Bangladeshis at Big Tech: What’s it like to work at Amazon?
Rehenuma Raysa
E-commerce and cloud computing colossus Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and a dream workplace to tech enthusiasts everywhere. Many Bangladeshis desire to work at Amazon; hence, we talked to Software Development Engineers Aunik Ahmed and Ahmed Faiyaj from Amazon to get some valuable insights about their journey of getting selected for their respective positions, their experience of navigating their way through the Amazon's selection procedure while asking them for advice for those, who want to work at Amazon in the future as we hope to see more Bangladeshis achieving their dreams and joining the company's workforce.
The experience of working at Amazon has been very exciting, humbling and rewarding for Aunik Ahmed as he is enjoying working with a great team that supports him and gives him the space to learn and grow at his own pace, and although he was not prepared for the sheer amount of responsibilities that came along with the job, it became an opportunity for him to grow even more and continuously improve himself to keep up with his colleagues. His surreal experience is what drives him to keep working for Big Tech. "My work is challenging and gives me a real sense of accomplishment, knowing that whatever I'm working on will be used by millions of people around the world; unfortunately, not yet in Bangladesh though '', said he.
He also assured future Amazon employees that there are perks of working at Amazon; it is not all work and no play. One will find plenty of people sharing similar interests and to do fun activities together. "I play games a lot, so I have joined several clash teams in League of Legends, we play Among Us every Friday, and we are in the process of convincing our managers to get a PS5 for our floor. Also, there are happy hours on Fridays, various informal hangouts and activities throughout each month while the pay is amazing and employees get a lot of discounts at really cool places," added he.
Meanwhile, this is Ahmed Faiyaj's first time working in a large company like Amazon, and from the software development process perspective, he is finding it quite similar to start-ups. However, working at Amazon becomes challenging when scaling and customer impact gets considered as his work can break the site, which can impact millions of customers worldwide. Also, he has to communicate with multiple teams and go through multiple steps before pushing his work to the live site or server. He said, "so far, working at Amazon feels like more responsibilities, more communication and process-oriented than working at other companies; especially the early-stage unicorn level start-up, where I had worked before joining Amazon".
Faiyaj shared his experience on what had worked for him in achieving this success saying, "I applied online on Amazon's website and later, they sent me some coding questions through an online exam system, I submitted my code. After a week, I got an email from a recruiter that they want me to go through the on-site interview. As the pandemic had started, I did the on-site interview fully remotely. There were four interviews - three coding interviews and one system design interview. All the interviews contained behavioural questions as well. The whole interview process was quite smooth and friendly, and the interview questions were quite standard and without any surprises. After one week, they sent me the job offer."
On the other hand, Aunik's journey of getting into Amazon started a year before he got into the company. "I applied for an internship at Amazon in my 3rd year of university. I passed the first online exam but failed the second one horribly. That did not discourage me, and I kept uploading my updated resume to their hiring portal and about a year later, when I was four months away from graduating, a recruiter from Amazon reached out to me encouraging me to apply again. This time I was well-prepared and aced their three rounds of online exams. After which, I prepared for another two weeks for the final on-site interview, and I was able to ace that as well. After about a week, they let me know that I got selected and that remains as one of my happiest days ever ", he noted.
Similar to working at any other FAANG companies, working at Amazon requires patience, hard work and perseverance. Since new graduates without internship experiences have a hard time understanding other people's code, Aunik Ahmed suggests that interested candidates should put in the hours and effort to drive their growth and deliver results accordingly. Moreover, he cautioned to expect a lot of struggles and have "impostor syndrome" almost all the time as what he finds scarier is the fact that his teammates are incredibly talented people who make him doubt his abilities and place on the team. The work is quite challenging, and unlike anything, one has ever done before. The deadlines just serve to increase the pressure even more. "These are normal things that every recruit goes through, and trust me it eventually gets better if one is not discouraged by the pressure and is passionate enough to keep moving forward. If not, they should reconsider joining Big Tech," he remarked.
Amazon is hiring a lot of people - from fresh grads to experienced people in different work roles; therefore, Ahmed Faiyaj advised that interested candidates go through the Amazon's career site to look for jobs which fit their profile, make sure the cv/resume reflects the job requirements and then apply on the site or get a referral from someone who works at Amazon. Having good preparation is a must, and for that, doing online searching to understand what kind of questions are asked during Amazon's interviews and what is the best way to answer those can be significantly helpful.
"One should have a good understanding of computer science concepts if one wants to work at Big Tech companies as an Engineer. So, it is better to solve algorithm problems when pursuing a bachelor degree. Participate in online programming contests, read about the latest technologies and use cases, do some pet-projects, work on communication skills, and look for online resources or questions related to Big Tech company job interviews to find out what skills you are lacking and work on it. Last but not the least, you may fail at the interview; do not get frustrated, do not lose faith, learn from the mistakes, and do more practice to make yourself better." he asserted.
Moreover, according to Aunik Ahmed, it is very straightforward to get into Big Tech as surprising as it may sound. There are three steps Bangladeshi students should take.
First of all, people applying at Big Tech have stellar resumes. Almost everyone who gets selected has either had some sort of internship experience, research experience, teaching experience or impressive side projects. As it is difficult for students in Bangladesh to get relevant coding internships, they should deep dive into making as many astounding side projects as possible to help them stand out among the crowd. It does not matter which university they have attended as long as everything else on the resume is what the recruiters are looking for.
Secondly, they need to prepare like there is no second chance, for if they fail to get into any of the Big Tech companies, they will have to wait for another 6-12 months to re-apply, and by the time they re-apply, they might have already fallen behind everyone else. So, to seize the opportunity, after the resume gets selected for online exams, they should learn and practice all coding fundamentals and behavioural questions. Aunik Ahmed highly recommended solving as many problems as possible on Leetcode and try to grasp the concepts properly so that it becomes easy to innovate when the time comes. The other big thing is to prepare for behavioural interviews by practising the STAR method. Prospective employees must be prepared to answer any sort of behavioural question using the STAR method.
Thirdly, it is mandatory to give online exams for any of the Big Tech companies to get selected. The format is different for each one but still, it is compulsory to take them to be considered for further interviews. So, if their resumes get selected, and they pass the online exams and if they are confident about their preparation for coding and behavioural questions, they should try doing timed mock interviews with their friends. These practices will be really useful in actual interviews. Finally, he advised trying not to panic too much during any of the exams or interviews. Being calm and collected is key to succeeding.
www.thedailystar.net
Rehenuma Raysa
E-commerce and cloud computing colossus Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and a dream workplace to tech enthusiasts everywhere. Many Bangladeshis desire to work at Amazon; hence, we talked to Software Development Engineers Aunik Ahmed and Ahmed Faiyaj from Amazon to get some valuable insights about their journey of getting selected for their respective positions, their experience of navigating their way through the Amazon's selection procedure while asking them for advice for those, who want to work at Amazon in the future as we hope to see more Bangladeshis achieving their dreams and joining the company's workforce.
The experience of working at Amazon has been very exciting, humbling and rewarding for Aunik Ahmed as he is enjoying working with a great team that supports him and gives him the space to learn and grow at his own pace, and although he was not prepared for the sheer amount of responsibilities that came along with the job, it became an opportunity for him to grow even more and continuously improve himself to keep up with his colleagues. His surreal experience is what drives him to keep working for Big Tech. "My work is challenging and gives me a real sense of accomplishment, knowing that whatever I'm working on will be used by millions of people around the world; unfortunately, not yet in Bangladesh though '', said he.
He also assured future Amazon employees that there are perks of working at Amazon; it is not all work and no play. One will find plenty of people sharing similar interests and to do fun activities together. "I play games a lot, so I have joined several clash teams in League of Legends, we play Among Us every Friday, and we are in the process of convincing our managers to get a PS5 for our floor. Also, there are happy hours on Fridays, various informal hangouts and activities throughout each month while the pay is amazing and employees get a lot of discounts at really cool places," added he.
Meanwhile, this is Ahmed Faiyaj's first time working in a large company like Amazon, and from the software development process perspective, he is finding it quite similar to start-ups. However, working at Amazon becomes challenging when scaling and customer impact gets considered as his work can break the site, which can impact millions of customers worldwide. Also, he has to communicate with multiple teams and go through multiple steps before pushing his work to the live site or server. He said, "so far, working at Amazon feels like more responsibilities, more communication and process-oriented than working at other companies; especially the early-stage unicorn level start-up, where I had worked before joining Amazon".
Faiyaj shared his experience on what had worked for him in achieving this success saying, "I applied online on Amazon's website and later, they sent me some coding questions through an online exam system, I submitted my code. After a week, I got an email from a recruiter that they want me to go through the on-site interview. As the pandemic had started, I did the on-site interview fully remotely. There were four interviews - three coding interviews and one system design interview. All the interviews contained behavioural questions as well. The whole interview process was quite smooth and friendly, and the interview questions were quite standard and without any surprises. After one week, they sent me the job offer."
On the other hand, Aunik's journey of getting into Amazon started a year before he got into the company. "I applied for an internship at Amazon in my 3rd year of university. I passed the first online exam but failed the second one horribly. That did not discourage me, and I kept uploading my updated resume to their hiring portal and about a year later, when I was four months away from graduating, a recruiter from Amazon reached out to me encouraging me to apply again. This time I was well-prepared and aced their three rounds of online exams. After which, I prepared for another two weeks for the final on-site interview, and I was able to ace that as well. After about a week, they let me know that I got selected and that remains as one of my happiest days ever ", he noted.
Similar to working at any other FAANG companies, working at Amazon requires patience, hard work and perseverance. Since new graduates without internship experiences have a hard time understanding other people's code, Aunik Ahmed suggests that interested candidates should put in the hours and effort to drive their growth and deliver results accordingly. Moreover, he cautioned to expect a lot of struggles and have "impostor syndrome" almost all the time as what he finds scarier is the fact that his teammates are incredibly talented people who make him doubt his abilities and place on the team. The work is quite challenging, and unlike anything, one has ever done before. The deadlines just serve to increase the pressure even more. "These are normal things that every recruit goes through, and trust me it eventually gets better if one is not discouraged by the pressure and is passionate enough to keep moving forward. If not, they should reconsider joining Big Tech," he remarked.
Amazon is hiring a lot of people - from fresh grads to experienced people in different work roles; therefore, Ahmed Faiyaj advised that interested candidates go through the Amazon's career site to look for jobs which fit their profile, make sure the cv/resume reflects the job requirements and then apply on the site or get a referral from someone who works at Amazon. Having good preparation is a must, and for that, doing online searching to understand what kind of questions are asked during Amazon's interviews and what is the best way to answer those can be significantly helpful.
"One should have a good understanding of computer science concepts if one wants to work at Big Tech companies as an Engineer. So, it is better to solve algorithm problems when pursuing a bachelor degree. Participate in online programming contests, read about the latest technologies and use cases, do some pet-projects, work on communication skills, and look for online resources or questions related to Big Tech company job interviews to find out what skills you are lacking and work on it. Last but not the least, you may fail at the interview; do not get frustrated, do not lose faith, learn from the mistakes, and do more practice to make yourself better." he asserted.
Moreover, according to Aunik Ahmed, it is very straightforward to get into Big Tech as surprising as it may sound. There are three steps Bangladeshi students should take.
First of all, people applying at Big Tech have stellar resumes. Almost everyone who gets selected has either had some sort of internship experience, research experience, teaching experience or impressive side projects. As it is difficult for students in Bangladesh to get relevant coding internships, they should deep dive into making as many astounding side projects as possible to help them stand out among the crowd. It does not matter which university they have attended as long as everything else on the resume is what the recruiters are looking for.
Secondly, they need to prepare like there is no second chance, for if they fail to get into any of the Big Tech companies, they will have to wait for another 6-12 months to re-apply, and by the time they re-apply, they might have already fallen behind everyone else. So, to seize the opportunity, after the resume gets selected for online exams, they should learn and practice all coding fundamentals and behavioural questions. Aunik Ahmed highly recommended solving as many problems as possible on Leetcode and try to grasp the concepts properly so that it becomes easy to innovate when the time comes. The other big thing is to prepare for behavioural interviews by practising the STAR method. Prospective employees must be prepared to answer any sort of behavioural question using the STAR method.
Thirdly, it is mandatory to give online exams for any of the Big Tech companies to get selected. The format is different for each one but still, it is compulsory to take them to be considered for further interviews. So, if their resumes get selected, and they pass the online exams and if they are confident about their preparation for coding and behavioural questions, they should try doing timed mock interviews with their friends. These practices will be really useful in actual interviews. Finally, he advised trying not to panic too much during any of the exams or interviews. Being calm and collected is key to succeeding.
Bangladeshis in Big Tech: What’s it like to work at Amazon?
We talked to Software Development Engineers Aunik Ahmed and Ahmed Faiyaz from Amazon to get some valuable insights about their journey of getting selected for their respective positions, their experience of navigating their way through the Amazon's selection procedure while asking them for...
