I know Aren from school, ad i am familiar with the multitude of problems he has solved at various companies. This should be a plug-and-play solution for others!
I went to Stanford with Munira, she was a few years older but we overlapped, and she was a CS Section Leader (CS198) which means she taught my intro CS class when I took it, and helped me (and others) when I was stuck writing my first programs.
I subsequently became friends with her, and I can personally vouch that she took all the requisite CS classes, and she was pulling all-nighters in the same lab as me, writing code for her classes.
I remember Munira being wicked smart - and an honest conscientious person.
Now, she may not have officially graduated - but keep in mind that she was finishing Stanford in the heady dot-com days, and she was likely a few units short of getting a full degree when Epiphany (a high-flying startup at the time) lured her in, and she never went back to finishing it. Similar story happened to me - i was 3 or 4 units short of required 45 units to get my CS Masters when i was graduating (I did the same co-term program where you get a BS and MS at the same time); and Stanford wanted me to pay the remaining $4k to get my degree. I paid, but quite possible that Munira was in the same boat, went to work for Epiphany and never bothered to finish her remaining units.
I don't work for Amazon, and I don't know the full details of the story - but it sounds a lot like ramblings of a disgruntled employee. I would definitely like to hear/see the Amazon side of the story before I draw any conclusions.
Keep in mind - I'm heavily biased, I was friends with Munira at Stanford and afterwards before she moved to Seattle, but i'm very skeptical to be taking all of the allegations at face value.
Official degree or not, I'd hire her to work at my startup in a heartbeat without any worries.
side note: Munira is not exUSSR from Tajikistan - good guess, but she just worked there for one summer. Nor Bangladeshi either. Either way, it's not in any way material to this conversation. I, on the other hand, am from former USSR, in case that makes any difference.
Wow, Epiphany. Haven't heard that name in a long time. I used to work at IBM above their office in Campus Dr. in San Mateo. I think they went out of business and that space was later occupied by a staffing agency. I might have run into her before in the lobby. Such a long time ago. Man, time flies.
