One of Amazon's first 100 employees reveals what it was really like to interview with Jeff Bezos
Joshua Burgin was hired as a developer in 1997
A man who was one of the first 100 employees of Amazon has revealed what it was like to be interviewed by Jeff Bezos.
Working at Amazon is pretty standard, considering the company has spread across the world and holds numerous facilities for people to work in. But what about working there in the 90s?
The company was founded in 1994, having started out in Bezos’ one-floor office near Seattle.
At the time, he was attempting to get it online, with the aim of it being an online bookstore.
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With his need to get it up on the web, Bezos decided to hire some employees- particularly those with coding experience.
That’s when Joshua Burgin decided to answer a job ad printed in the University of Washington newspaper, with his own fax.
The advert requested that people with high degrees and experience in ‘C/C++/Unix’ and designing and maintaining large, complex systems.
For Joshua, this was a gamble, as the company was only in its second year at the time, and he would have to relocate, for a steady salary cut.
He wrote on Medium that he began his career at a ‘traditional enterprise software company’ and ‘even had some options as the company had just gone public’, but he knew he wanted to write code on the West Coast for the foreseeable.
When a friend saw Amazon’s ad, Joshua responded and soon went on his journey to being in the first 100 staff for the global company.
He explained that at the time, he had ‘hair back then’ and decided to wear a ‘full suit to the interview because you did that on the East Coast’.
He also made the mistake of writing code on an ‘actual keyboard live in one interview’ because he didn’t know interviewees were supposed to use the whiteboard.
While it was a minor mess-up, it didn’t seem to stop the company from giving him a second interview - this time with Bezos himself.
Joshua shared: “I interviewed with the Jeff Bezos in Amazon’s single floor office (yes, we all fit on one floor! No, I don’t think he remembers me).”
He was ‘shocked’ that he was even able to interview with a CEO, and although nerve-wracking, he was confident he had performed well... unlike most of us, who would not be as calm considering Bezos’s interview tactics.
Of course, he landed the job and was notified after Thanksgiving, and despite his confusion over how online books could be successful, he ended up staying with the company for over three years.
Having left in 2000, Joshua went on to spend 14 years doing various other projects before coming back to work in Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2014, where he continues to work.
Maybe Joshua wasn’t intimidated by Bezos because at the time, he was looking a little different.
A 1996 interview with The Computer Chronicles had people on social media perplexed that he looked so ‘normal’ compared to looking like a ‘James Bond villain’.
Topics: Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Britt Jones