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Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are highly data driven and people are constantly challenged to make design choices and decisions based on data--they are being constantly asked for hard evidence on why a certain choice is better than another. In a way they are optimizing for rational people in their recruitment. Could it be that they are more rational than average? Could it be that they are qualified to look at their work experience and weigh it against the compensation, and make the choice to instead go work for Microsoft, or one of the many tech companies around the Seattle area? Maybe they are all just masochists? (Disclosure: I am a software engineer in AWS, and I love my job. Sorry, can't speak for non-tech jobs. Opinions are my own.)

laythea 9y ago
Does the treatment outlined in the article apply to just warehouse workers or does this policy apply to software engineers/office bods also? (pee in a bottle etc?)
- Sea_Wulf 9y ago
  There have been reports of toxic management [0] and at least one suicide attempt over the years [1], which indicates that the problem is not purely on the warehouse floor. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... [1] http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attempt/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attemp...
FilterSweep 9y ago
> Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there This is sparing the employer at the expense of the employee. Employee's employment status is.....far more sticky.
nlowell 9y ago
The people in my recent college graduating class who were planning on going to Amazon for software engineering were going there with a plan to burnout after 2-3 years and take their experience elsewhere. It was seen as worth it for the money + resume, even knowing those years would suck.
- delecti 9y ago
  My Amazon RSUs more than knocked out my significant student loans, so I have to say that's a reasonable strategy.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Bit like been a lawyer for one of the big firms. They work you like a dog but proof that you can 'graduate' from them gets you better offers afterwards. Crazy system when you think about it.
delecti 9y ago
I think it largely comes down to a few factors: Amazon does a lot of hiring, changing jobs is a hassle that many people won't do just because of momentum, and we naturally only hear about the very worst of what it's like to work at Amazon. If you keep hiring enough developers, enough of them will stick it out thanks to momentum (through possibly sub-optimal but not necessarily tortuous conditions) for long enough to have a large number of developers at any given time. I worked at Amazon for ~5.5 years, and it was fine. I wasn't in bliss, but it wasn't awful, it was fine. I eventually left not because conditions worsened but because my team's responsibilities eventually shifted to work I disliked enough to overcome the momentum (web ads), and I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about.
- stone-monkey 9y ago
  >> I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about. What do you mean? Are you referring to the severance you get if you leave on a PIP?
  - delecti 9y ago
    Yes, but you can also opt-in to that. I told my manager I was dissatisfied and thinking of leaving, he suggested I talk to HR about the pivot program. They then put me on a PIP so I could accept the severance option. Also I had been on an actual PIP before and I'm pretty sure that option wasn't mentioned.
    - jackgolding 9y ago
      this is crazy to me, check out /r/consulting they view being on a PIP as a doomsday clock where the company will find any excuse to fire you in the next 6 months.
      - delecti 9y ago
        I can't speak universally, but I "passed" mine, and lasted another full year before leaving willingly. My manager seemed to very earnestly want me to pass, and implied that most people do. All that said, I would advise that if you get put on a PIP, just take the severance right away. You're ineligible for a raise or additional stock grants in the cycle following the PIP.
pg_bot 9y ago
Not to offend you or your work, but IMO Amazon makes the worst software out of all the big tech companies. I think that this is related to their ability to attract and retain talent due to their poor work culture.
- manigandham 9y ago
  What software specifically? The AWS cloud is still the leader in most products.
  - pg_bot 9y ago
    AWS is the leader in the cloud because of its 6-7 year head start on the competition, not because their product is better than their competitors. There was even a company built on top of AWS that made money by creating a reasonable UX on top of that product.[0] walmart.com is better designed that amazon.com. I don't know when that happened but you can take a look at two product pages for the same book and be the judge. [1][2] That's just the tip of the iceberg. I could rant about Amazon's software for days, but in the end software doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad company. If I order something from amazon I expect to get it quickly and in the case something goes wrong I can talk with someone who will be more than agreeable. That is why they are successful, not because of their software prowess. [0]: https://www.heroku.com/ https://www.heroku.com/ [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523905821&sr=1-4&keywords=thinking+fast+and+slow https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp... [2]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow/20530246 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow/20530246
    - GSimon 9y ago
      Those product pages aren't really self evident as to which is better, I actually prefer Amazon's also, it seems to have more details about the item in addition of course to the 1000s of reviews.
    - sgtmas2006 9y ago
      While this isn't a direct problem with Amazon vs Walmart site design, I'm more likely to use Amazon due to the amount of reviews. Walmart can do one thing right, while Amazon has the majority of it right for me. It's going to take a lot to sway me away from Amazon.
rosser 9y ago
How professional technologists are treated by their giant tech employer is utterly orthogonal to how lower-skilled, hourly warehouse workers are treated by the same company. Why do technologists reliably chime in with completely irrelevant details of a technologist's experience of working for a tech company, in response to articles talking about how poorly those companies treat their non-technologist staff? What does the one have to do with the other? "Amazon can't be all bad, if they aren't abusing (some of) the subset of their workforce that can meaningfully vote with its feet"? EDIT: not singling you out specifically, but you did the thing here, so you get the follow-up.
- dastbe 9y ago
  I think everybody is doing this? Looking through the comments and its nothing but people talking about SDEs and other well compensated employees, when the crux of this article and others like it are the issues faced by warehouse workers, which I'm betting make up a large majority of the ~550k workers employed by amazon.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  People are really, really good at assuming that their experience of just about anything is a representative sample. And because their experiences are subjectively pretty important to them (naturally) they must be objectively important and relevant in the grand scheme of things as well.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
spenczar5 9y ago
At least one reason is that the stock has done so well. A typical software engineer hired 4 years ago is incredibly well compensated at Amazon because of this. Consider a mid-level software engineer hired 4 years ago, on April 16 2014, with a salary of $100k. A typical stock grant at hiring for a mid-level software engineer in 2014 might be $400k over 4 years, backloaded so most of it comes at the end; on April 16 2014 the share price was $323, so the grant would have looked something this: Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @ $323 = $50k = $150k total comp Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @ $323 = $80k = $180k total comp Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @ $323 = $120k = $220k total comp Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $323 = $150k = $250k total comp But the share price has gone through the roof since then, so things look more like this: Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @ $383 = $59k = $159k total comp Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @ $625 = $155k = $255k total comp Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @ $901 = $334k = $434k total comp Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $1,440 = $668k = $768k total comp That mid-level, totally normal software engineer is making more than $750k this year because the stock price has gone up so much since 2014. They're likely to put up with a lot of bullshit to get that kind of financial security - that's not just a down payment on a house, it can be the whole thing in cash in the east side suburbs, with great school districts. Amazon (and Seattle in general) could be in big trouble if the stock price turns around. I don't think that's likely, but it's kind of scary to me.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  Amazon is minting millionaires like crazy. Of course people want to work there.
- YetAnotherNick 9y ago
  Anyone could have bought this stock if they would have known the price. Yes, the decision to join amazon turned out to be great money wise, but still doesn't explain why the top talent works there.
  - spenczar5 9y ago
    Hm, I don't understand what purchasing stock has to do with it. If someone bought the stock then they would own it. But that's not what happens when a company grants you stock - it's a promise to deliver you shares later. If this hypothetical employee quit on April 10th, 2018, they would not get the 464 shares (== $668k) on April 16th, 2018. They also would probably not get a comparable offer if they quit to join Facegooglesoft. So, if they quit, they lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's enough to keep many people even if the work is unpleasant.
xg15 9y ago
I think the conditions apply more to the warehouse workers than the software engeneers. Presumably both groups are vastly different regarding qualifications, income, ability to switch jobs and freedom to structure their work, so I think they should be taken separately when discussing workplace conditions. (As an analogy, during the industrial revolution, the people that designed the machines probably weren't the ones that were working 18-hour days in hazardous conditions either.)
sudhirj 9y ago
At the risk of rehashing other comments here, software devs at Amazon are profit centers - when they work the company gains exponentially more value than it pays them. A good engineer retained can often deliver 2X to 10X the value of a new hire. The company treats them them accordingly. Warehouse employees are cost centers. They're replaceable pseudo-robots that are filling in the gaps until the engineers mentioned above finish building the real ones. A new worker at a cheaper rate is objectively better than retaining one, because the number of boxes packed tends to increase inversely proportional with age and tenure. The company treats them accordingly.
- snoman 9y ago
  > A good engineer retained can often deliver 2X to 10X the value of a new hire. The company treats them them [sic] accordingly. The turnover rate is generally less than 2 years.
  - sudhirj 9y ago
    We’re mostly talking about large comp packages here, and I’m guessing they all vest over 4 years? I’m not saying devs are particularly pampered, just that there’s no comparison with the warehouse workers.
- awat 9y ago
  Piggybacking on what you were saying I don’t disagree from a purely business sense. But I find it ironic society seems to have this constant droning fear about actual robots becoming sentient and dissenting but doesnt fear the droves of these sudo-robots who are already able bodied and sentient and being actively antagonized (piss in bottles, etc) to dissent.
BookmarkSaver 9y ago
>Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Hacker News hates big companies, Amazon being evil is in the zeitgeist, and people are unable to contextualize criticisms properly. Being a software engineer at Amazon is fine (yeah, yeah, congrats, out of the tens of thousands of engineers you were able to uncover a few horror stories and terrible teams. Shocking) and very lucrative.

laythea 9y ago

Does the treatment outlined in the article apply to just warehouse workers or does this policy apply to software engineers/office bods also? (pee in a bottle etc?)

Sea_Wulf 9y ago
There have been reports of toxic management [0] and at least one suicide attempt over the years [1], which indicates that the problem is not purely on the warehouse floor. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... [1] http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attempt/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attemp...

FilterSweep 9y ago

> Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there This is sparing the employer at the expense of the employee. Employee's employment status is.....far more sticky.

nlowell 9y ago

The people in my recent college graduating class who were planning on going to Amazon for software engineering were going there with a plan to burnout after 2-3 years and take their experience elsewhere. It was seen as worth it for the money + resume, even knowing those years would suck.

delecti 9y ago
My Amazon RSUs more than knocked out my significant student loans, so I have to say that's a reasonable strategy.
noir_lord 9y ago
Bit like been a lawyer for one of the big firms. They work you like a dog but proof that you can 'graduate' from them gets you better offers afterwards. Crazy system when you think about it.

delecti 9y ago

I think it largely comes down to a few factors: Amazon does a lot of hiring, changing jobs is a hassle that many people won't do just because of momentum, and we naturally only hear about the very worst of what it's like to work at Amazon. If you keep hiring enough developers, enough of them will stick it out thanks to momentum (through possibly sub-optimal but not necessarily tortuous conditions) for long enough to have a large number of developers at any given time. I worked at Amazon for ~5.5 years, and it was fine. I wasn't in bliss, but it wasn't awful, it was fine. I eventually left not because conditions worsened but because my team's responsibilities eventually shifted to work I disliked enough to overcome the momentum (web ads), and I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about.

stone-monkey 9y ago
>> I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about. What do you mean? Are you referring to the severance you get if you leave on a PIP?
- delecti 9y ago
  Yes, but you can also opt-in to that. I told my manager I was dissatisfied and thinking of leaving, he suggested I talk to HR about the pivot program. They then put me on a PIP so I could accept the severance option. Also I had been on an actual PIP before and I'm pretty sure that option wasn't mentioned.
  - jackgolding 9y ago
    this is crazy to me, check out /r/consulting they view being on a PIP as a doomsday clock where the company will find any excuse to fire you in the next 6 months.
    - delecti 9y ago
      I can't speak universally, but I "passed" mine, and lasted another full year before leaving willingly. My manager seemed to very earnestly want me to pass, and implied that most people do. All that said, I would advise that if you get put on a PIP, just take the severance right away. You're ineligible for a raise or additional stock grants in the cycle following the PIP.

pg_bot 9y ago

Not to offend you or your work, but IMO Amazon makes the worst software out of all the big tech companies. I think that this is related to their ability to attract and retain talent due to their poor work culture.

manigandham 9y ago
What software specifically? The AWS cloud is still the leader in most products.
- pg_bot 9y ago
  AWS is the leader in the cloud because of its 6-7 year head start on the competition, not because their product is better than their competitors. There was even a company built on top of AWS that made money by creating a reasonable UX on top of that product.[0] walmart.com is better designed that amazon.com. I don't know when that happened but you can take a look at two product pages for the same book and be the judge. [1][2] That's just the tip of the iceberg. I could rant about Amazon's software for days, but in the end software doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad company. If I order something from amazon I expect to get it quickly and in the case something goes wrong I can talk with someone who will be more than agreeable. That is why they are successful, not because of their software prowess. [0]: https://www.heroku.com/ https://www.heroku.com/ [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523905821&sr=1-4&keywords=thinking+fast+and+slow https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp... [2]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow/20530246 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow/20530246
  - GSimon 9y ago
    Those product pages aren't really self evident as to which is better, I actually prefer Amazon's also, it seems to have more details about the item in addition of course to the 1000s of reviews.
  - sgtmas2006 9y ago
    While this isn't a direct problem with Amazon vs Walmart site design, I'm more likely to use Amazon due to the amount of reviews. Walmart can do one thing right, while Amazon has the majority of it right for me. It's going to take a lot to sway me away from Amazon.

rosser 9y ago

How professional technologists are treated by their giant tech employer is utterly orthogonal to how lower-skilled, hourly warehouse workers are treated by the same company. Why do technologists reliably chime in with completely irrelevant details of a technologist's experience of working for a tech company, in response to articles talking about how poorly those companies treat their non-technologist staff? What does the one have to do with the other? "Amazon can't be all bad, if they aren't abusing (some of) the subset of their workforce that can meaningfully vote with its feet"? EDIT: not singling you out specifically, but you did the thing here, so you get the follow-up.

dastbe 9y ago
I think everybody is doing this? Looking through the comments and its nothing but people talking about SDEs and other well compensated employees, when the crux of this article and others like it are the issues faced by warehouse workers, which I'm betting make up a large majority of the ~550k workers employed by amazon.
Sharlin 9y ago
People are really, really good at assuming that their experience of just about anything is a representative sample. And because their experiences are subjectively pretty important to them (naturally) they must be objectively important and relevant in the grand scheme of things as well.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

spenczar5 9y ago

At least one reason is that the stock has done so well. A typical software engineer hired 4 years ago is incredibly well compensated at Amazon because of this. Consider a mid-level software engineer hired 4 years ago, on April 16 2014, with a salary of $100k. A typical stock grant at hiring for a mid-level software engineer in 2014 might be $400k over 4 years, backloaded so most of it comes at the end; on April 16 2014 the share price was $323, so the grant would have looked something this: Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @ $323 = $50k = $150k total comp Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @ $323 = $80k = $180k total comp Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @ $323 = $120k = $220k total comp Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $323 = $150k = $250k total comp But the share price has gone through the roof since then, so things look more like this: Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @ $383 = $59k = $159k total comp Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @ $625 = $155k = $255k total comp Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @ $901 = $334k = $434k total comp Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $1,440 = $668k = $768k total comp That mid-level, totally normal software engineer is making more than $750k this year because the stock price has gone up so much since 2014. They're likely to put up with a lot of bullshit to get that kind of financial security - that's not just a down payment on a house, it can be the whole thing in cash in the east side suburbs, with great school districts. Amazon (and Seattle in general) could be in big trouble if the stock price turns around. I don't think that's likely, but it's kind of scary to me.

skookumchuck 9y ago
Amazon is minting millionaires like crazy. Of course people want to work there.
YetAnotherNick 9y ago
Anyone could have bought this stock if they would have known the price. Yes, the decision to join amazon turned out to be great money wise, but still doesn't explain why the top talent works there.
- spenczar5 9y ago
  Hm, I don't understand what purchasing stock has to do with it. If someone bought the stock then they would own it. But that's not what happens when a company grants you stock - it's a promise to deliver you shares later. If this hypothetical employee quit on April 10th, 2018, they would not get the 464 shares (== $668k) on April 16th, 2018. They also would probably not get a comparable offer if they quit to join Facegooglesoft. So, if they quit, they lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's enough to keep many people even if the work is unpleasant.

xg15 9y ago

I think the conditions apply more to the warehouse workers than the software engeneers. Presumably both groups are vastly different regarding qualifications, income, ability to switch jobs and freedom to structure their work, so I think they should be taken separately when discussing workplace conditions. (As an analogy, during the industrial revolution, the people that designed the machines probably weren't the ones that were working 18-hour days in hazardous conditions either.)

sudhirj 9y ago

At the risk of rehashing other comments here, software devs at Amazon are profit centers - when they work the company gains exponentially more value than it pays them. A good engineer retained can often deliver 2X to 10X the value of a new hire. The company treats them them accordingly. Warehouse employees are cost centers. They're replaceable pseudo-robots that are filling in the gaps until the engineers mentioned above finish building the real ones. A new worker at a cheaper rate is objectively better than retaining one, because the number of boxes packed tends to increase inversely proportional with age and tenure. The company treats them accordingly.

snoman 9y ago
> A good engineer retained can often deliver 2X to 10X the value of a new hire. The company treats them them [sic] accordingly. The turnover rate is generally less than 2 years.
- sudhirj 9y ago
  We’re mostly talking about large comp packages here, and I’m guessing they all vest over 4 years? I’m not saying devs are particularly pampered, just that there’s no comparison with the warehouse workers.
awat 9y ago
Piggybacking on what you were saying I don’t disagree from a purely business sense. But I find it ironic society seems to have this constant droning fear about actual robots becoming sentient and dissenting but doesnt fear the droves of these sudo-robots who are already able bodied and sentient and being actively antagonized (piss in bottles, etc) to dissent.

BookmarkSaver 9y ago

>Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Hacker News hates big companies, Amazon being evil is in the zeitgeist, and people are unable to contextualize criticisms properly. Being a software engineer at Amazon is fine (yeah, yeah, congrats, out of the tens of thousands of engineers you were able to uncover a few horror stories and terrible teams. Shocking) and very lucrative.