I find this highly unlikely. My first day at Amazon I encountered an engineer puzzling over a perfect sine wave in a graph. After looking at the scale I made the comment "oh. you're using 5 minute metrics." Their response was "how could you figure that out just by looking at the graph?" When I replied "Queuing theory and control theory," their response was "what's that?"
Since then, Amazon's hiring practices have only gotten worse. Can you invert a tree? Can you respond "tree" or "hash map" when you're asked what is the best data structure for a specific situation? Can you solve a riddle or code an ill-explained l33tcode problem? Are you sure you can parse HTML with regexes? You're Amazon material.
Did you pay attention to the lecture about formal proofs. TLA+ or Coq/Kami? That's great, but it won't help you get a job at Amazon.
The idea that formal proofs are used anywhere but the most obscure corners of AWS is laughable.
Although... it is a nice paper. Props to Amazon for supporting Ph.D.'s doing pure research that will never impact AWS' systems or processes.
replies(7):