Amazon interviewed me about my Amazon fake reviews detection app

[vumania]

Here's how it went down.

So last April-May, I built a chrome extension that detects fake reviews on Amazon. It analyzes a combination of factors about the linguistics of the review (part of speech tags, unigrams and bigrams analysis), the reviewer metadata (rank, percent helpful reviews, number of reviews...), and the overall product reviews statistics (standard deviation, percent one time reviewers... etc).

At the end the reviews quality are scored on all these factors to give the product reviews a letter grade rating where "F" means that the product is very likely to have gone through a reviews bombing campaign and an "A" grade is for a product that contains mostly reliable reviews from reliable reviewers.

On the side I've been applying to Amazon jobs, and the last one I applied I included in my resume that I made such an app. About a couple of weeks later I get an email saying I was lined up for an interview. The interview went OK, I didn't do great in it to be honest, I didn't do bad either. I got asked about the chrome extension I made to describe what it did and why I did it which I obliged in answering.

Two weeks later, I contacted them to know about the hiring process and I got a reply that I was not considered for the job and that they couldn't share the reason why.

That sucked. What stung me even further, and made me believe that the interview was only a sham reason to only know about my app, was the fact that the product that I used as an illustration on the chrome extension store got banned. Not only that, but multiple products from the same seller and other sellers in that product category engaging in review deception schemes also got banned or more in their lingo "Discontinued".

BUT the app still detects products with deceptive reviews in other categories so it wasn't a site-wide update.

This is my story. Do with it as you wish. And be careful in dealing with large corporations.

Edit: Here's the link to the chrome extension in question:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/evalute-amazon-reviews-le/cfngaogeljebhifobnjlhoakgaogmndj?hl=en

[UnoriginalGuy]

But Chrome extensions are easy to deconstruct. Just open the CRX file using 7Zip and read through the source code.

Your interview might have made them acutely aware that your extension exists and they may have either got a copy and looked their site's products to find issues or at least take care of the "low hanging fruit" examples you used.

So what occurred might have been as you say. And I suspect you didn't move forward on the interview process BECAUSE of your extension (i.e. they didn't want to muddy the waters in case Amazon's legal department wants to send you a C&D letter) but I don't think they needed to interview you to get intelligence on your extension (since any engineer worth their salt at Amazon could have told them the same thing, just by downloading a copy and reading).

It sucks that Amazon didn't see the value of your innovations and exploit them to make their site better. But their loss I guess...

[lmg643]

I tried out this extension and found that it slowed down chrome and even crashed within a few minutes of using it. so perhaps amazon didn't get as much useful information as you think.

[Guillaume86]

They couldn't if he put the logic on a server and just make the extension a client (which seems better to cache things across clients, I don't know if it's the case here).

[DasIch]

They don't need to make an interview to learn more about the extension but even so it's convenient to be able to talk to the author directly.

[electic]

It is usual practice not to give a reason. If you give a reason, you are creating 'exposure' which could lead to a lawsuit, or worse, a class action lawsuit. Most big companies have this policy in place.

So no, it was not some sort of ploy to get info on your chrome extension. If they wanted to do that, they could have just unzipped it and read through your source code. It's trivial.

Lastly, kudos to Amazon for paying attention. Sounds like they investigated the vendors and banned them for review pumping.

[linux_devil]

But writer should be given some credit, he executed it right using possible resources. May be they used his approach .

[arfliw]

More accurate title: "Amazon didn't hire me. During my interview, they asked about a Chrome extension I built that detects bad reviews."

[dang]

We've changed the title from "Amazon interviewed me only to learn about my Amazon fake reviews detection app".

[paulsutter]

Almost certainly, someone at Amazon was impressed with your app, but ultimately they just weren't that into you. It's not a big deal. You're a smart guy and capable of something different than being a tiny cog inside of Bigco anyway.

Happy to brainstorm about standalone services you could build with your abilities.

[philwelch]

Have you considered the possibility that Amazon's fraud detection systems independently caught the same product that your extension caught?

Also, another part of your story doesn't make sense: Amazon is growing like crazy right now[1], so why wouldn't they continue with the hiring process if you passed the interview? Setting up a "sham interview" like you're suggesting implies that it's worth the company's time to talk to you for 20 minutes about your Chrome extension, but not worth the company's time to actually hire you. This might be true for a company that has a hiring freeze or is downsizing or laying people off, but not a company that's hiring tens of thousands of people every year.

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2014/company-town-amazons-rapid-grow...

[smt88]

This doesn't answer your question, but many HN posts talk about how awful it is to work at Amazon. You sound smart and resourceful. Apply somewhere that's more likely to make you happy.

[demachina]

There are new Reddit threads from veteran Amazon employees about what a horrible place Amazon is for their developers, and its gotten much worse in recent years. You can find them from here:

http://www.geekwire.com/2015/old-man-at-amazon-gives-advice-...

They appear to be using stack ranking and performance improvement plans to massively churn their work force so a significant percentage of employees doing good work are disposed of by their two year anniversary just because their system is designed that way. They seem to be making their “teams" in to brutal exercises in survival of the fittest or more accurately survival of those most able to play the stack ranking game. Stacking ranking nearly destroyed Microsoft so you assume it is or will do the same to Amazon.

I feel for young programmers starting out, because the work environment seems to be bad and getting worse in a lot of places.

[CodeWriter23]

After about 8 years of helping my mom grow her business on Amazon, I can tell you for a fact, when that company sees something it wants, and can get it for free, they just take it from you.

She created a unique product offering on Amazon and sold it well, about 500 units per month. The product was not hard to knock off, as it is a simple manufacturing process, and now Amazon sells their own version of it, with better search placement to boot. Contrast that with another product she purchases on the open market, similar unit sales with better margins, and has sustained that for several years. Amazon can't identify the source, so they don't sell their version of it.

With Amazon, if you're not the customer, you're the product. The only exception: AWS customers are sometimes both, Dropbox is an example.

[rebootthesystem]

One opinion I've see is that they use third party sellers to identify valuable product niches to get into. I've read many accounts of Amazon launching their own version of a product and sometimes going as far as suspending or ejecting the seller or sellers with the product that inspired them.

My guess is that there are too many sellers making money on Amazon who take the abuse. To speak up would mean to risk losing your business. So people don't. I see one massive class action lawsuit in the making.

The other Amazon scam has to do with sales tax. Rather than collecting sales tax on every sale they've somehow managed to pass this on to third party sellers. It's as if Walmart had their suppliers become responsible for collecting and paying sales tax at every Walmart location. Which makes no sense.

Amazon should collect and pay sales taxes in every state where they have a warehouse. States are getting cheated out of tax revenue because Amazon plays lose with this and sellers have no clue they are tasked with collecting taxes. A secondary effect is that sellers get into massive trouble with authorities because Amazon doesn't collect taxes for them and does not submit the funds to the sellers. When sellers discover they were made responsible for sales tax they often end-up with a huge bill that nearly ruins them.

[RogerL]

Amazon has interviewed my cat's mouse toy. And companies never share why they turn you down. I really wouldn't read much into this.

[giancarlostoro]

"Never" is too strong, sometimes they do.

[blrgeek]

Amazon has an 'Andon cord' where any employee can report on any product and the retail manager will review and take appropriate action.

Looks like in this case the interviewer pulled the cord and the seller/category was reviewed and several were banned.

This would most likely have been completely independent of the interview reject.

[micaeked]

Consider that you don't have the necessary evidence to come to that conclusion. In particular:

- Fraud is something that happens a lot online, and Amazon is going to be removing stuff they think is fraud constantly.

- Looking through the source of a chrome extension is pretty trivial. An engineer can find the info without asking you, and an hr person has no use for that info.

- Tons of people don't get hired. Many companies don't give reasons for not hiring for legal reasons.

[jaredsohn]

>What stung me even further, and made me believe that the interview was only a sham reason to only know about my app, was the fact that the product that I used as an illustration on the chrome extension store got banned. Not only that, but multiple products from the same seller and other sellers in that product category engaging in review deception schemes also got banned or more in their lingo "Discontinued".

This seems like potential evidence that they became aware of your app and made some changes based on the easy to identify information, but I don't think this is evidence as to why they decided to interview you. Maybe they would have interviewed you if your resume didn't include that app on it.

[FatalLogic]

>potential evidence...

I know you probably didn't mean evidence in a legal sense, but it is circumstantial evidence, and this is a reason why a competent, healthy company would not call in a developer for a fake interview with the intention of stealing his ideas. The costs of potential legal liability and reputational risks would far outweigh the small financial gain. Especially as they could just analyze the app, never contact the developer, and not leave such a big evidence trail

Maybe Amazon is not a competent, healthy company, or maybe a rogue executive inside the company independently arranged this evil scheme, but that seems so unlikely when they could just offer a few 100K, or employment, to get access to his ideas legally.

Anyway, my advice to the developer is: it's possible you were evilly taken advantage of, but it's improbable. What is probable is that if you go down this road of paranoid fear of having your ideas stolen, it's a very unhealthy path to follow, even if you are right a few times. Try to think the best of people, and usually they will return that favor.

[yabatopia]

Another possibility is that users of the extension reported the fake reviews, even used the examples of the extension page, forcing Amazon to ban the sellers.

[mentat]

People write about Google interviews but my Amazon interview was significantly worse than my Google one. Totally disorganized, confused start times, reinterviewed by people I'd already been phone screened by to that asked me the same questions. I wouldn't assume either way that this had anything to do with your extension, their interviews and interview choice process is pretty bad.

[ytdht]

asking the same question twice is not necessarily a mistake, specially if they it has been reformulated.

[kabdib]

You don't want to work for Amazon. All the feedback I have from the place is that it's awful.

I honestly don't know how they retain good engineers.

[ksherlock]

You know what's worse than interviewing for an amazon job and being rejected? Interviewing for an amazon job and being hired.

[amelius]

Who was taking the interview? Was it just some general HR officer, or a person specialized in some field, like a machine learning expert?

[rebootthesystem]

One of our clients sells products on Amazon. The stories i hear from time to time are absolutely incredible.

Amazon's buyer facing persona looks organized, efficient and professional. Amazon's back-end, the side sellers see, is chaotic, totalitarian, irrational, unfair, unprofessional and, generally speaking, an utter mess.

Given what I know I am not surprised to learn that some sellers game the system. When Amazon pulls shit like suspending your product/s only to reach out to your suppliers to sell them themselves the end result is the creation of a mercenary "get what you can as fast as you can" mentality with some sellers. It's a mess.

[golergka]

> the product that I used as an illustration on the chrome extension store got banned. Not only that, but multiple products from the same seller and other sellers in that product category engaging in review deception schemes also got banned or more in their lingo "Discontinued"

But isn't that a good thing? I mean, would you really be opposed to Amazon using your exception to detect fraud?

[alistproducer2]

I've been emailed at least 3 times about interviewing with them, so I think they just cast their net wide and see who does the best on their programming tests. I personally don't interview with companies that hire that way, so I've never responded. I turned to down a Google interview for the same reason. I heard Amazon sucks to work for anyways.