This was just a phone interview. They had previously reviewed my resume and reached out to me about the position. I did ask beforehand if they needed someone local, because I wasn't close to an office, and NYC is not a possibility for where I am. The recruiter said she'd check, then scheduled an interview, so I thought that maybe it was okay. The first interview they scheduled had to be canceled, because apparently the guy who was supposed to do the firing was leaving AWS that day. So they scheduled for the next week with the current hiring manager, his boss, who was apparently looking for a replacement. I used to live in the Bay area in California, and I had a cell phone number with an area code out there, so I guess the hiring manager was caught off-guard when I replied that I live and work in the state of New York. I let her know that NYC was not a possibility at this time, but she decided to go ahead with the interview anyway. So the interview actually went well, in my opinion, and I was asked a lot of questions about my skillset and why I was looking at AWS (while I didn't apply directly for this position, AWS is a place I was looking at). It was your standard phone interview, basically. She said that the recruiter that I was in communication with would contact me back sometime within the next few days. Well, I didn't hear anything from the recruiter until yesterday. I have no clue, because it could be that either I haven't done this specific job and she thought my skills didn't translate well enough, or it could be that my location was a deal-breaker. One of the questions was about working with groups of people that were spread all over the world, and I have, so I personally don't understand why, if I'm working with large groups of remote people, I have to physically be there, especially when the hiring manager would be across the country even if I could move to the NYC office. We still wouldn't be face-to-face. In today's world, when it comes to most software companies, you're working with lots of people that are remote. It's just a fact of life, but I'm not the hiring manager, and I'm not privy to her decisions. If you have the skills, and if you can be local, AWS is a good place to try for, I think. It does seem like a challenging environment, and you'd be surrounded by lots of hard workers, and I think that's a good place to be. They are really fixated on "customer obsession," so if you have a real passion for helping people understand AWS technologies, I recommend trying for a position with AWS. I do hope for two things: 1) That recruiters actually verify if a condition you have is a deal-breaker before setting up the interview, and 2) Hiring managers, if location is a dealbreaker, look at the location of the recipient and verify whether they can get to a location that's preferable. Both of those are fairly easy things to do, and it saves both you and the interviewee lots of time if you just do your homework, too. We don't want to waste your time just as much as we don't want to waste ours.