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I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge

I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge majority of average joes who would kill for an Amazon job.

hueving 8y ago
You need to qualify that. Most people would not kill to work in a warehouse or customer support, which is a huge portion of Amazon jobs.
- CobrastanJorji 8y ago
  This absolutely. While we tech scene folks love to consider ourselves "average joes," Amazon employs around 100,000 warehouse employees, and for them Amazon is decidedly NOT the #1 place people want to work. It's a fine place to be a software engineer, so long as you enjoy the high stress/low perks part of the tech scene, but that's a very different, air conditioned environment.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I know someone who works as a low level manager at Amazon and I've seen salaries of the average Software developer - for both the salary is like $140-$160K. That's nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living. You can make that in 1 of 20 other metro areas that I know of with a much lower cost of living and much lower stress. Even when considering the signing bonus and stock, I was never enticed to actually fly out there and interview even after I got through some preliminary phone screens.
    - cm2012 8y ago
      You know median seattle family income is like 80k right? Less if you consider more of the metro area. That's the family income, so it includes two earner households. NYC is like 50k.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        What does the average household income have to do with someone who is choosing between a software engineering job in Seattle and another area with a lower cost of living?
        cm2012 8y ago
        That it's absurd on its face to say that 160k is "nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living". The vast majority of people live with much less. The rest of your comment was fine re: programmers have other options.
        scarface74 8y ago
        It came with the assumption that I wanted the same standard of living. But the truth applies the other way. You won't live in a neighborhood with top rated schools (they will be safe), but you can live in a nice neighborhood with a 70k household income. When I bought my first home in 2002, it was a new build and 2800 square feet for around $170K. I was making around 70K. Looking now, that same house I use to live in just sold for around the same price about a year or two ago. The neighborhood is a safe, quiet, place. Commuting to downtown was only about a 30-35 minute drive.
    - nicoburns 8y ago
      I'm not sure what planet you live when $140k dollars is nothing. As a software developer you might be able to do better, but you are incredibly lucky. I assure you the median wage is significantly lower than that, and of course many people make minimum wage.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        In context - $140K for an experienced software engineer in a major metropolitan city isn't outrageous. A "software architect" often does hands on coding. For reference: https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/ https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/ If I can make $140K in metro Atlanta, where a newly built 3000 square foot house can be had for less than $350K in a nice neighborhood, why would I want to live in Seattle?
        taeric 8y ago
        Politics. Nicer weather. Better environment for women/girls in schools. :) The weather point is, of course, tough. Seattle summers are bloody amazing. The winter sorta blows.
        AFNobody 8y ago
        The weather in Atlanta isn't much better than Seattle, if you compare season to season. Seattle has one bad season, one good season. Atlanta is the same.
        enraged_camel 8y ago
        It is overcast 8-9 months of the year in Seattle.
        taeric 8y ago
        The weather in Atlanta is just more extreme, honestly. Which can matter a lot if you like hot weather. Out here in Seattle it is almost always cooler. Hardly ever actually "cold" though, in that I think Atlanta actually got more snow and I had my pipes freeze more there than I have out here. Now, the winter is much darker. The shift in sunset and sunrise is much more pronounced. This is somewhat offset by how much bloody sun we get in the summer. Which is truly insane. Sun is up by 4:30 most mornings, and you can see outside till near 10 most evenings. (Sunset, I think, is well earlier than that, but our twilight is bright. I am likely mistaken on this understanding, though. Haven't taken a journal or kept records, etc.)
    - praneshp 8y ago
      (wife works at amazon (but in palo alto) (and is 1 year out of grad school)) a. That salary is not low. If you chose to run a family of 4 on one salary of 160k, it's your choice. It's still quite good. b. If you discount 30% of the comp because you feel like it, I wonder how many of the 20 other metro areas are going to match up.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Comparable houses in Seattle compared to metro Atlanta is a lot more than 30%. For reference, the area of Atlanta with both the highest average house prices and the highest household income is Forsyth County. The average house price is around $350K and the average income is around 90K.
    - drharby 8y ago
      Thats like a military Major's payrate when converted to civilian pay (bc allowances)
    - didibus 8y ago
      I don't know if I'm just being taken advantage of, or if your data is just wrong, or you're lucky, but I've never been offered more anywhere that wasn't Sillicon Valley big tech, or Seattle big tech.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        - I posted a link from a recruiting agency (that I have used) but because you haven't been offered that amount, my data must be wrong? The link is "2017 salary survey". - looking at another recruiting agency I've used, I found this job posting. https://prestigestaffing.jobs.net/job/lead-net/J3W7C8754PTSHLPB8RC https://prestigestaffing.jobs.net/job/lead-net/J3W7C8754PTSH... - from anecdotal experience, I have a group of four friends from a former job. We all still get together about once a month and we are in a private Slack group. All of us are in our early 40s and none of us have any desire to go into management. We all consider ourselves "full stack developers". Our salaries range from $125 to $145K. - I just turned down a job for $145K as a lead developer (still hands on coding) because of the commute. I accepted a job that paid slightly less that was better commute and used newer technology.
  - sixo 8y ago
    They aren't slaves...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - cloakandswagger 8y ago
    I met a couple of a guys at a bar a few months ago. They both had on Amazon gear and, when prompted, would excitedly talk about their job at a fulfillment center and what it's like to "work for Amazon". They had worked their jobs for 1 and 2 years respectively. Remind yourself that the warehouse employees are in areas where their choice of work would normally be Walmart or a coal mine. Working for a big name company like Amazon has as much prestige for them as it does for us "tech scene folks".
- lynx234 8y ago
  Correct, but I believe the LinkedIn report was in reference to LinkedIn users. Many of which are not looking for warehouse positions.
- Blindedwino 8y ago
  A lot of it are "permanently temporary" jobs with no prospects of raises, promotions, etc.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  I don't believe LinkedIn is concerned with warehouse workers as warehouse workers aren't using LinkedIn to find jobs.
Bahamut 8y ago
I hear a lot of disaster stories from corporate at Amazon too, some from coworkers who have worked there. It has a well-known bad reputation in general in tech, even for non-software fields. My girlfriend has heard bad stories about Amazon from the hardware side as well. This doesn't even include some of the absolutely terrible things they do on the warehouse side either - I have friends who have first hand accounts from having worked there, and none of them are pretty. It's one of the few companies on my list of companies to avoid, unless they improved their employee treatment (and got rid of their bad employee RSU vesting schedule).
AFNobody 8y ago
> I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge majority of average joes who would kill for an Amazon job. They are the most aggressive at recruiting. I've never gone 6 months without at least one e-mail from an Amazon recruiter, despite asking to be removed multiple times from their lists. This leads me to believe they have turn over problems that would make your assertion incorrect. For anyone arguing it is growth, consider they are the _only_ company that does this but they are not the only company that is growing at that pace.
tclancy 8y ago
Doing what? The point of Amazon is to eliminate whole swathes of human-powered jobs from the supply chain. You're either getting paid six figures or more for coding or you're busting your ass for minimum wage on the wrong end of the supply chain for just as long as it takes them to get the robots that will replace you working right. What jobs do you think your "average joes" would kill for?

hueving 8y ago

You need to qualify that. Most people would not kill to work in a warehouse or customer support, which is a huge portion of Amazon jobs.

CobrastanJorji 8y ago
This absolutely. While we tech scene folks love to consider ourselves "average joes," Amazon employs around 100,000 warehouse employees, and for them Amazon is decidedly NOT the #1 place people want to work. It's a fine place to be a software engineer, so long as you enjoy the high stress/low perks part of the tech scene, but that's a very different, air conditioned environment.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I know someone who works as a low level manager at Amazon and I've seen salaries of the average Software developer - for both the salary is like $140-$160K. That's nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living. You can make that in 1 of 20 other metro areas that I know of with a much lower cost of living and much lower stress. Even when considering the signing bonus and stock, I was never enticed to actually fly out there and interview even after I got through some preliminary phone screens.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    You know median seattle family income is like 80k right? Less if you consider more of the metro area. That's the family income, so it includes two earner households. NYC is like 50k.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      What does the average household income have to do with someone who is choosing between a software engineering job in Seattle and another area with a lower cost of living?
      - cm2012 8y ago
        That it's absurd on its face to say that 160k is "nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living". The vast majority of people live with much less. The rest of your comment was fine re: programmers have other options.
        scarface74 8y ago
        It came with the assumption that I wanted the same standard of living. But the truth applies the other way. You won't live in a neighborhood with top rated schools (they will be safe), but you can live in a nice neighborhood with a 70k household income. When I bought my first home in 2002, it was a new build and 2800 square feet for around $170K. I was making around 70K. Looking now, that same house I use to live in just sold for around the same price about a year or two ago. The neighborhood is a safe, quiet, place. Commuting to downtown was only about a 30-35 minute drive.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    I'm not sure what planet you live when $140k dollars is nothing. As a software developer you might be able to do better, but you are incredibly lucky. I assure you the median wage is significantly lower than that, and of course many people make minimum wage.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      In context - $140K for an experienced software engineer in a major metropolitan city isn't outrageous. A "software architect" often does hands on coding. For reference: https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/ https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/ If I can make $140K in metro Atlanta, where a newly built 3000 square foot house can be had for less than $350K in a nice neighborhood, why would I want to live in Seattle?
      - taeric 8y ago
        Politics. Nicer weather. Better environment for women/girls in schools. :) The weather point is, of course, tough. Seattle summers are bloody amazing. The winter sorta blows.
        AFNobody 8y ago
        The weather in Atlanta isn't much better than Seattle, if you compare season to season. Seattle has one bad season, one good season. Atlanta is the same.
        enraged_camel 8y ago
        It is overcast 8-9 months of the year in Seattle.
        taeric 8y ago
        The weather in Atlanta is just more extreme, honestly. Which can matter a lot if you like hot weather. Out here in Seattle it is almost always cooler. Hardly ever actually "cold" though, in that I think Atlanta actually got more snow and I had my pipes freeze more there than I have out here. Now, the winter is much darker. The shift in sunset and sunrise is much more pronounced. This is somewhat offset by how much bloody sun we get in the summer. Which is truly insane. Sun is up by 4:30 most mornings, and you can see outside till near 10 most evenings. (Sunset, I think, is well earlier than that, but our twilight is bright. I am likely mistaken on this understanding, though. Haven't taken a journal or kept records, etc.)
  - praneshp 8y ago
    (wife works at amazon (but in palo alto) (and is 1 year out of grad school)) a. That salary is not low. If you chose to run a family of 4 on one salary of 160k, it's your choice. It's still quite good. b. If you discount 30% of the comp because you feel like it, I wonder how many of the 20 other metro areas are going to match up.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Comparable houses in Seattle compared to metro Atlanta is a lot more than 30%. For reference, the area of Atlanta with both the highest average house prices and the highest household income is Forsyth County. The average house price is around $350K and the average income is around 90K.
  - drharby 8y ago
    Thats like a military Major's payrate when converted to civilian pay (bc allowances)
  - didibus 8y ago
    I don't know if I'm just being taken advantage of, or if your data is just wrong, or you're lucky, but I've never been offered more anywhere that wasn't Sillicon Valley big tech, or Seattle big tech.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      - I posted a link from a recruiting agency (that I have used) but because you haven't been offered that amount, my data must be wrong? The link is "2017 salary survey". - looking at another recruiting agency I've used, I found this job posting. https://prestigestaffing.jobs.net/job/lead-net/J3W7C8754PTSHLPB8RC https://prestigestaffing.jobs.net/job/lead-net/J3W7C8754PTSH... - from anecdotal experience, I have a group of four friends from a former job. We all still get together about once a month and we are in a private Slack group. All of us are in our early 40s and none of us have any desire to go into management. We all consider ourselves "full stack developers". Our salaries range from $125 to $145K. - I just turned down a job for $145K as a lead developer (still hands on coding) because of the commute. I accepted a job that paid slightly less that was better commute and used newer technology.
- sixo 8y ago
  They aren't slaves...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- cloakandswagger 8y ago
  I met a couple of a guys at a bar a few months ago. They both had on Amazon gear and, when prompted, would excitedly talk about their job at a fulfillment center and what it's like to "work for Amazon". They had worked their jobs for 1 and 2 years respectively. Remind yourself that the warehouse employees are in areas where their choice of work would normally be Walmart or a coal mine. Working for a big name company like Amazon has as much prestige for them as it does for us "tech scene folks".
lynx234 8y ago
Correct, but I believe the LinkedIn report was in reference to LinkedIn users. Many of which are not looking for warehouse positions.
Blindedwino 8y ago
A lot of it are "permanently temporary" jobs with no prospects of raises, promotions, etc.
EpicEng 8y ago
I don't believe LinkedIn is concerned with warehouse workers as warehouse workers aren't using LinkedIn to find jobs.

Bahamut 8y ago

I hear a lot of disaster stories from corporate at Amazon too, some from coworkers who have worked there. It has a well-known bad reputation in general in tech, even for non-software fields. My girlfriend has heard bad stories about Amazon from the hardware side as well. This doesn't even include some of the absolutely terrible things they do on the warehouse side either - I have friends who have first hand accounts from having worked there, and none of them are pretty. It's one of the few companies on my list of companies to avoid, unless they improved their employee treatment (and got rid of their bad employee RSU vesting schedule).

AFNobody 8y ago

> I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge majority of average joes who would kill for an Amazon job. They are the most aggressive at recruiting. I've never gone 6 months without at least one e-mail from an Amazon recruiter, despite asking to be removed multiple times from their lists. This leads me to believe they have turn over problems that would make your assertion incorrect. For anyone arguing it is growth, consider they are the _only_ company that does this but they are not the only company that is growing at that pace.

tclancy 8y ago

Doing what? The point of Amazon is to eliminate whole swathes of human-powered jobs from the supply chain. You're either getting paid six figures or more for coding or you're busting your ass for minimum wage on the wrong end of the supply chain for just as long as it takes them to get the robots that will replace you working right. What jobs do you think your "average joes" would kill for?