How AWS SDM Dive Deep (7) - Bar Raiser

The most famous Amazon Bar Raiser (BR) program is probably the interview BR. But there are also many other bar raiser programs inside Amazon. There are document writing BR, COE BR, API design BR, and Cryptography BR etc. Within KMS, I even created a runbook BR program to help engineers write better runbooks that are concise and easy to follow. Almost any area that requires continuously higher standards, significant technical depth, with enough passionate Amazonians that are willing to contribute their time to help others, there will be a bar raiser program. I am part of a few bar raiser programs myself. I truly enjoy the learning experience. Being an interview BR allows me to participate many organizations' interviews that I don't have opportunities to work with directly. I learned to appreciate the massive size of Amazon and its diversities across the globe. I learned to interview for roles I don't even know they existed. Interviewing people is a mirror effect for both the interviewer and interviewee. We see ourself on others. “But how do you interview people for roles you have no ideas about?”, you may ask. Good question! I had the same doubt when I started my interview bar raiser training program. But after several hundred interviews I started to see patterns among roles. No matter what roles people play they are still humans. We can use the same Amazon leadership principles to calibrate their narratives. 1. Do they have stories to tell? 2. How do they tell their stories? “But some people can game the system to be perceived better than they really are through fabricated stories, can't they?”, you may ask. Yes, we do encourage candidates to be prepared for Amazon interview questions. Bar raisers are trained to probe into the stories to collect relevant data points, including tell the difference between fake data points and the truthful ones. If a candidate can tell their stories so well we can not tell the difference anymore, well this becomes a Turing Test, isn't it? If someone looks like Shakespeare, talks like Shakespeare and writes like Shakespeare, we can probably take the risk and hire them as Shakespeare as long as they continue to play the long game. My best interview experience was with a fellow bar raiser from a different company. After a while I realized I was probably talking to someone with hundreds of interviews under her belt. She knew exactly how to answer my questions and I knew what she wanted me to hear. At the end she acknowledged she was a BR too and we agreed we both had great fun. So if you are a SDM, join a BR program you are passionate about. Even better, if you see the emptiness and the need, start a BR program to fill the gap. BR is like most worthy endeavors, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it!