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>I don't think it's a coincidence that Amazon (for ex) has poor working conditions. I just spent a year and a half working for Amazon, and the recent reports a

>I don't think it's a coincidence that Amazon (for ex) has poor working conditions. I just spent a year and a half working for Amazon, and the recent reports about working conditions were, as far as I could tell, either fabrications, or things that hadn't happened for years. Working there was great. Yes, I was in the AWS tree, but I also had contact with people in the Retail tree, and didn't perceive any differences there. Low-wage jobs like fulfillment...I don't know. I'm a developer. Oh, and did I mention the pay was great? Hard to complain, really.

tomtang0514 11y ago
Pay was great? Really? Maybe it's true for Seattle. I've done an internship at AWS couple years back and I chose not to return for fulltime, while two of my colleagues did. We're all in california and they both left Amazon before this summer. Why? Maybe because they're paid 20% less than I do? And one of them told me most people in his office only got 3% raise in salary each year.
- Alupis 11y ago
  Cost of living is substantially higher in Silicon Valley/CA than in WA state (maybe not Seattle itself, but in general). So it's natural to have differences in pay. In reality, you and your friends probably made around the same amount after all living expenses were paid, etc... Basically $60K (or whatever salary) isn't $60K everywhere, it's relative. It's a reason why some "put their time in" working in SV, then move to Nebraska or something for a comfortable living.
  - tomtang0514 11y ago
    Are you carefully reading my comment? I said we are all in California, one of them is in Amazon Irvine while the other is in Amazon Palo Alto. And before you make any further guess, I'm in Redwood City not San Francisco. So there's no reason they should be paid 20% less. In addition, this is just one year after we all graduated, if we keep the same growth rate for 5 years they're going to make 40% less than me. It's just not competitive at all.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - philjr 11y ago
      Plural of anecdote is not data, right? ;) As someone who competes against them for talent, and having seen dozens of examples from different parts of their business, Amazon is an extremely competitive employer on the tech side for experienced employees. They typically pay nicely above market
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Geography arguments for salary discrepancies aren't compelling. Equal pay for equal work. My work won't be any different if I do it from DC or Des Moines.
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      I understand where you're coming from (and I counteracted an apparent downvote of your comment), but I don't think you're entirely right. Mostly, maybe, but not entirely. There is a value in having good people work in the same room. I think it's overvalued, but it's not zero. And if companies want to hire a top engineer in the Bay Area, they're simply going to have to pay more than if they want to hire an engineer in Des Moines: Competition for good local employees is much higher, and higher competition for fewer resources means that the rate for those resources will go up. If you're a senior developer in the Bay Area right now making less than $115k, you're not trying hard to get a raise. If you're in Des Moines making $115k, you're in the long tail; the 90th percentile is $108k. [1] The MEDIAN in San Francisco is $115k. [2] And that doesn't even fully capture the state of the industry, because there are a few employers who go well beyond the median. Most senior engineers I know who are working at one of: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Twitter, earn over $200k (total compensation, counting stock grants), and many earn closer to $500k. Des Moines doesn't have major campuses of any of the above employers (correct me if I'm wrong), so the increased salary pressure from the high rolling Internet companies isn't affecting the local market. Would love it if more big companies would hire remote workers; it would "spread the money" around the country more evenly, they could probably find developers for less, and it would reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses wasted on commuting. But until they do, a significant fraction of the best developers will congregate in the Bay Area, where they can potentially pull in $500k/year instead of a pathetic $95k. Because good developers are worth that much in value to the company, and any good developer making less than $120k is being exploited. Even in Des Moines. [1] http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Salary-Details-Des-Moines-IA.aspx http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Sal... [2] http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Salary-Details-San-Francisco-CA.aspx http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Sal...
      - 11y ago
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  I was an SDE III, and I had some hard-to-find skills. I'm also a crazy awesome developer who they decided they REALLY wanted to come in full time after I'd done a few months of contract work. Total comp was comfortably past $250k/year, counting signing bonus and stock. I was based in Seattle, though I worked from remote. I was told I could have made Principal within a year if I were willing to move to Seattle. Which I wasn't.
  - capex 11y ago
    Working remotely might've been a factor in your Amazon experience.
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      Granted. It actually got me out of the evil mandatory "on-call" experience. Someone on my team actually quit without notice three days after he was first forced to go through an on-call week. So I don't want to sugar-coat it: It was everyone's least favorite activity.
  - sah2ed 11y ago
    > I was an SDE III, and I had some hard-to-find skills. Mind highlighting what those "hard-to-find" skills were?
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      In my case, Android NDK (C/C++ development) and low-level video streaming.
tinbad 11y ago
Offtopic and anecdotal but two people I knew at Amazon quit shortly after joining. One developer, after being at Amazon Music for 3 months and expected to work 80 hour work weeks, was asked by his boss to come in on the weekend to finish something up, that was the final straw for him.
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  My own experience was anecdotal, so not a problem. Obviously there ARE still sections of Amazon that are broken. Others have suggested as much in comments as well. Sorry your friends had such bad experiences. Hope they found a better employer.
HelloMcFly 11y ago
I personally know three people whose stories are much closer to the NYT pieces than your comments, and they've all only left within the past three years, with the most recent exit being about five months ago. I know two others (in Seattle, it's easy to know many people with an Amazon work history) who had a fine experience, one of whom that still works there. I've interviewed for two positions there myself, one that I declined and one that I did not receive an offer for; one was presented as exceptionally competitive, with the HR rep dancing around a few of the NYT-style topics, and one that seemed much more typical and collaborative. No, I've not worked there, but all of the evidence at my disposal (your comment included), leads me to believe your Amazon experience is highly dependent on where your work group sits in the Amazon network. To shrug off the stories as potential fabrications seems as intellectually dishonest as assuming the stories of extreme treatment are commonplace.
- hitekker 11y ago
  People who are treated well by systems will generally defend those systems, even if it means rationalizing acts of injustice or cruelty happening just next door. At the very least, how much a person is willing to question the hand that feeds them can reveal the strength of their character to others.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    Ouch. I deny that my comment has anything to do with strength of character. I was treated well, and everyone who I had contact with over my 18 months was similarly treated well (with the exception of forcing client developers to go "on call" for server issues that our team knew NOTHING about...that was cruel and unusual, but even that didn't require 80 hour weeks, just the occasional 2am pager beep). Our branch of the org chart was happier (according to internal surveys) than Amazon at large, but those internal surveys absolutely didn't paint a picture of tons of unhappy people. That said, I'm sure there are bad managers at Amazon, just as I had an awesome manager. There are just too many people there for them all to be perfect. But the picture from where I stood was honestly as positive as I described. So don't throw around aspersions of my character when you don't know my situation, or what I observed. ASIDE from the fact that I DID leave Amazon and sold all of my stock, so it's more like "the hand that fed me for a while."
setpatchaddress 11y ago
I know many highly-competent individual engineering contributors and managers who quit Amazon (Lab126, mobile app store, CreateSpace) and found the NYT story accurate to varying degrees. Several of them were absolutely miserable. One was reasonably content, but still underpaid.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> I just spent a year and a half working for Amazon, and the recent reports about working conditions were, as far as I could tell, either fabrications, or things that hadn't happened for years. Amazon employs roughly 150,000 people. It's pretty arrogant of you to assume that everyone else must be lying just because the bad things didn't happen within sight of your department.

tomtang0514 11y ago

Pay was great? Really? Maybe it's true for Seattle. I've done an internship at AWS couple years back and I chose not to return for fulltime, while two of my colleagues did. We're all in california and they both left Amazon before this summer. Why? Maybe because they're paid 20% less than I do? And one of them told me most people in his office only got 3% raise in salary each year.

Alupis 11y ago
Cost of living is substantially higher in Silicon Valley/CA than in WA state (maybe not Seattle itself, but in general). So it's natural to have differences in pay. In reality, you and your friends probably made around the same amount after all living expenses were paid, etc... Basically $60K (or whatever salary) isn't $60K everywhere, it's relative. It's a reason why some "put their time in" working in SV, then move to Nebraska or something for a comfortable living.
- tomtang0514 11y ago
  Are you carefully reading my comment? I said we are all in California, one of them is in Amazon Irvine while the other is in Amazon Palo Alto. And before you make any further guess, I'm in Redwood City not San Francisco. So there's no reason they should be paid 20% less. In addition, this is just one year after we all graduated, if we keep the same growth rate for 5 years they're going to make 40% less than me. It's just not competitive at all.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - philjr 11y ago
    Plural of anecdote is not data, right? ;) As someone who competes against them for talent, and having seen dozens of examples from different parts of their business, Amazon is an extremely competitive employer on the tech side for experienced employees. They typically pay nicely above market
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Geography arguments for salary discrepancies aren't compelling. Equal pay for equal work. My work won't be any different if I do it from DC or Des Moines.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    I understand where you're coming from (and I counteracted an apparent downvote of your comment), but I don't think you're entirely right. Mostly, maybe, but not entirely. There is a value in having good people work in the same room. I think it's overvalued, but it's not zero. And if companies want to hire a top engineer in the Bay Area, they're simply going to have to pay more than if they want to hire an engineer in Des Moines: Competition for good local employees is much higher, and higher competition for fewer resources means that the rate for those resources will go up. If you're a senior developer in the Bay Area right now making less than $115k, you're not trying hard to get a raise. If you're in Des Moines making $115k, you're in the long tail; the 90th percentile is $108k. [1] The MEDIAN in San Francisco is $115k. [2] And that doesn't even fully capture the state of the industry, because there are a few employers who go well beyond the median. Most senior engineers I know who are working at one of: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Twitter, earn over $200k (total compensation, counting stock grants), and many earn closer to $500k. Des Moines doesn't have major campuses of any of the above employers (correct me if I'm wrong), so the increased salary pressure from the high rolling Internet companies isn't affecting the local market. Would love it if more big companies would hire remote workers; it would "spread the money" around the country more evenly, they could probably find developers for less, and it would reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses wasted on commuting. But until they do, a significant fraction of the best developers will congregate in the Bay Area, where they can potentially pull in $500k/year instead of a pathetic $95k. Because good developers are worth that much in value to the company, and any good developer making less than $120k is being exploited. Even in Des Moines. [1] http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Salary-Details-Des-Moines-IA.aspx http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Sal... [2] http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Salary-Details-San-Francisco-CA.aspx http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Engineer-III-Sal...
    - 11y ago
SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
I was an SDE III, and I had some hard-to-find skills. I'm also a crazy awesome developer who they decided they REALLY wanted to come in full time after I'd done a few months of contract work. Total comp was comfortably past $250k/year, counting signing bonus and stock. I was based in Seattle, though I worked from remote. I was told I could have made Principal within a year if I were willing to move to Seattle. Which I wasn't.
- capex 11y ago
  Working remotely might've been a factor in your Amazon experience.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    Granted. It actually got me out of the evil mandatory "on-call" experience. Someone on my team actually quit without notice three days after he was first forced to go through an on-call week. So I don't want to sugar-coat it: It was everyone's least favorite activity.
- sah2ed 11y ago
  > I was an SDE III, and I had some hard-to-find skills. Mind highlighting what those "hard-to-find" skills were?
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    In my case, Android NDK (C/C++ development) and low-level video streaming.

tinbad 11y ago

Offtopic and anecdotal but two people I knew at Amazon quit shortly after joining. One developer, after being at Amazon Music for 3 months and expected to work 80 hour work weeks, was asked by his boss to come in on the weekend to finish something up, that was the final straw for him.

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
My own experience was anecdotal, so not a problem. Obviously there ARE still sections of Amazon that are broken. Others have suggested as much in comments as well. Sorry your friends had such bad experiences. Hope they found a better employer.

HelloMcFly 11y ago

I personally know three people whose stories are much closer to the NYT pieces than your comments, and they've all only left within the past three years, with the most recent exit being about five months ago. I know two others (in Seattle, it's easy to know many people with an Amazon work history) who had a fine experience, one of whom that still works there. I've interviewed for two positions there myself, one that I declined and one that I did not receive an offer for; one was presented as exceptionally competitive, with the HR rep dancing around a few of the NYT-style topics, and one that seemed much more typical and collaborative. No, I've not worked there, but all of the evidence at my disposal (your comment included), leads me to believe your Amazon experience is highly dependent on where your work group sits in the Amazon network. To shrug off the stories as potential fabrications seems as intellectually dishonest as assuming the stories of extreme treatment are commonplace.

hitekker 11y ago
People who are treated well by systems will generally defend those systems, even if it means rationalizing acts of injustice or cruelty happening just next door. At the very least, how much a person is willing to question the hand that feeds them can reveal the strength of their character to others.
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  Ouch. I deny that my comment has anything to do with strength of character. I was treated well, and everyone who I had contact with over my 18 months was similarly treated well (with the exception of forcing client developers to go "on call" for server issues that our team knew NOTHING about...that was cruel and unusual, but even that didn't require 80 hour weeks, just the occasional 2am pager beep). Our branch of the org chart was happier (according to internal surveys) than Amazon at large, but those internal surveys absolutely didn't paint a picture of tons of unhappy people. That said, I'm sure there are bad managers at Amazon, just as I had an awesome manager. There are just too many people there for them all to be perfect. But the picture from where I stood was honestly as positive as I described. So don't throw around aspersions of my character when you don't know my situation, or what I observed. ASIDE from the fact that I DID leave Amazon and sold all of my stock, so it's more like "the hand that fed me for a while."

setpatchaddress 11y ago

I know many highly-competent individual engineering contributors and managers who quit Amazon (Lab126, mobile app store, CreateSpace) and found the NYT story accurate to varying degrees. Several of them were absolutely miserable. One was reasonably content, but still underpaid.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> I just spent a year and a half working for Amazon, and the recent reports about working conditions were, as far as I could tell, either fabrications, or things that hadn't happened for years. Amazon employs roughly 150,000 people. It's pretty arrogant of you to assume that everyone else must be lying just because the bad things didn't happen within sight of your department.