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A look inside Amazon’s Spheres as they get set to open
- atomical 9y agoFrom reading answers on Quora I came to the conclusion that Amazon employees aren't given expensive perks (i.e. computers and work place furniture). Are things changing at Amazon?
- guacamoleSoda 9y agoI've worked at some of the FANGs, including Amazon. As far as their standard workspace equipment goes (e.g. computers, desk, monitors, etc...), they seemed to be more or less at parity with the other companies. The workspaces used to be on the drab side, but they've taken to modernizing them with bright colors and lounge furniture in common areas that looks trendy but is damned uncomfortable. They don't really have any perks like high-quality micro-kitchens (except at subsidiaries and sites where those sorts of perks are standard locally), cafes, gyms, etc... EDIT: I should mention that I'm pretty easy when it comes to things like computer hardware and desks. I just need a terminal, chair to sit in, plain old desk, and I'll be happy. I might not notice any differentiating factors other people find important...
- confounded 9y agoAmazon are probably the only large monopolistic tech company that make employees pay for their own lunch. EDIT: I am mollycoddled and wrong (see below).
- jonknee 9y agoWhich is great for the city. Amazon's big perk is that they're in the city and since they don't feed the staff there are tons of restaurants to walk to.
- atomical 9y agoThere are also thousands of other companies in the city as well.
- jonknee 9y agoNone nearly as large as Amazon... Amazon has 19% of all prime office space in the whole city [1] and they're concentrated over a fairly small number of blocks. They're bigger than the next 40 largest employers combined. [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/thanks-to-amazon-seattle-is-now-americas-biggest-company-town/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/thanks-to-amazo...
- akhilcacharya 9y agoSo does Microsoft. Amazon doesn't have free soda though
- objclxt 9y agoOut of the FAANG's neither Apple nor Amazon provide free lunch (although Apple's on-site cafes are very good. You pay $5-10 for an entree, depending on what you get). Going by Glassdoor, Netflix doesn't universally provide free food at all its offices either.
- CydeWeys 9y agoMy employer provides free meals, and it's amazing how much of an outsized effect it has on my affection for them, relative to the actual cost to them of the perk. I know there's plenty of other perks that they spend more money on than the free food (office in good location, 401k match, and healthcare for starters), but the free food really sticks out as something I'm appreciative of. I'd definitely miss it once I no longer had it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago> My employer provides free meals Do you mean most big tech employers in the US? I've never heard of an Australian company providing food for employees. Is it common in the US, or just amongst the big tech companies?
- thundergolfer 9y agoWell Atlassian's Australian and provides food to employees, as does Seek (also Australian). It isn't full-catered hot food everyday but it's still great. I haven't heard of a non-tech Australian company that does though, and would certainly say it's a 'big tech company' thing
- CydeWeys 9y agoIt's common in the US, not just at big tech companies, but at any "Silicon-Valley-style" tech company of any size. Companies that aren't big enough to have their own cafeteria might have a daily Seamless order, for example.
- atomical 9y agoIt's common at some startups because the startup wants to keep the employee at work. Ordering dinner at 6 so it arrives at 7 and employees stay until 8:PM. It happens.
- mattnewton 9y agoI think it’s just a google-and-people-poaching-googlers thing? (Facebook, Linkedin are the only other two I know of). We did not get free lunch at Apple.
- Gargoyle 9y agoThis looks infinitely better than the Facebook industrial-esque spaces, but then this is for a tiny portion of the company's employees.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoThe workspaces in Amazon buildings are pretty standard (open plans subsectioned off for specific teams, etc) and look pretty similar to the Facebook buildings I've been to at the HQ.
- colmmacc 9y ago10 year Amazonian here. I think we have one of the most expensive perks of all: an active, expansive, downtown campus. That's not cheap, those towers cost billions, and there's a reason many big technology competitors are in more suburban locations (Redmond, Mountain View, Kirkland, etc ...). But it really is something to be able to get to and from work relatively quickly via public transport, to be in the middle of a cool city with great restaurants and food trucks, and to be so easily able to socialize with colleagues and friends. But it's true that we don't have free cafeterias, free sodas, gyms (though we do have free on-campus workouts and yoga classes) and so on. We do have some other unusual perks though: our mailrooms get the "Amazon" shipping rates from USPS/DHL/FedEx, and since Amazon is one of their biggest customers, it's really really cheap to ship personal packages. We have a dog park with awesome puppies that's 17 stories up, with a crazy view of the Puget Sound and Downtown Seattle. There's lots of less tangible things like that, but in general, people aren't here for the perks.
- aaronbrethorst 9y ago> get to and from work relatively quickly via public transport I have to lol a little at this, given that it's faster to walk up Denny than take the 8 bus during rush hour.
- exogen 9y agoDoesn't get more "public transport" than using a public sidewalk via free manual transport. ;) (The fact that you can feasibly walk to work is an even bigger benefit.)
- atomical 9y agoI have never thought of location and a building as a perk. It is easy for even a moderately funded company to have an office in the downtown of any major city.
- discoursism 9y agoA perk is not a perk because of the ease of providing it or its cost. It's a perk because it's a benefit not part of core compensation. And it is true, none of the other tech giants have downtown HQs (although plenty of Google satellite offices are in urban centers, at least).
- CydeWeys 9y agoHow are computers are a perk? They're required to do your job. And yes, Amazon does provide them. I haven't ever heard of a developer job where you're expected to buy a work computer with your own money, and I've worked at places that had fewer perks than Amazon. I'd flat out refuse to buy my own. Requiring that might even be illegal.
- __float 9y agoErr, I think OP just meant the computers were not the best, you might not get 2 monitors, or something like that. Not that you don't get a computer at all.
- bbgm 9y agoYou get a 34” curved monitor or 2 * 27” ones these days. Not uncommon to see engineers with 3 monitors either.
- CydeWeys 9y agoI keep going back and forth on multiple monitors. I'm using one big one right now, which felt better than my previous setup of two displays at first, but now I'm thinking I might want another smaller one off to the side to monitor running terminal output ... ugh. I will say that two monitors has the significant drawback that there isn't a single central display, so you're always either tilted to the left or to the right relative to your desk. That's not good ergonomics.
- hugs 9y agoI would rather give a developer a $2K signing bonus and tell them to go buy whatever laptop they want... and they own it. That way, if/when their employment ends, we don't have to go through the awkward process of taking the equipment back.
- atomical 9y agoIf you get good hardware it's a perk. If you get a hard disk and 8 gigs of ram you won't be as productive.
- gdulli 9y agoLast I checked they don't even get free Prime accounts, the Amazon discount is capped ridiculously low, and the stock vesting schedule is terrible, especially considering how short the tenure is likely to be given how they treat employees. The vibe I get is that you're supposed to think working there is the perk. But you can do so much better elsewhere.
- pkaye 9y agoLooks nice but a stark contrast from what their warehouse workers are afforded.
- discoursism 9y agoOf course. What do you expect?
- pkaye 9y agoI guess my work experience over the last 30 years has been different. None of the companies had this extravagant facilities but those that had substantial operations or manufacturing capabilities were fairly uniform in the offering of facilities among the white collar and blue collar employees. Both had the same snack rooms with free food and far as I could tell nearly all had their own cubicles.
- stevespang 9y agoAnother PAYWALL site, unblock your ads
- mc32 9y agoThey're like tree houses for office workers --neat. Remind me a bit of the tropical Sphere inside the California Academy of Sciences.
- _cave_johnson 9y agoThe spheres are an ok corporate showpiece but at the end of the day they are just that: a showpiece. They don't integrate well with the neighborhood or contribute much to the broader public environment—and Amazon must be just thrilled that there is literally a gentlemen's club across the street from them—nor do the spheres aesthetically make up for all warehouse style offices Amazon has put up all over South Lake Union. All the coverage celebrating this private public space also concerns me
- trhway 9y agoLooks like a mall for me. From hanging there as teenagers to working there... That and similar Google plans show what is coming next after open floor - a multilevel panopticon.
- throwawayjava 9y agoa multilevel treehouse panopticon!
- bcoughlan 9y agoThe foliage is a nice reminder of what offices are: zoos for humans.
- paxy 9y agoDo people pay to come watch you work?
- pavel_lishin 9y agoMaybe bcoughlan is a streaming video performer?
- CydeWeys 9y agoHuh? Who's doing the gawking? This analogy between a zoo and an office doesn't make straight-forward sense. Anyway, foliage is nice, and appreciated by people on a deep innate level. Would you rather not have foliage in your office? I don't like a sterile workplace myself.
- txsh 9y agoBiodomes that aren’t called biodomes because of Pauly Shore.
- Sir_Substance 9y agonag-free link for the lazy: https://archive.fo/ftB17 https://archive.fo/ftB17
- gwern 9y agoThe fig tree in the diagram is enormous. Is it really that big? And what will they do with all the figs? (Pick your own, perhaps, from whatever the cafeterias can't sell.)
- stevenwoo 9y agoThere's a fig tree in Balboa Park in San Diego that dwarfs the one in the diagram, and that's only the third biggest in California. But I imagine it's hard to convince people to sell trees that big / transport them into buildings much larger than the one in the diagram. https://www.balboapark.org/attractions/moreton-bay-fig-tree https://www.balboapark.org/attractions/moreton-bay-fig-tree
- underwater 9y agoMoreton Bay Figs are amazing. They’re everywhere in Brisbane, AU and there is even a children’s playground that weaves through a huge one. https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnXjXBacp7-fNfsnHIrEXnGoqv28OaxJYvJXKwEN5heteL1Cgb1AkUOxz_ https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnXjXB...
- webwielder2 9y agoIs that headline supposed to intentionally sound like the setup to a sci-fi horror movie?
- dEnigma 9y agoIt really sounds ominous if, like me, you've never heard about "Amazon's Spheres". Brings to mind stories of alien objects appearing at several key locations on Earth, surrounded by the military and scientists, when suddenly they show signs of activity.
- lwhi 9y agoI hadn't heard about them, and it read like a sci-fi thought experiment describing the kind of mega-corporate excess that might come along in the future. I guess that future is now.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gwern 9y ago"Starbucks To Begin Sinister 'Phase Two' Of Operation" https://www.theonion.com/starbucks-to-begin-sinister-phase-two-of-operation-1819565956 https://www.theonion.com/starbucks-to-begin-sinister-phase-t...
- moonka 9y agoSome other pictures are here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-26/inside-amazon-s-giant-spheres-where-workers-chill-in-a-mini-rainforest https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-26/inside-am...
- amelius 9y ago> The Spheres are kept at 72 degrees and 60 percent humidity during the day, and 55 degrees with 85 percent humidity at night. Working late is going to be an adventure.
- weisser 9y agoThis is fascinating. It's almost a forcing function to prevent overwork and burnout. Imagine if the lights were on and it was 72 degrees, 60% humidity, 24/7 — the plants wouldn't thrive.
- o_____________o 9y agoThis is awesome and will be a boon for the workers' health. I wonder how they'll deal with fungi and other plant pathogens? Fungicides? I've installed small living walls and have had issues with that.
- itronitron 9y agoit would be cool if big tech companies invested in creating public spaces rather than biospheres for insulating their employees from the world
- threatofrain 9y agoIt would be cool if voters were willing to pay for public spaces, real public spaces, rather than waiting on the charity of companies through moral expectation, charity which could be retracted at any time, or diverted for any whim.
- goldenkey 9y agoTaxpayers dont want additional burdens. Parks are already free and accessible. These treehouses are nothing more than a hollow gesture considering Amazon's toxic middle-managers and poor processes like performance reviews based on the cult-like "leadership principles." (Note: I worked at Amazon as a front end / full stack dev around the SLU Seattle campus recently and left _voluntarily_ due to the environment.)
- jasonpeacock 9y agoParks are not free - they're supported by taxpayers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JauntTrooper 9y agoKind of has a Blue Origin feel to it.