe people work there. Hell no. (Not just this, I also know people who have worked there)
'However these are infeasible for most non-technical people'<p>Most non-technical people wouldn't be applying for a software internship at Amazon!