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Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever. - No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself! - No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes. - Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software! This is Amazon's mindset TOPDOWN. The root of the problem is that the leadership does NOT care about employees or technology. This is a retailer and a powdered Walmart, what do you expect?! SDE 1 and SDE 2 are simply the slaves working at a sweatshop. Some of my co-workers are hired without onsite interviews. They do some video chat and they are hired at Amazon. They don't even know how to write bash scripts. Our team used to have technical program managers who can't even write a Python script. With simple things like running a command line tool, he cuts a ticket and let the engineers do it. The managers at Amazon pocket bonuses and don't give a damn. They don't carry pagers and when they do, they just page lower level employees. The only reason people take offers at Amazon is that they can't get better packages from Facebook/Google. * I worked at AWS for 2 years.

tedmiston 10y ago
Those terms are insane.
- notyourwork 10y ago
  Compared to what?
- onion2k 10y ago
  They make it clear that Amazon prefer employees who'll stay there for a while because employees only become value after a couple of years, or if you're feeling less generous, Amazon know that they'll extract all the value from someone in under a year before they're driven out. Either way the terms aren't insane; they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs.
  - wiz21c 10y ago
    By insane, I guess the OP was thinking "not moral"... >>> they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs That's no excuse. Hitting someone weaker than you is not "very much weighted to your beliefs".
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      A more precise word choice to convey my intent would have been "outrageous".
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    You're right. I should have finished that thought with "compared to a standard 1-year cliff and 25% per year". In any case, dragging relocation out over two years feels wrong to me given that relocation is binary. I suppose in effect they are using it as a way to attach strings to a signing bonus.
vonklaus 10y ago
I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am desperate. Why would others. Interested to know if you(others) took terms out of naivete, need, broken promises/misrepresentation, career or skill boost, ect. Tl;dr seems like a lot of good engineers work there, but many recount horrific exp.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  I know not every part of every company is the same since your direct manager plays a big part in your experience but I have to wonder why people put up with the bad experiences. Maybe the pay for AWS consulting gigs is worth a couple years in that kind of environment.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    Not so much the pay, as the wonders it works for your resume. Prior to Amazon, I tried applying to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Nothing. After Amazon, recruiters from those companies started contacting me.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      I've had recruiters from 3 of the big 4 reach out over the past few years without having worked at one. It's hard to generalize across recruiters and the four companies, but I think they pay more attention to your number of years than where they were at in the early recruitment stage.
- kosei 10y ago
  Amazon headcount from mid-2015 said over 24k in Seattle: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/07/exclusive-amazon-reveals-washington-state.html http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/07/ex...
SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
I was at AWS for six months as a contractor and a year as an SDE3. Equity vesting was low for the first year, but they gave me a (cash) signing bonus that made up for it. Pretty much one-to-one based on the starting value of the equity, and it paid out monthly instead of waiting until the end of the year. The cafes were awesome and the prices there were decent. I was paid more than enough to buy my own lunch. Catered food is a cute perk, but it's hardly critical. I don't drink soda, but they had free coffee and tea. Tea is my drink of choice, so I was happy. Soda is bad for you anyway. ;) They did have free "snacks" if you count breakfast cereal. Which many people would grab a cup full of as a snack (there were no bowls, oddly enough). There were a mountain of breakfast cereal boxes on every floor near the kitchen. But yes, they also had paid snack machines. The oncall routines were terrible, though, I agree. Luckily I was in a strange situation and was able to avoid them. Our team was far better, technically speaking, than what you describe. Everyone was a pretty awesome developer, including my manager, who was really awesome overall. Developers went home at night; no one was being driven as if in a sweatshop. We had game nights and played board games. Periodic team dinners (that were awesome!). It was a blast. And I think the latter really makes the difference. There are 20,000 people working at Amazon, according to the article. When you scale that big, some corners of the org are going to suck, and some will be better. I may someday return to Amazon, now that they have an office near me in Colorado. But I'm still working on the game that I put on hold while I worked at Amazon, and I need to finish it before I reattach the golden handcuffs.
- amazon_employee 10y ago
  Wow, someone that isn't comparing Amazon to Stalinist Russia.
- gambler 10y ago
  The oncall routines were terrible, though, I agree. Luckily I was in a strange situation and was able to avoid them. I would think that Amazon of all places would automate anything they could.
  - sulam 10y ago
    No incentive at best, disincentive usually. There is a steady stream of new grads willing to put up with it for a couple years. The horrible vesting means you aren't paying much for them, not to mention salaries are mildly low to start with. I have repeatedly heard these stories about Amazon -- it is one of the known-bad places to work, unless you have found a truly special situation. Keep in mind this is only compared to other tech employers. It's fine compared to games companies, non-tech companies that won't value your work, and most jobs if you're not privileged enough to be a software developer.
rememberlenny 10y ago
Those points you mentioned are pretty standard for any corporation that isnt an insanely profitable tech company.
manish_gill 10y ago
Is tuition reimbursement a thing at companies? That would be pretty awesome. TIL
- theparanoid 10y ago
  Almost all, I'd never heard of a tech company not do it.
  - nojvek 10y ago
    Microsoft has this program but it's pretty bad. Only masters courses are allowed with managers approval. Rest is out of pocket. Most managers don't approve. Tuition benefit is very much a myth.
    - mmcconnell1618 10y ago
      Microsoft tuition assistance is available for both undergraduate and graduate programs. There are annual limits to how much is reimbursed and you get more for graduate school. Yes, it does require manager approval too. (I work at Microsoft)
  - rifung 10y ago
    Facebook doesn't do it either at least from the last I heard, because supposedly they don't care whether you have a degree or not.
  - ericd 10y ago
    Really? I know a bunch. Almost all startups, for starters.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    The parent said "companies" not necessarily "tech companies".
  - dagw 10y ago
    As in university tuition? Or as in sometimes they decide to send you on a course and pay for it?
peripitea 10y ago
The worst part to me was that despite all of the claims of meritocracy, there was zero financial incentive to perform well during my four years there. That's because any previously-granted equity is counted against you when determining your total compensation for the next year. When those big year 3 & 4 equity vests kick in, they just stop giving you additional stock, because the stock you already had went up so much. What this means is that in four years, despite glowing reviews every year and a promotion, I never got a meaningful raise/bonus/stock grant, because the stock was doing so well. My W2 income went up, but it was completely unrelated to my performance -- I could have done just enough to not get fired and would have made essentially the same amount. People who performed worse than me were regularly given larger stock grants. It was super demoralizing to figure that out. Big part of the reason I left.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  The cult of management seems to think that they have some magic that will incentivize workers without any increase in monetary compensation (or often percentage increases below inflation). I've seen it at work for C and D players but anyone with half a brain won't stick around once Oz is exposed as just a man behind a curtain.
tn13 10y ago
At IIT Bombay Amazon arrived for recruitment. The AC in the hall was not working so all students tried to catch the window seats. The HR shouted at us claiming "If you want a job come and seat here else get out of the room" despite a student politely explaining why they are prefering to seat near a window. I learned that I should not be working there that very moment.
rifung 10y ago
> They don't even know how to write bash scripts Is this weird? I only know of one or two coworkers who knows how to write bash scripts.. Despite almost knowing no bash, I was hired as an SDE1 at Amazon so your story adds up though!
- chris_wot 10y ago
  It's super weird that anyone exposed to a Unix system can't write a bash script!
  - dagw 10y ago
    Why? Do you think it weird that most Windows user couldn't write a .bat script? I've worked support at a large university that used Unix as its main desktop OS for staff and students in most departments. I'd bet that most people there couldn't write bash script. 90+% of peoples interaction with the OS was click browser icon, click e-mail icon, click text editor icon and click icon/type in name at command prompt of whatever programs they needed to get work done. Writing bash scripts is simply not something that ever came up for the vast majority of users.
    - shawabawa3 10y ago
      Aren't we talking about software engineers not just generic users? I would be very surprised if an engineer working primarily in windows couldn't write a .bat/powershell script
      - dagw 10y ago
        I wouldn't. I work with lots of (non-software) engineers and I bet that most of them couldn't produce an non-trivial .bat without a lot of googling.
        subway 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure the structural engineer next to me has no clue wtf a script is. Fortunately this conversation is about software engineers.
Kiro 10y ago
Seriously, from your initial sentence I was expecting something way worse. Those problems seem very trivial to me compared to most normal jobs where you don't get offered anything at all, ever. Not to mention the many jobs where you get abused for real.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Well, all of these are standard perks in SV. So compared to them Amazon is a really bad place to work.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    To everyone outside of SV, this sounds like the smallest violin playing for the software engineers in their salary/perk bubble.
joshstrange 10y ago
I don't work in SV so maybe my comment doesn't matter but most of these things seem pretty trivial.... > - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years I haven no equity in my company or opportunity to get any. > - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. I don't think my company offers any relocation packages (I could be wrong on that) but even so this policy doesn't strike me as completely crazy. > - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever. My vesting schedule only vests after 6 years (with 20 percent vesting every year after the first). It's not great but on average it's not the worst AFAICT. > - No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself > - No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes. Both of these... We have nothing like it at all, I'd kill for a "shitty cafe". We have coffee and that's about it. This comment comes of as extremely spoiled to me. > - Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software! My job doesn't include being on call but I work with people who are, I don't fully understand what this bit is talking about. Are you woken up just to be told your "shift" is starting or is this just referencing being woken up because there is a problem? Cause that's kind of the definition of being on call.... Maybe I'm just naive and stupid to think my job is good (every job could be better of course) but from where I'm sitting 90% of your comment comes off as entitled and spoiled and it colors the rest of it.
- jordache 10y ago
  i think his complaint is in the context of amazon's aggresive and stressful work culture. For all of that, you ought to get some pretty good benefits
- herge 10y ago
  Whatever your work conditions may be, it still stinks for him to be given an offer on paper which looks comparable to other companies of Amazon's reach, and yet in the small print wind up being a lot worse.
  - 10y ago
mikeash 10y ago
"No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes." This seems totally out of place to me. You have to pay for your own food, who cares? That's the way it is for pretty much everybody.
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
I interviewed with AWS. What struck me was how different the people were. The would-be peer manager I spoke with was upbeat, really enthusiastic about tech, his team, creativity, and balance. My next conversation with his manager (presumably the person I would work for) was entirely different - much harsher tone, seemed uninterested in answers longer than a sentence, zero sense of humor. Now, I haven't been around for a long time, but I'm past the 10 year mark. That was the first interview I've ever had where I unequivocally lost interest in the manager and the company in just 30 minutes, despite being very enthusiastic about the product itself. They did not make me an offer, which is just as well as I would have declined. I doubt I did a great job of sounding interested past the 15 minute mark, which is really out of character for me. Now to address some of your points, tech must be a different animal. I'll tell you about my benefits since I really like that HN is a place to really get some transparency, and probably by design, there isn't a lot of Fortune 500, non-tech firm representation here. So you can stop reading if you aren't curious, but for those that are, here goes. I work in finance tech, but with a large, somewhat oldschool company, not a startup. I recently became a (junior) officer of this company. Comparatively, I don't think Amazon sounds all that bad in terms of the fringe items. For instance: - I don't even get a free cup of coffee here - the cafeteria is pretty good, but not cheap - Most people here don't get equity. We do have an employee stock purchase benefit that lets you buy at a discount with a reasonable holding period (90 days or 6 months, can't remember). For those that do have what I'd call retention incentives (either cash or stock), our vesting period starts at 3 years. This is separate from our bonus, which varies by level (and all levels get something), but vests when deposit hits your account - Our 401k match is comparatively better. We match 1:1 up to 5%, and then I think we kick in roughly the same as a defined contribution, since we no longer offer a pension. So 10% in "free" retirement money each year. I believe matching begins on day 1 and vests immediately - Tuition reimbursement is a funny thing. I haven't tried our benefit here since I'm done with school. However, I've been around my industry, which is heavily concentrated in the Fortune 500. Most companies offer 5-6k a year, and they all try their best never to pay it. At one company, who I won't name, I was told that my degree was not related to my job, so no benefit. Great, but the policy makes no mention of that, and the recruiter certainly doesn't undersell the benefit - Oncall sucks. I've avoided it since I manage backend financial/data engineering processes, nothing customer-facing. I've covered myself as much as I've delegated, though, it's only fair - Relocation was I think a year, and they covered everything - packing, moving, transporting our 3rd car, etc. Package is based on level and some other factors. As an employee now, though, I don't think there's ever any repayment period for internal relocation. They just cover it, and from what I hear, it's pretty comprehensive I realize I'm not entry level, but the above applies to everyone here, except where noted. I used to think we don't pay Amazon salaries, but a peek at Glassdoor says that Amazon doesn't really pay that well, particularly for the cost of living around the HQ.

tedmiston 10y ago

Those terms are insane.

notyourwork 10y ago
Compared to what?
onion2k 10y ago
They make it clear that Amazon prefer employees who'll stay there for a while because employees only become value after a couple of years, or if you're feeling less generous, Amazon know that they'll extract all the value from someone in under a year before they're driven out. Either way the terms aren't insane; they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs.
- wiz21c 10y ago
  By insane, I guess the OP was thinking "not moral"... >>> they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs That's no excuse. Hitting someone weaker than you is not "very much weighted to your beliefs".
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    A more precise word choice to convey my intent would have been "outrageous".
- tedmiston 10y ago
  You're right. I should have finished that thought with "compared to a standard 1-year cliff and 25% per year". In any case, dragging relocation out over two years feels wrong to me given that relocation is binary. I suppose in effect they are using it as a way to attach strings to a signing bonus.

vonklaus 10y ago

I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am desperate. Why would others. Interested to know if you(others) took terms out of naivete, need, broken promises/misrepresentation, career or skill boost, ect. Tl;dr seems like a lot of good engineers work there, but many recount horrific exp.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
I know not every part of every company is the same since your direct manager plays a big part in your experience but I have to wonder why people put up with the bad experiences. Maybe the pay for AWS consulting gigs is worth a couple years in that kind of environment.
- quanticle 10y ago
  Not so much the pay, as the wonders it works for your resume. Prior to Amazon, I tried applying to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Nothing. After Amazon, recruiters from those companies started contacting me.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    I've had recruiters from 3 of the big 4 reach out over the past few years without having worked at one. It's hard to generalize across recruiters and the four companies, but I think they pay more attention to your number of years than where they were at in the early recruitment stage.
kosei 10y ago
Amazon headcount from mid-2015 said over 24k in Seattle: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/07/exclusive-amazon-reveals-washington-state.html http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/07/ex...

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago

I was at AWS for six months as a contractor and a year as an SDE3. Equity vesting was low for the first year, but they gave me a (cash) signing bonus that made up for it. Pretty much one-to-one based on the starting value of the equity, and it paid out monthly instead of waiting until the end of the year. The cafes were awesome and the prices there were decent. I was paid more than enough to buy my own lunch. Catered food is a cute perk, but it's hardly critical. I don't drink soda, but they had free coffee and tea. Tea is my drink of choice, so I was happy. Soda is bad for you anyway. ;) They did have free "snacks" if you count breakfast cereal. Which many people would grab a cup full of as a snack (there were no bowls, oddly enough). There were a mountain of breakfast cereal boxes on every floor near the kitchen. But yes, they also had paid snack machines. The oncall routines were terrible, though, I agree. Luckily I was in a strange situation and was able to avoid them. Our team was far better, technically speaking, than what you describe. Everyone was a pretty awesome developer, including my manager, who was really awesome overall. Developers went home at night; no one was being driven as if in a sweatshop. We had game nights and played board games. Periodic team dinners (that were awesome!). It was a blast. And I think the latter really makes the difference. There are 20,000 people working at Amazon, according to the article. When you scale that big, some corners of the org are going to suck, and some will be better. I may someday return to Amazon, now that they have an office near me in Colorado. But I'm still working on the game that I put on hold while I worked at Amazon, and I need to finish it before I reattach the golden handcuffs.

amazon_employee 10y ago
Wow, someone that isn't comparing Amazon to Stalinist Russia.
gambler 10y ago
The oncall routines were terrible, though, I agree. Luckily I was in a strange situation and was able to avoid them. I would think that Amazon of all places would automate anything they could.
- sulam 10y ago
  No incentive at best, disincentive usually. There is a steady stream of new grads willing to put up with it for a couple years. The horrible vesting means you aren't paying much for them, not to mention salaries are mildly low to start with. I have repeatedly heard these stories about Amazon -- it is one of the known-bad places to work, unless you have found a truly special situation. Keep in mind this is only compared to other tech employers. It's fine compared to games companies, non-tech companies that won't value your work, and most jobs if you're not privileged enough to be a software developer.

rememberlenny 10y ago

Those points you mentioned are pretty standard for any corporation that isnt an insanely profitable tech company.

manish_gill 10y ago

Is tuition reimbursement a thing at companies? That would be pretty awesome. TIL

theparanoid 10y ago
Almost all, I'd never heard of a tech company not do it.
- nojvek 10y ago
  Microsoft has this program but it's pretty bad. Only masters courses are allowed with managers approval. Rest is out of pocket. Most managers don't approve. Tuition benefit is very much a myth.
  - mmcconnell1618 10y ago
    Microsoft tuition assistance is available for both undergraduate and graduate programs. There are annual limits to how much is reimbursed and you get more for graduate school. Yes, it does require manager approval too. (I work at Microsoft)
- rifung 10y ago
  Facebook doesn't do it either at least from the last I heard, because supposedly they don't care whether you have a degree or not.
- ericd 10y ago
  Really? I know a bunch. Almost all startups, for starters.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  The parent said "companies" not necessarily "tech companies".
- dagw 10y ago
  As in university tuition? Or as in sometimes they decide to send you on a course and pay for it?

peripitea 10y ago

The worst part to me was that despite all of the claims of meritocracy, there was zero financial incentive to perform well during my four years there. That's because any previously-granted equity is counted against you when determining your total compensation for the next year. When those big year 3 & 4 equity vests kick in, they just stop giving you additional stock, because the stock you already had went up so much. What this means is that in four years, despite glowing reviews every year and a promotion, I never got a meaningful raise/bonus/stock grant, because the stock was doing so well. My W2 income went up, but it was completely unrelated to my performance -- I could have done just enough to not get fired and would have made essentially the same amount. People who performed worse than me were regularly given larger stock grants. It was super demoralizing to figure that out. Big part of the reason I left.

cmdrfred 10y ago
The cult of management seems to think that they have some magic that will incentivize workers without any increase in monetary compensation (or often percentage increases below inflation). I've seen it at work for C and D players but anyone with half a brain won't stick around once Oz is exposed as just a man behind a curtain.

tn13 10y ago

At IIT Bombay Amazon arrived for recruitment. The AC in the hall was not working so all students tried to catch the window seats. The HR shouted at us claiming "If you want a job come and seat here else get out of the room" despite a student politely explaining why they are prefering to seat near a window. I learned that I should not be working there that very moment.

rifung 10y ago

> They don't even know how to write bash scripts Is this weird? I only know of one or two coworkers who knows how to write bash scripts.. Despite almost knowing no bash, I was hired as an SDE1 at Amazon so your story adds up though!

chris_wot 10y ago
It's super weird that anyone exposed to a Unix system can't write a bash script!
- dagw 10y ago
  Why? Do you think it weird that most Windows user couldn't write a .bat script? I've worked support at a large university that used Unix as its main desktop OS for staff and students in most departments. I'd bet that most people there couldn't write bash script. 90+% of peoples interaction with the OS was click browser icon, click e-mail icon, click text editor icon and click icon/type in name at command prompt of whatever programs they needed to get work done. Writing bash scripts is simply not something that ever came up for the vast majority of users.
  - shawabawa3 10y ago
    Aren't we talking about software engineers not just generic users? I would be very surprised if an engineer working primarily in windows couldn't write a .bat/powershell script
    - dagw 10y ago
      I wouldn't. I work with lots of (non-software) engineers and I bet that most of them couldn't produce an non-trivial .bat without a lot of googling.
      - subway 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure the structural engineer next to me has no clue wtf a script is. Fortunately this conversation is about software engineers.

Kiro 10y ago

Seriously, from your initial sentence I was expecting something way worse. Those problems seem very trivial to me compared to most normal jobs where you don't get offered anything at all, ever. Not to mention the many jobs where you get abused for real.

maverick_iceman 10y ago
Well, all of these are standard perks in SV. So compared to them Amazon is a really bad place to work.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  To everyone outside of SV, this sounds like the smallest violin playing for the software engineers in their salary/perk bubble.

joshstrange 10y ago

I don't work in SV so maybe my comment doesn't matter but most of these things seem pretty trivial.... > - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years I haven no equity in my company or opportunity to get any. > - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. I don't think my company offers any relocation packages (I could be wrong on that) but even so this policy doesn't strike me as completely crazy. > - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever. My vesting schedule only vests after 6 years (with 20 percent vesting every year after the first). It's not great but on average it's not the worst AFAICT. > - No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself > - No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes. Both of these... We have nothing like it at all, I'd kill for a "shitty cafe". We have coffee and that's about it. This comment comes of as extremely spoiled to me. > - Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software! My job doesn't include being on call but I work with people who are, I don't fully understand what this bit is talking about. Are you woken up just to be told your "shift" is starting or is this just referencing being woken up because there is a problem? Cause that's kind of the definition of being on call.... Maybe I'm just naive and stupid to think my job is good (every job could be better of course) but from where I'm sitting 90% of your comment comes off as entitled and spoiled and it colors the rest of it.

jordache 10y ago
i think his complaint is in the context of amazon's aggresive and stressful work culture. For all of that, you ought to get some pretty good benefits
herge 10y ago
Whatever your work conditions may be, it still stinks for him to be given an offer on paper which looks comparable to other companies of Amazon's reach, and yet in the small print wind up being a lot worse.
- 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

"No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes." This seems totally out of place to me. You have to pay for your own food, who cares? That's the way it is for pretty much everybody.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago

I interviewed with AWS. What struck me was how different the people were. The would-be peer manager I spoke with was upbeat, really enthusiastic about tech, his team, creativity, and balance. My next conversation with his manager (presumably the person I would work for) was entirely different - much harsher tone, seemed uninterested in answers longer than a sentence, zero sense of humor. Now, I haven't been around for a long time, but I'm past the 10 year mark. That was the first interview I've ever had where I unequivocally lost interest in the manager and the company in just 30 minutes, despite being very enthusiastic about the product itself. They did not make me an offer, which is just as well as I would have declined. I doubt I did a great job of sounding interested past the 15 minute mark, which is really out of character for me. Now to address some of your points, tech must be a different animal. I'll tell you about my benefits since I really like that HN is a place to really get some transparency, and probably by design, there isn't a lot of Fortune 500, non-tech firm representation here. So you can stop reading if you aren't curious, but for those that are, here goes. I work in finance tech, but with a large, somewhat oldschool company, not a startup. I recently became a (junior) officer of this company. Comparatively, I don't think Amazon sounds all that bad in terms of the fringe items. For instance: - I don't even get a free cup of coffee here - the cafeteria is pretty good, but not cheap - Most people here don't get equity. We do have an employee stock purchase benefit that lets you buy at a discount with a reasonable holding period (90 days or 6 months, can't remember). For those that do have what I'd call retention incentives (either cash or stock), our vesting period starts at 3 years. This is separate from our bonus, which varies by level (and all levels get something), but vests when deposit hits your account - Our 401k match is comparatively better. We match 1:1 up to 5%, and then I think we kick in roughly the same as a defined contribution, since we no longer offer a pension. So 10% in "free" retirement money each year. I believe matching begins on day 1 and vests immediately - Tuition reimbursement is a funny thing. I haven't tried our benefit here since I'm done with school. However, I've been around my industry, which is heavily concentrated in the Fortune 500. Most companies offer 5-6k a year, and they all try their best never to pay it. At one company, who I won't name, I was told that my degree was not related to my job, so no benefit. Great, but the policy makes no mention of that, and the recruiter certainly doesn't undersell the benefit - Oncall sucks. I've avoided it since I manage backend financial/data engineering processes, nothing customer-facing. I've covered myself as much as I've delegated, though, it's only fair - Relocation was I think a year, and they covered everything - packing, moving, transporting our 3rd car, etc. Package is based on level and some other factors. As an employee now, though, I don't think there's ever any repayment period for internal relocation. They just cover it, and from what I hear, it's pretty comprehensive I realize I'm not entry level, but the above applies to everyone here, except where noted. I used to think we don't pay Amazon salaries, but a peek at Glassdoor says that Amazon doesn't really pay that well, particularly for the cost of living around the HQ.