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0 pointskokanee6mo ago0 comments

I worked at AMZN for a bit and the complexity is not exactly arbitrary; it's political. Engineers and managers are highly incentivized to make technical decisions based on how they affect inter-team dependencies and the related corporate dynamics. It's all about review time.

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sharpy6mo ago

I have seen one promo docket get rejected for doing work that is not complex enough... I thought the problem was challenging, and the simple solution brilliant, but the tech assessor disagreed. I mean once you see there is a simple solution to a problem, it looks like the problem is simple...

bdbdkdksk6mo ago

I had a job interview like this recently: "what's the most technically complex problem you've ever worked on?"

The stuff I'm proudest of solved a problem and made money but it wasn't complicated for the sake of being complicated. It's like asking a mechanical engineer "what's the thing you've designed with the most parts"

mboerwink6mo ago

I think this could still be a very useful question for an interviewer. If I were hiring for a position working on a complex system, I would want to know what level of complexity a prospect was comfortable dealing with.

arethuza6mo ago

I was once very unpopular with a team of developers when I pointed out a complete solution to what they had decided was an "interesting" problem - my solution didn't involve any code being written.

SoftTalker6mo ago

I suppose it depends on what you are interviewing for but questions like that I assume are asked more to see how you answer than the specifics of what you say.

Most web jobs are not technically complex. They use standard software stacks in standard ways. If they didn't, average developers (or LLMs) would not be able to write code for them.

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gchamonlive6mo ago

That's what arbitrary means to me, but sure, I see no problem calling it political too

AtlasBarfed6mo ago

Forced attrition rears its head again

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