17 ms·

Everyone is quitting

• Kurtz79 10y ago
  PSA: In case you need more context, just go to the parent url: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home Which from my understanding is a collection of anonymous rants from Amazon employees, and the posted link is just an example. As someone already posted, it would be interesting to hear if someone in HN can provide some counterexample, or if the rants are spot on.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • danso 10y ago
    Back when scrutiny of Amazon's working conditions blew up after a NYT investigation, there were several HN'ers who had good things to say about working there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 Here's an anonymous comment that backed Amazon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065713 (there were plenty of negative experiences too)
  • bane 10y ago
    I've known a few Amazonians and their stores more or less mirror the bad stuff I've heard (they all worked in the retail part as SDEs, not AWS). Some of the details about software processes and team build-up/dissolving make me wonder how the site even stays on-line. I also interviewed once with them for a TPM position and had a fairly weird discussion with the recruiter about compensation and had to field some pretty random interview questions. Nothing was particularly terrible about my experience, but it made me wonder if I wanted to move across the country for what looked like a very non-amazing job.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      >Some of the details about software processes and team build-up/dissolving make me wonder how the site even stays on-line. Their inventory system is totally screwed up, worst I ever seen. I can't understand how they can run their company the way they do. Examples: http://www.orensmoneysaver.com/2016/03/amazon-and-mysterious-case-of-lost.html http://www.orensmoneysaver.com/2016/03/amazon-and-mysterious... "I sent in 14. 14 were received, 1 was lost and 1 was found. How many should have? 14 How many does Amazon say I should have? 11. How many units do I actually have? 9."
      • staticautomatic 10y ago
        I can't get over how bad this is.
  • cm3 10y ago
    Let's assume the rants are true for the most part. How is it possible that so many people work for Amazon despite the antics, especially in Seattle where it should be possible to get a similar job elsewhere. Are there benefits people work towards while coping with the toxic workplace?
    • exit 10y ago
      people have far less freedom in deciding where to work than we fool ourselves into believing
      • johnmarius 10y ago
        you mean, amazon is better than whatever other places people could work instead?
        • quantumhobbit 10y ago
          Or they thought it would be better than their previous place and were stuck once there. Or it was the only place to give them an offer. Or the money was too good to pass up despite the abuse. Or they accepted the abuse for the name brand on their resume.
          • exit 10y ago
            this, + a lot of job searching happens in a desperate daze.
          • pascalxus 10y ago
            Or, they have a huge mortgage to pay off and are in danger of losing their house. That'll keep people in an abusive relationship for a long time.
        • ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
          Ex amzn here: most of my ex colleagues agree that claims regarding opportunities for growth and so on are massively exaggerated by managers and HR.
  • eumoria 10y ago
    I would like to hear something from the other side but not many employees create entire sites dedicated to documenting management/abuse problems. That's a sign right there that it seems serious :(
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    Are there dates attached to these? I don't see any, and this complaint could be outdated (I doubt it is, but it still could be)
• option_greek 10y ago
  No wonder they are on constant recruitment overdrive. Calls from consultants recruiting for them have become worse than from banks offering credit cards.
  • madaxe_again 10y ago
    It's visible from the outside too. We've worked with Amazon for years, around AWS, MWS, login and pay, etc., and it's a shambles. Nobody seems to stay more than ten weeks or so, points of contacts are always changing and one gets the feeling they're all bluffing because it's their first day - I don't know how they actually get anything done. They must have a core of people somewhere who aren't rotating rapidly, I suppose?
    • brianwawok 10y ago
      So even if only 25% of your frontline staff leave in a year... that is still a lot of time the higher guys that stick around need to spend teaching the new staff. If you couple with 25% of frontline staff left + need 25% new staff due to growth, you are in for a rough ride.
  • _RPM 10y ago
    Good point. I get as many credit card offers, as I do inquires on LinkedIn for jobs.
• strooper 10y ago
  I wonder how they are managing and keeping up with excellent products without right management behind the scene?
  • labrador 10y ago
    It's a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Abusing your employees can produce short term benefits. I think the point of the complaints and the growing resistance is the point of the parable of robbing Peter to pay Paul, that it doesn't work out in the long run.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      How long is the long run? People been complaining already for a Long time.
      • spriggan3 10y ago
        > How long is the long run? People been complaining already for a Long time. People usually quit fast.
      • cmdrfred 10y ago
        You'll know the party is over when the Hamptons are burning to the ground.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    IMO, it's a part of the API driven culture. If the API is the glue that ties business units together, you don't need as many knowledgable employees who understand the guts of the company -- the company itself is self-documenting.
    • berntb 10y ago
      Interesting thought. If you're guessing correctly, this will probably be the future of the development business.
• johan_larson 10y ago
  What do their turnover numbers actually looks like? Chances are they get a lot of management attention. IIRC, 15% per year is pretty standard in the software industry. I think Google's figure was something like 5% when I was there.
• wccrawford 10y ago
  This makes me wonder what would happen if you took a job there and just refused to do the sucking up? What if you just competently did what they asked and didn't worry about getting fired for bullshit reasons? With that kind of turnover, it occurs me to that you very well could survive without doing all the soul-sucking bullshit because the managers simply couldn't afford to lose more workers. I'm not the one to try it, though, as I've no interest in working in those high-stress situations in the first place. I'm fine with making a little less and having a personal life outside of work.
  • imaffett 10y ago
    You can cruise and do nothing. I worked at Intel for 3.5 years and watched "old white guys" collect $200k+ in pay/bonus/stock and do about 1 month of real work. But it is soul sucking...if you piss the wrong people off they will do their best to get rid of you and promote their lackeys. It really is welfare for the middle class.
    • Amygaz 10y ago
      In my current job that's all there is, and 1 month worth of work is pushing it, unless "work" also means manipulating the information and the situation, then they are working hard, giving their 100% in that department.
      • cmdrfred 10y ago
        Its the old way of thinking, its like that episode of Seinfeld where Georges car breaks down at work and his boss who now sees his car parked there as he gets in and as he leaves thinks he is a great employee. Costanza is always working! Its easier to look at cars than numbers.
    • fdsaaf 10y ago
      > old white guys Why did you inject race into the conversation for no reason? I've seen layabouts of every description
• lhnz 10y ago
  Almost everything I've heard about employment at Amazon has been negative. Now obviously, I can't say whether that's fair to the company, however it must be costing them a lot of money. I bet there are a lot of people that have heard the din of politics and would never consider working there. Are there any HN readers that are currently working at Amazon and that are happy?
  • ajkjk 10y ago
    I worked there as an SDE for ~3 years, until recently (in Seattle, in a core business area) and liked it a lot.. As far as I could tell, most of the people in my organization were very content with their jobs. We've of course talked about the negative reputation about the work environment. It seems like those conditions must exist somewhere, to hear this much about it, but they must be in other parts of the company since they're totally unlike what I've seen. That or it existed until several years ago and the rumors have a time delay in coming out.
    • Jach 10y ago
      Unless the turnover is ludicrous such that very few lasted over a year, survivor bias would probably make it seem those left are content... For myself I've read a lot of really bad posts from ex-employees (and talked with a few as I'm in the area) and it's enough to make me never want to work there under even desperate circumstances despite my great appreciation as a customer and acknowledgement of their superior tech practices in some domains. (Like use of TLA+, being API-driven...) Maybe you can update me on these, but I currently ignore Amazon recruiters because I can't figure out which few-words complaint to send by itself in response: "free snacks", or "personal side projects including games", or "40 hour weeks", or "stack ranking", or "aggressive non-compete".
      • ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
        Ex amzn here: survivor bias is a huge. You hear very different stories when talking to the few (starry-eyed) employees and the many ex employees.
• harryh 10y ago
  I wish more of these stories had some indication of what department the author was from. I have a bit of a suspicion that the closer you get to the retail operation the worse it gets (and of course doing fulfillment in a warehouse is the belly of the beast). Part of it is certainly Amazon culture but part of it is surely that retail businesses are a grind. Margins are slim and there is constant pressure to gain every possible efficiency even at the cost of human pain.
• amelius 10y ago
  I think we should limit the size of companies (in terms of number of people). Because capitalism is great for competition, until a company has grown so big that there is no choice left. Both for the consumer and the employee. Also, big companies usually have an internalized economy, which limits its usefulness for the outside world. Basically, keeping companies small would increase the modularity of the economy.
  • sevenless 10y ago
    The number of employees in a company doesn't necessarily limit its monopoly power or ability to collude, though. If you tried this, you'd just get companies avoiding the law by working with subsidiaries or contractors, a bit like they do already for different reasons.
    • amelius 10y ago
      Certainly true, but this can be considered a (secondary) side-effect. Law could prohibit this behavior, but can of course never eradicate it. As for your point about monopoly: I don't think it will be very easy to maintain a monopoly if the number of people you employ is limited (because other companies could easily equal that number of employees).
      • thecolorblue 10y ago
        Their advantage is not the number of people they employ, but the customers they have and the patents/applications/property/reputation they own.
  • Annatar 10y ago
    After thinking about this for 20 years every day, I came to the same conclusion.
    • calgoo 10y ago
      Make them follow the unix/oss philosophy? One task/ company? Fork the company by splitting of a unit from the original company, creating microservices for companies :) Make HR a company, make sales a company, etc etc....
• nartz 10y ago
  The bad grammar makes it hard to take this post seriously (my something-is-off spam-detector goes off I guess, trained from years of sifting through fradulent emails).
  • callumlocke 10y ago
    What bad grammar?
• kevindeasis 10y ago
  Does Amazon offer relocation and tn visa sponsorship? There isn't a lot of great opportunities from where I'm from (western canada). Wouldn't they look good as my first job in my resume for a person who recently graduated that never had a software job?
  • ajkjk 10y ago
    Yes, they do. (Well - I'm not sure about TN Visas specifically, but I was aware of their sponsoring plenty of visas). It was my first software job and as far as I can tell it's an amazing thing to have on my resume.
    • kevindeasis 10y ago
      How was your experience there?
      • ajkjk 10y ago
        Generally very positive. I posted about it elsewhere in this thread.
  • swalberg 10y ago
    A company doesn't really "sponsor" a TN visa, they just have to be willing to write a job offer letter that satisfies the border officer. This means it specifies the job is temporary (try to get it to say 3 years, as that's the longest they'll give you the visa for), it has a salary, and it has a listing of job duties that aligns with the NAFTA job class you're going for. With the TN visa, you just need the proper documentation and they issue it at the border. The company doesn't need lawyers or filings; it's all on you. I'm sure a big company like Amazon has experience here. If you're job hunting and are talking to smaller companies, you might have to educate them about how the TN works because many don't know it exists and assume they'll have to pay a lot of money to hire a Canadian. If you've never come in on a TN visa before it's worth the ~$400 in lawyer fees to get them to review the TN letter and coach you on the procedure.
  • Naritai 10y ago
• rdtsc 10y ago
  I got a glimpse of the craziness just interviewing there. I enjoy telling that story (sorry mentioned it many times here in the past). * They missed first phone call. * Then on interview day my future manager was not there. Heck, I suspect they didn't even know I was supposed to come in (yes, I did check my email 3 times that morning to make sure I wasn't crazy). * People I talked to expected to be told about the stupid leadership principles. I talked more about those than actual cool stuff I did with distributed systems. One would think Amazon would care about distributed systems, but I guess not... * Forgot about me during lunch. I was just left in a room by myself for an hour. After some point I started to walk around aimlessly hoping someone would ask if I am supposed to be there (I even had a funny comeback line ready) * After promising to get back to me in 2 days, got back in 3 weeks. * Didn't get the offer. Feels like dodged a bullet. Take it as an anecdote, a fluke, but I see it as pointing to a systemic issue. I can see some problems, but it was just too many in row. From various people, at various points in time.
  • tronje 10y ago
    So what would the funny comeback line have been?
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      "I am here to steal your CA private key" ;-) Then probably ask them how they like their job or such.
• aworker 10y ago
  Worked at amazon for 4 years in late 90s and early 2000s. I think there are two distinct employment experiences: If the company (that is, your team and hierarchy) found you promising, the rewards were usually good, at that time that meant incentive stock options. More importantly, you were given significant managerial responsibility and opportunity to drive strategic initiatives. If you fell into this group, you could be reasonably well off in in 4-5 years, and wealthy in 10. Your job, while demanding, was generally fulfilling. For those that didn't fall into this group (by my guess about 80% didn't make the cut,) life was more brutish. Significant stress, poor rewards, and no possibility of advancement. The company didn't really care if you stayed or not, and actively managed you for maximum output. My guess was it usually took about a year for management to make decision as to which group you fell in. So my advice, join Amazon if you feel you can really be good (both technically, as well as in your ability to manage the politics of a large organization) The politics itself was not anymore than you would find in any org that size. One just had to make a point to understand and work the system.
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    So, basically like every other medium- and large-sized company. Get into the small, privileged "in" crowd and you're smooth sailing, up the hierarchy and up the pay scale. Otherwise, get on the treadmill--you're going to have as much value as possible burnt out of you until you quit or get replaced with another "resource".
• wukerplank 10y ago
  I constantly read how badly the pickers in the (European) dispatch centers get treated. They can get away with it because those are low wage jobs and the workers easy to replace. It becomes more evident that this is a fundamental issue in the company's culture.
• skc 10y ago
  Everything I've ever read about working at Amazon has been terrible. Despite this, from the outside at least they still seem to execute flawlessly and are still adored by geeks who don't work there.
• pionar 10y ago
  I've learned that there are only two things managers are responsible for - getting the performance and achieving the goals the company has set for them, and keeping their people. If you achieve goals but don't keep your people, you've lost.
• musha68k 10y ago
  Don't work for Amazon, don't buy from Amazon if you can. I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently, it's surprisingly easy. I do my research online (often times via AMZN tbh) and pick up the books on my way from/to the office.
  • gdulli 10y ago
    Walgreens, Best Buy, and Newegg turned out to have better deals for the last few things I would have bought from Amazon. Lower or equivalent prices and free shipping without having to pay $100/yr or have a $50 order.
  • f_allwein 10y ago
    Exactly this. Besides not paying a fair amount of tax (= not giving back to society), it also drains money out of local economies if everybody just buys everything from Amazon.
    • imaginenore 10y ago
      You first have to explain the worship of local economies and small stores. 99% of the time they can't give you a better price, because their overhead isn't optimized and/or they operate at much smaller scale. So your suggestion is basically to support the less efficient businesses.
      • gdulli 10y ago
        It's not only about efficiency. Unlike Amazon, a real bookstore is a lot of fun to browse in. Being able to browse real shelves, hold and flip through real books for an hour or two is a great leisure activity in itself. Now that stores are closing and it's at risk, I'd even pay a small entrance fee if it meant keeping the good ones open. Though I agree that a larger chain bookstore with more selection offers more value than a small bookstore, for me it's more about real-world vs. online, not large vs. small business.
      • mmcwilliams 10y ago
        If your goal is to reward businesses that operate at the highest efficiency, then you are correct; supporting local businesses doesn't make sense to you. If you have any kind of self-interest, though, supporting local businesses should be your priority. How does it benefit you to send your money away from your city or town so that it does not get re-invested in the area directly surrounding you? A lower share of your money gets re-invested in roads and schools through taxes and it has a multiplying effect when local businesses shutter frequently. It lowers real estate prices (assuming you own real estate, this matters) and reduces the quality of life of those around you; a factor which tends to cause an increase in the crime rate. Your argument is essentially, "Why eat at anywhere other than McDonalds? They have the most efficient supply chain."
• johnnyfaehell 10y ago
  Amazon's treatment of non IT staff is well known to be bad. It's CEO said they have no intentions on improving to reduce employee turnover.
• anacleto 10y ago
  >Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it becomes a great company for its really hard working employees as well. Hat off.
• stupidcar 10y ago
  Last time there negative press about Amazon's culture, Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse. Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-contacting-jeff https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for...
  • throwanem 10y ago
    > if you actually try it, you get fired Of course! What more efficient way could there be to identify and weed out potential troublemakers in the organization?
  • sanderjd 10y ago
    If that is true, I'm surprised I haven't seen a follow up in the NYT after they got somewhat tarnished by Amazon's response to their initial article.
    • exolymph 10y ago
      My guess is they couldn't confirm it... or they're in the process of reporting a follow-up story, who knows :)
  • akerro 10y ago
    All other stories are sad, but this one is ironically funny.
  • PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired Well, of course you get fired. You're obviously a malcontent, and clearly not a team player. But, in fairness to Bezos, this is pretty much SOP at many companies.
    • bluelu 10y ago
      1-2 years ago, before all the public coverage, I was interviewing one person from amazon. He was not happy with his former work situation (pager duty pushed on him, requests in the evening, ...) and he was terminated in the trial period because he brought it up to HR. I didn't believe him at that time.
• dotemacs 10y ago
  Interesting to see Amazon people writing these complaints on Google's services. Also, what effect will this have on people using Amazon? Should we try to use Google cloud offering instead of AWS? I guess with any service that offered super cheap costs, there was a place where something had to give...
  • RandomOpinion 10y ago
    >Interesting to see Amazon people writing these complaints on Google's services. If they used Amazon's own services, IP and other logs would be available to Amazon's internal investigators without so much as a subpoena. The old Mini-Microsoft blog was on a Google service as well.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• chris_wot 10y ago
  If Amazon try this in NSW, Australia then they want to watch out. If they get a complaint about bullying and it's not dealt with, directors can go to prison.
  • brianwawok 10y ago
    Non-IT staff will be robots eventually. I think this post is about IT.. if not this entire thread is out of context ;)
    • chris_wot 10y ago
      It applies to IT and non-IT staff alike.
• henrik_w 10y ago
  I thought this was pretty funny (from The Onion a year ago): "Jeff Bezos Assures Amazon Employees That HR Working 100 Hours A Week To Address Their Complaints" http://www.theonion.com/article/jeff-bezos-assures-amazon-employees-hr-working-100-51121 http://www.theonion.com/article/jeff-bezos-assures-amazon-em...
  • 0xmohit 10y ago
    And how much do those work who address HRs complaints?
  • mk89 10y ago
    > Nothing matters more to me than the well-being of our employees, and our HR staff will continue to work their fingers to the bone— not seeing their families or friends or anything at all outside their offices [...] Is their HR outsourced? Because they should also be their employees, right? :D EDIT: Judging from the down votes, I guess that someone didn't get the sarcasm. :)
    • elbear 10y ago
      That was the joke :)
• hifumi 10y ago
  The reason I refuse to work for Amazon is because they claim ownership of every side project you make on your own time, with your own equipment, just because you are employed there.
  • brianwawok 10y ago
    Many Big Cos do. One reason you are often better off working for small companies. Risk is they can't always pay as well.
    • johnward 10y ago
      Can confirm. Was acquired and had to sign the same "we own everything you do even in your own time" agreement.
  • dhimes 10y ago
    Is that enforceable though?
    • kzisme 10y ago
      Pretty sure recently I read that this can't be enforced very easily (looking for source)
    • 0xmohit 10y ago
      I guess the fine print in the employment contracts of most companies says so. The degree of enforcement might vary, though.
    • quantumhobbit 10y ago
      Doesn't matter what the courts say if the mere threat of a lawsuit can scare off investors in a future startup.
  • chmike 10y ago
    That is a bery good rason not to work there. Thank you.
  • 10y ago
• ohstopitu 10y ago
  everyone's quitting... but Amazon's hiring does not seem to be picking up slack (unless they just increase the workload on current employees). I mean, if a lot of people were quitting, recruiters would be trying their best to replace them. While I have seen a lot of open positions on amazon.jobs, they have been open for months (some even for a year) and are still accepting resumes (they seem to be taking their time replacing people if at all). and in all honesty, I'd still want to work there if I can get a chance (so if Amazon employees / recruiters are hiring in Canada, please email me).
  • Practicality 10y ago
    I've been getting a strange number of recruiters contacting me from Amazon recently, when I am not looking for a job. I mean, there are always recruiters, but the Amazon ones are always like "You've got 1month+ experience, you get a job!" I was always put off by how entry level they sound.
    • ohstopitu 10y ago
      I have had a couple of amazon recruiters contact me (I applied via their website), and both appeared to be confused (I wanted a position in Toronto/Vancouver) which they assured me was what I was selected for (to go through the interview process). However after the first online test, they changed it to a Seattle-based position and made me do the test again. As for the entry level jobs, it's weird because I applied to both SDEI (0 - 3 yrs of exp) and SDEII (1 - 3 yrs of exp) - and they rejected me for SDEI (which I'm more qualified for) while I was "under consideration" for SDEII.
• muninn_ 10y ago
  Sometimes you get a bad manager or you get into a bad situation. Sometimes you don't. Without the details on why this person actually was fired, we're just speculating and adding more to rumors.
  • kelvin0 10y ago
    "You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all the time..."
• TomMasz 10y ago
  I was recently recruited by Amazon's video division but I had to decline due to personal issues. Looks like I dodged a bullet.
• whack 10y ago
  Everytime I hear these stories, there are 2 things that go through my mind. 1) I'm never going to work at Amazon 2) If you're judging a company based on the experiences of those who are dissatisfied, isn't that always going to be heavily biased? At any large company, there will be many people who are unhappy and dissatisfied. If you go out looking for stories from such people, and compile them into a single digest, it's going to make any company look dysfunctional. Using a glassdoor-esque rating system seems like the best way to judge a company. And Amazon's rating there is 3.4 (https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-Reviews-E6036.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-Reviews-E6036.h...). Which is nowhere near Google (4.4) or Facebook (4.5), but it isn't horrible either. It's even slightly above average (3.3) across all companies in Glassdoor. Which does kind of make sense... no tech company can churn out great technology products over many years, if the work-culture is dysfunctional. Purely for that reason alone, I'm sure Bezos would put a lid on how bad the work culture at Amazon can possibly get. All of which is to say... I get the feeling that Amazon is probably an okay place to work. It's not great. It's probably a little below-average for the tech industry. But it's probably not as dysfunctional as these reviews and horror stories seem to suggest.
  • randall 10y ago
    This seems the most nuanced explanation. Most Big Companies™ I've worked with (AOL, CNET when it was a public co) have a lot of layers, which without proper objective alignment, creates a natural 'broken-ness' feeling. Contrast that with startups where the lack of resources and increasing growth makes it feel broken. Also if you're growing headcount very quickly, culture doesn't always get transmitted and you can end up with factions fighting against each other. "Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something." You do, however, get to pick your pain. Pain from growing too quickly feels much different from organizational disfunction. In Amazon's case they might have both (!) because of how fast they grow and how big they are.
  • shados 10y ago
    Amazon is large company. A really large company. Like all large companies, there are good/great departments and bad ones. Sometimes, the people part of the bad ones wake up and start bitching, then you get this. Google has great reviews, but it has its share of bad departments. It also has a lot of koolaid drinkers, so the people who work in those just bitch about it a lot to their friends and it never goes any further than that... Eventually someone will post a NYT article about it and make Google sounds totally horrible because of those localized issues, just like Amazon. Or maybe they'll just keep drinking the koolaid. Who knows!
• fatdog 10y ago
  What are the attributes of a crappy manager? A lot of people say what they hate, but there is a theme I have seen in tech. When you think of these managers, you need to ask, who are they? Where are they from? How did they get the job? What did they do before (large/small org)? What is their social background? What is their style? At the root, I suspect it's shitty leadership at the top. The Valley execs I have met, let's just say they are not the sort of guys you would willingly go into battle for. Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect. I have also yet to see a non-white person quit over company culture issues. Thar be some elephants in thar rooms.
  • sverige 10y ago
    >Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect. This is spot on. Most of the currently big tech companies were founded by people who got where they are by means of their technical skill. The general disdain for "old order" businesses carries over into a disdain for management practices that were developed and refined at those "old" businesses, sometimes to the point that such things don't matter at all. So big companies end up being run by goofballs who live out some juvenile fantasy by appearing in Star Trek. Makes Richard Branson look like Thomas Watson in comparison.
  • InclinedPlane 10y ago
    The fundamental difference between good and bad managers is usually how they deal with "shit". Bad managers are shit funnels, good managers are shit umbrellas.
    • arielweisberg 10y ago
      I think there is more to it then that. All my managers have been shit umbrellas, but still some of them were not worth the investment of my time. Once my management was split over several people and that was an issue as well as one could set incentives and then the other would obstruct because they didn't share the incentives and didn't care about the outcome. Not having shared incentives and outcomes has been the most common problem across my entire career. Managers can set up goals and incentives and then change them at the last minute without telling you and claim you failed. Not maliciously in my case, but the effect is the same. I'm sure the ways in which a manager can be bad is quite diverse.
• tristor 10y ago
  Just more fodder for my mental reasoning for why Amazon is on my lengthy blacklist of companies I will never work for. It's kind of amazing to me how many companies in the tech sector have given up even the vestige of being about technology and how it benefits people in favor of being some of the most ruthless and sharky people in the business world. There was a point in my life where I'd say I'd never again work in government, finance, or healthcare related companies, and now I actually find I'd rather do that because management politics is /less cutthroat/ and more reasonable in those industries than it is in tech. I hope maybe we'll see a real revival in the tech industry one of these days, but so many of the companies that have made it big have done it by stomping on the people who actually matter. Tech these days is all about big egos fueled by big dollars, but the numbers don't actually matter so things are irrational from the top all the way down. At least in finance, the numbers are all that matter at the end of the day. At least in healthcare there's a semblance of care given to the patients. At least in government there's an understanding if not a fulfillment of the social contract. In tech all we have are douchebags with big wallets and bigger egos (Bezos, Ellison, et al) destroying the lives of their employees (and sometimes their customers) to enrich themselves at the expense of all others. It's completely pathological.
  • drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    >in favor of being some of the most ruthless and sharky people in the business world. A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very early on. I think a lot of shops have a problem where the cut-throats are a good part of the staff, then these guys start graying a bit, have kids, etc and realize they can't keep up but they've already created a cut-throat culture. So they burn out and move onto a company with better benefits and values. Its easy to blame CEOs, and obviously they should share the blame here, but a lot of this culture is grassroots. The most miserable environments I've been in are CS classes and early career tech work. Holy shit, are the egos huge and the attitudes bad. Social skills in IT are below average in general in my experience, so we're talking a lot of serious and dedicated misanthropes with stereotypical male social aggression, bullying, and intimidation. (gee, women don't feel comfortable in CS classes, I wonder why?) The real question is why aren't we teaching the values of work-life balance, win-win, etc from early on. Is it schooling with its emphasis with grades and "doing better than the other guy?" By the time it gets to the CEO level, its already been ingrained in society. My pet theory is that CEO behavior just reflects the rest of us. If it didn't they'd be kicked out of by the board or an employee uprising. A lot of people love Bezos and his heavy-handed ways, in fact, they think this is why Amazon products provide such a good value. As we move towards automation and post-scarcity these questions are going to become important. It may be the case that today's batch of CEO bad guys are the last generation as GMI and other concepts become political realities to handle later stage capitalism, economic drive-downs, loss of jobs via automation, and lower costs of living.
• mcguire 10y ago
  Personal favorite: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-bathrooms https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-... Don't often hear about health and safety in this business.
  • artursapek 10y ago
    It sounds like there is some serious passive aggression (or even just aggression) going on over there.
• mirekrusin 10y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks that at least some of those reports may be complete bullshit? I've red couple and to be honest they don't go into details on what actually happened, like this one https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/assaulted-at-amazon https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/assaulted... Why was he assaulted? Just randomly, without a reason 40yo guy came to him one day and assaulted him? How was he assaulted? Did the guy came with kitchen knife and said he's going to cut his fingers or something? Or he thrown a paper ball in his direction?
  • trentmb 10y ago
    > Lesson learned... if you're ever assaulted or harassed at Amazon (and most females will be, eventually, in one form or another) Different kind of assault.
• patmcguire 10y ago
  Another one on the site: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-bathrooms https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-... This is not the only tech company I've heard this about, and it's been a problem everywhere I've been. I'm not especially opposed to open offices, but if companies are routinely cramming more people on a floor than the designers of the building ever imagined, it might be time to reconsider a few things.
  • shostack 10y ago
    At a certain point I wonder if OSHA complaints or calls to the local fire department would help at all.
    • patmcguire 10y ago
      They do fix it when there's a complaint, because they have to.
• 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  Amazon was terribly run a decade ago, in 2006. At the time my manager had training to be a prison guard- that was his intended career. He didn't know how to run a spreadsheet well, and he was managing programmers. His boss was an ex-DMV employee, literally, and had carried the same sort of passive hostility over. Amazon is a retailer that thinks it is a tech company and so its management is the kind of management you want at Walmart to keep the "associates" from pilfering the goods. At least in 2006 it was that way. I think the really interesting thing is, how can a company that is so notoriously terrible still be able to hire as many employees as they want? How is it that so many young (eg: 19-24 year old) engineers think that getting Amazon on their resume (or Facebook, Google, etc.) is somehow a big feather? Are further employees really that impressed by the name of the companies on the resume? When I was that age I certainly did think that a big name meant something but after I got to the other side- where I'm interviewing people- I realized that it's a huge mistake to try and judge whether you should hire someone with these kinds of correlations (including college and GPA). Amazon was the most terrible work experience of my career. I strongly urge everyone I meet who is considering them to avoid them.
  • andrest 10y ago
    > getting Amazon on their resume (or Facebook, Google, etc.) is somehow a big feather? Because it is. Everybody knows these companies get to skim the cream and they vet their candidates thoroughly. As a start-up with no HR and poor hiring processes it, more often than should, gets the interview/job.
    • 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
      I don't know why so many people believe it, and I know for a fact that "Everybody knows" is false. Amazon does not skim the cream and they do not vet their candidates thoroughly. I don't know where these ideas come from, though I would guess marketing done by the companies themselves. Amazon engineers are lower than average. I'd say "the cream" is the top %10 of engineers I've worked with. (I'd put myself at %80). The average Amazon engineer is %40. Engineering managers are %20. I think the average Google engineer is maybe %60. Apple %80-%90. Facebook I have less visibility into but the impression from their attempts to recruit me is that they are probably getting pretty average engineers. Note that I would work for Apple and I will not work for google, because google is not high enough quality to meet my standards. (And I personally saw Mark Zuckerberg say "never hire anyone over 30 years old.. they just don't get it" at a YC Startup School in 2007 or 2008, so I'm of the impression they probably are close to as bad as google at being able to tell who is good and who is not. Being able to hire good engineers is not an easy task, because you have to be an excellent engineer to be able to tell who is good and who isn't. I have the distinct impression that people in their 20s do not realize that these companies names on their resumes are only feathers when presented to lower quality hiring departments. If you want to work with the best of the best, you're not going to rely on the fallacy of correlation.
• user5994461 10y ago
  A Google site criticizing Amazon... Am I the only one seeing the irony?