The bizarre question Jeff Bezos always asked during job interviews at Amazon – and getting it wrong could mean you wouldn’t be hired
A former Amazon boss has revealed one of Jeff Bezos’s ‘favourite’ questions to ask candidates in job interviews, the answer he would look for – and the replies that would guarantee a rejection.
Dan Rose, who was an executive at Amazon for six years before becoming VP at Facebook, said the billionaire would ask interviewees if they were a ‘lucky person’.
He said Bezos would favour potential employees who answered that they thought of themselves as lucky but had taken advantage of the luck that has come their way.
The ex-Amazon executive explained that Bezos used the unusual question to gauge whether a candidate was ‘humble’, an ‘optimistic person’ and someone who ‘manifests success’.
‘When I worked at Amazon 1999-2006, Jeff Bezos’ favourite interview question was ‘Are you a lucky person?’ What a great way to filter for optimists and people who manifest success,’ Dan said in a post to X.
‘If you’re a successful, optimistic, humble leader, the right answer starts this way: ‘Yes, I’m the luckiest person on earth. I’ve worked hard to get to this point in my career, but a lot of things also had to go right, and I’ve taken full advantage of my luck.’
Dan said the question was used as a metric for finding workers who were optimistic, as Bezos thought the trait showed ‘leadership potential and likelihood of success’.
‘Perceiving yourself as lucky is a good proxy for optimism,’ he said.
A former Amazon executive has revealed one of Jeff Bezos’s favourite questions to ask candidates in job interviews
‘Humility is also important, and it’s easy to filter out false humility (‘humble brags’) in follow-up questions. This isn’t the only question, it’s a conversation starter and opens to door to exposing someone’s personality beyond their resume.’
Dan, who went on to turn Facebook from a 130-staff business to 35,000-employee company, also revealed the answers that would see Bezos knock candidates out of the running.
‘Two wrong answers: 1) No, I’ve never felt lucky, but I’ve been able to overcome all the bad things that always happen to me,’ he said.
‘2) No, I’ve never needed luck because I am better/smarter/stronger than everyone else.’
Amazon is known for its meticulous recruitment strategies when employing its corporate team.
Former employees and those who have applied for positions at the trillion-dollar corporation have reported having to endure multiple interviews, some lasting hours or all day.
One man who worked at Amazon in its early stages alongside Bezos long before he became one of the wealthiest men in the world said he was a ‘hands-on leader’ with an ‘unmistakable magnetism to him.’
Steve Yegge, 56, from Washington, started working at Amazon in 1998 as a technical program manager, four years after Bezos launched the company out of his garage.
Bezos would favour potential employees who answered that they thought of themselves as lucky but had taken advantage of the luck that has come their way (stock image)
Speaking with Business Insider, he added that he was so ‘focused on the mission’ that he sometimes overlooked problems in the office.
‘He didn’t seem to care about anything other than his mission,’ Steve said. ‘It didn’t matter if the toilet was dirty or if engineers were being paged all night long.
‘He seemed to only care if it started slowing him down. Maybe that’s the kind of leader you have to be. Successful leaders don’t take no for an answer.’
Steve described the Amazon offices as ‘dark and grungy,’ but added that despite the unappealing space, the atmosphere was amazing.
‘Once you stepped into the building, there was a crackle in the air. You could feel that something really big was going on – and it was all centered on Jeff,’ he continued.
Steve admitted that there was a lot of ‘pressure’ and an expectation ‘that everybody had to work all the time.’
‘People avoided asking for time off. Some employees would berate others,’ he added.
‘A friend of mine worked in a closet because that’s the only place where there was room for a desk.’
A man (left) who worked at Amazon when it was just starting up as revealed what Jeff Bezos was really like long before he was a billionaire
He recently told Business Insider recently that the Amazon founder (seen in 1997) was a ‘hands-on leader’ with an ‘unmistakable magnetism’
When he first started at the company, Steve said he ‘helped coordinate projects’ before he eventually began ‘leading the engineering team.’
He continued to ‘work his way up’ and eventually found himself working with Jeff directly on a ‘secret project:’ a platform ‘that was meant to be something like Reddit.’
‘I didn’t know enough about distributed computing to pull off what Jeff wanted in his desired timeframe,’ he admitted.
‘I felt the project wasn’t feasible at the time, but I was scared to deliver that message to Jeff.’
In 2005, Steve said Google made him a ‘great offer’ so he decided to leave Amazon.
Looking back, he confessed that he ‘didn’t really like working’ there and doesn’t ‘agree with the company’s practices,’ but he was grateful that he got the time he did with Jeff.
‘I’ve worked under other CEOs, including Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and they didn’t typically pull senior employees together for impromptu chats, but Jeff would do this quite often,’ he concluded.
‘He’d reset us and change how everyone in the company thought about things. He challenged people every day, but I never saw him get mad or swear in my almost seven years there.
‘He had this electric presence, a magnetism to him that was unmistakable.
‘He was never difficult to work with, even though he could be difficult to work for at times because of his super-high expectations.’
In response to Business Insider’s story, Amazon told the publication in a statement, ‘An anecdote from one person isn’t representative of what it was like to work at Amazon then or what it’s like now.’
