Emails Show Amazon Will Only Hire Students and Recent Graduates for Entry Level Software Posts
upstart writes:
Leaked emails show Amazon will only hire students and recent graduates:
Amazon is only hiring current students or newly graduated people for its entry level software developer positions.
According to an internal memo obtained by Insider, starting on January 25, 2023, Amazon limited new job openings for SDE-1s - the lowest software development engineering position - to what it calls "campus" hires, or students in Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD program alongside recent graduates. The memo said those in part-time or executive programs with years of work experience can apply too.
The change will mean that those that have been out of school for more than 12 months, or candidates for more senior SDE-2 positions who might be a better fit for an SDE-1 position would not be considered for the latter.
The internal note said Amazon is making the change because of the "pipeline" of candidates available through student programs, but the memo nor Amazon's spokesperson clarified why the company believes campus hires are better than experienced industry candidates for entry-level positions.
The change is "global and Amazon-wide," the note said, indicating it's applied across the company. Amazon's S-team, a group of over two dozen most senior executives, and top HR leaders made the decision, and exceptions will be made only with a VP or higher approval, it added.
[...] Overhauling Amazon's engineering culture has been a priority for Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy. At an internal staff meeting in 2021, Jassy told employees that he was aware of developer complaints at the company and that the engineering culture needed to be "meaningfully better than what it is today," as Insider previously reported. It also created a new team called "Amazon Software Builder Experience" to address those concerns.
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