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This is not correct about Amazon/AWS from what I've been told. I have several friends that work at, or worked at AWS within Amazon. When something goes wrong,

This is not correct about Amazon/AWS from what I've been told. I have several friends that work at, or worked at AWS within Amazon. When something goes wrong, I hear it's a blame game. I hear that it's a witch hunt and the person that's responsible gets held accountable, even if they didn't cause it. Example: Employee is in charge of project, project hires subcontractors, subcontractors screw up, Employee is fired. Sounds unfair. Sounds unreasonable. Happened.

lukeschlather 10y ago
I used to work at AWS, and this is not at all typical. I was in meetings with various high-level directors and the mantra was always the same: Why did this happen? If the answer is "somebody made a mistake" we need to figure out how we can automate so nobody can make that mistake again. Now, that's not to say there's not a lot of pressure. People are held accountable. But they are held accountable for fixing the underlying issue and making sure the same mistakes aren't made again. I've never heard of someone getting fired for making a mistake. People get fired when the same expensive mistake is made repeatedly by the same person. (And really, based on my experience, that might not even be enough. I think in order to get fired you probably would have to fail to understand the nature of the mistake when everyone else in the room understands.)
ryanczak 10y ago
Who ever told you that was incorrect. Amazon's root cause analysis process focuses on understanding the failure and implementing corrective actions. A process with a human in the critical path is a broken process.
sudhirj 10y ago
Mixing up engineering and sales/marketing/management. The consequences of making mistakes and the result of them are different in both fields.
goldenkey 10y ago
This is 100% correct. The average stay at AWS is less than a year. Each employee has color coded badges based on length of stay. You can also use the LDAP tools to fetch each employees years of employment. The average is pretty sad and spun as "we are hiring more than ever. our oldest employees left when their stock became worth a ton" But of course the real reason is that Amazon's work environment is basically chock full of shitty middle-managers, many who are adopted from Microsoft or salvaged somehow from better tech companies in the valley. They even have these leadership principles that are basically a bunch of no-brainers that they force down the employees throats at every opportunity. They use them as a criteria for performance reviews, even before actual hard metrics. Shitty middle managers will keep stressing the leadership principles because (1) that's what they are told to do (2) they need to rate their subordinates on them (3) because these principles are qualitative, the only insurance they have is that they spewed them enough to get through. Amazon, to sum it up, is just, shitty employees from other tech companies. And dumb/average intelligence follow-the-pack type drones - many who can hardly speak English and are on work visas..and they put many of these terrible speakers as managers!! (Amazon loves cheap labor, and will use it for ANY position possible) When your leadership principles are sold as prolific and something every employee "should study" (Bezos words') you really can't expect to hire intelligent folk who don't want no-brainer basic business and character traits hamfisted to them as if it is the new work of Plato himself. [1] https://www.amazon.jobs/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

lukeschlather 10y ago

I used to work at AWS, and this is not at all typical. I was in meetings with various high-level directors and the mantra was always the same: Why did this happen? If the answer is "somebody made a mistake" we need to figure out how we can automate so nobody can make that mistake again. Now, that's not to say there's not a lot of pressure. People are held accountable. But they are held accountable for fixing the underlying issue and making sure the same mistakes aren't made again. I've never heard of someone getting fired for making a mistake. People get fired when the same expensive mistake is made repeatedly by the same person. (And really, based on my experience, that might not even be enough. I think in order to get fired you probably would have to fail to understand the nature of the mistake when everyone else in the room understands.)

ryanczak 10y ago

Who ever told you that was incorrect. Amazon's root cause analysis process focuses on understanding the failure and implementing corrective actions. A process with a human in the critical path is a broken process.

sudhirj 10y ago

Mixing up engineering and sales/marketing/management. The consequences of making mistakes and the result of them are different in both fields.

goldenkey 10y ago

This is 100% correct. The average stay at AWS is less than a year. Each employee has color coded badges based on length of stay. You can also use the LDAP tools to fetch each employees years of employment. The average is pretty sad and spun as "we are hiring more than ever. our oldest employees left when their stock became worth a ton" But of course the real reason is that Amazon's work environment is basically chock full of shitty middle-managers, many who are adopted from Microsoft or salvaged somehow from better tech companies in the valley. They even have these leadership principles that are basically a bunch of no-brainers that they force down the employees throats at every opportunity. They use them as a criteria for performance reviews, even before actual hard metrics. Shitty middle managers will keep stressing the leadership principles because (1) that's what they are told to do (2) they need to rate their subordinates on them (3) because these principles are qualitative, the only insurance they have is that they spewed them enough to get through. Amazon, to sum it up, is just, shitty employees from other tech companies. And dumb/average intelligence follow-the-pack type drones - many who can hardly speak English and are on work visas..and they put many of these terrible speakers as managers!! (Amazon loves cheap labor, and will use it for ANY position possible) When your leadership principles are sold as prolific and something every employee "should study" (Bezos words') you really can't expect to hire intelligent folk who don't want no-brainer basic business and character traits hamfisted to them as if it is the new work of Plato himself. [1] https://www.amazon.jobs/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/principles