20 ms·

Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

284 points by tinderliker 8y ago

Was there any change from the time New York Times article was published? And does the pay + stock compensate for the bad work culture (if there is?)

lazypanda 8y ago
depends on team
- erikb 8y ago
  This is only very small amount of information, though. Of course it depends on the team. I think even at the crappiest of employers you will find a team or two that are not as painful to work with. And since this platform here allows more than one person to answer a question, it is totally valid to just describe your own, personal, non-objective experience and let the reader make conclusions based on the sum of what they are reading.
- goostavos 8y ago
  It does entirely. In an org consisting of hundreds of thousands of people, "culture" is a pretty local phenomenon. The Amazon experience is entirely dictated by the team on which you land.
  - ssalazars 8y ago
    I agree. But in my experience, even when VPs expose a vision of their culture, directors/GMs are the ones who end up exercising their vision/culture to their teams.
frmramzn 8y ago
Moved to Google and TBH have cried once or twice because I didn't realize an employer could be so humane. Amazon was terrifying, but the academic culture I came from normalized self brutalization to succeed,so I didn't realize how much they were relying on my lack of a sense of boundaries and personal priorities to extract excess labor.
- frmramzn 8y ago
  And, I'm already making 50% more at Google than I was at Amazon, after a bit more than a year.
  - some_account 8y ago
    That self brutalization stuff works on people who needs outside approval to feel good, and it's encouraged behavior in specially American culture to work hard and compete your entire life. Sounds pretty terrible to me. When are you supposed to enjoy life if you are in constant competition?
    - doubt_me 8y ago
      enjoy life? people have to value life to enjoy it first.
    - ikeyany 8y ago
      > That self brutalization stuff works on people who needs outside approval to feel good Prestige and the perception of it is a huge part of self-worth.
- dieterrams 8y ago
  Mind if I ask what team(s) you were on at Amazon? Looking to avoid the worst. I’m starting to get the impression, though, that if I want to be happiest as a Big Tech Co. engineer, I really just need to work at Google.
  - throwaway84742 8y ago
    I heard FB is good as well, though I still don’t get why they need so many people to do what they do. Heck, even MS is probably better than Amazon. I delete all Amazon recruiter emails (of which I receive about 2 per week) as soon as they arrive.
    - stevenwoo 8y ago
akerro 8y ago
New entries are still being added, so probably great https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home
jamdamu 8y ago
Amazon has taken steps to prevent abusive behavior from occurring, such as creating a process for engineers to challenge managerial pips and allowing engineers to transfer while on development plans. In my opinion, these steps seem more like treating the symptom than the cause. The overall culture remains the same. Engineers are still treated by management as resources to be allocated, and for me, this is the hardest pill to swallow. Even though my manager, my skip, and my peers tell me I do good work, at the end of the day, I feel that all I am is X capacity points per sprint. The feeling of being disposable in the huge machine that is Amazon is quite depressing.
- some_account 8y ago
  You are. The software engineer profession is becoming like traditional factory workers, only this time they have ping pong tables and free snacks. Also the salary is very high. But the downside is that you are still at the bottom of the pyramid.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    That would be the warehouse workers not tech
    - lithos 8y ago
      Warehouse workers are treated like equipment. And will eventually be replaced with real equipment.
- gigatexal 8y ago
  What gave it away? The fact that there’s a department called Human Resources? The only way to not feel like a cog in a wheel is to be your own boss.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    > a department called Human Resources And in that phrase, "Human" is the adjective...
BigTex420 8y ago
Out of the 6 coworkers I’m close with, I’ve seen every single one of them cry for work related reasons at least once over the past year. Peak is hell.
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  I can only think of one former coworker who cried from stress during work. Strangely enough, she's one of only two devs I know still on that team out of the original ten members when I joined. (I'm not the other dev)
- akerro 8y ago
  Either your friends are emotionally unstable or should report abuse and leave the company. Seriously, why be so unhappy with your workplace? Do they work in North Korea?
  - rurban 8y ago
    Happens in South Korea and Japan also.
    - pc86 8y ago
      I don't think I could make up a better example of missing the point if I tried.
- alimbada 8y ago
  Then why are they (and you after witnessing this) still there?
- not_real_acct 8y ago
  I'm a software consultant so I've had the opportunity to work at nearly a hundred different offices. I've seen employees driven to tears at two companies, and both of them were wretched to work for. It became my barometer of whether the company was a good place to work for. I really like working for companies in finance. They're generally laid back and the pay is decent, not great.
kevan 8y ago
I joined in mid-2016, My team is in a pretty good spot now.
cm2012 8y ago
The talk here about sticking at a job that makes you cry, when you have in demand skills and can work anywhere, is nuts to me.
- Cofike 8y ago
  Yeah it's insane. I can't tell if the people who say it isn't bad just have good teams or are lying. The fact that there is a chance of crying at work based on your manager is absurd and washes away any good of working at that company.
  - stone-monkey 8y ago
    I can easily believe it. The overall structure may be designed to be ruthless to employees, but teams and orgs have a ton of leeway to form their own culture. They purposely break up teams that get too big in order to keep with the idea of "two pizza teams", that is, a team small enough that two pizzas would be enough to feed everyone. The team and managers set the tone of culture at this level. At the next level up, the smaller teams coalesce into the upper org headed by a vp or whatever. The upper management here and the team managers sets the culture for cross team interactions. It can therefore be possible to be on a good team if your managers are proactive and shield their team, but managers also have a ton on their plate and are beholden to the same power structures that are attempting to grind them into dust. There was one manager that was beloved by all in the org because he took care of his direct reports - he saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to a greenfield project in a different org. A bunch of senior engineers followed along shortly after.
    - paxunix 8y ago
      It is often said that people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. I've seen it be true much more often than not.
- Insanity 8y ago
  I'm guessing brand popularity had something to do with it. Along with perceived 'prestige' of working at that company. But yeah it does sound a bit crazy to me as well. Perhaps some of their employees are there on work visa and don't want to risk them and their family having to relocate to another country again. But I don't think that's the case for all the people whom complain.
ssalazars 8y ago
1. It depends on the company (Amazon vs AWS) and it varies from org to org, and team to team. Just like in every place there's going to be great and crapy people. In 3 years at Amazon I had the opportunity to work next to great people, but also with people at the complete opposite side. 2. In my case, it did not. I decided my happiness/wellness and health (physical and mental) were more important.
mter 8y ago
I work under 40 hours a week with no pressure to work more, I get along with my coworkers and look forward to going to work in the morning. I have worked a crunch time that was pretty terrible, but that was a once off. It's been almost 2 years since my last crunch time. The comp is decent. It doesn't match google/fb but it's better than a non tech company. I have a target of ~170 total comp as an SDE II with just under 4 years of experience out of college. This is my last year of my initial stock grant so my take home is quite a bit over 170. I've never seen anyone cry at work. Closest was a guy that got pip'd, but he was genuinely struggling. I can/could see glimmers of truth in the NYT article but I've never seen it that bad. That said, I am aware that tech (SDEs in particular) tend to be treated a bit better than everyone else.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  What does “pip’d” mean?
  - Cofike 8y ago
    Performance improvement plan. Basically a chance to get your act together before they fire you.
    - jamiethompson 8y ago
      Some would argue it's more of a "start looking for a new job, we're about to fire you" warning.
      - smueller1234 8y ago
        I don't know whether you're making this statement about Amazon, in which case I have no insight and you can stop reading now, or whether that's intended as a more general statement. If it's the latter, I'd like to challenge the assertion that a PIP is necessarily the company trying to get rid of someone. In my experience as a manager, I've always made sure that PIPs are as honestly designed to get people back on track as could be. In, say, the last five years as a manager, and in my organisation of a couple hundred engineers, there were exactly two cases (and the key point is that I recall both specifically) where a PIP was primarily motivated to document the already extremely obvious (to anyone far and wide) underperformance and attitude problem. And even then, the managers in question had the professionalism to design the PIP to be eminently achievable. Generally speaking, I find the likelihood of a PIP to be adversarial and/or a tool to be able to fire somebody to be much more strongly connected to whether there has been an adversarial relationship between the employee and their manager. For that reason, I found that it paid off hugely to make sure people move to different teams & managers and get a reset there before taking any drastic action. In the same way as people are said to leave due to their managers, not jobs, it's key to take that personal component out of a bad situation.
anonazon123 8y ago
No change since the NYT article. Amazon only changes things when it has to, and only in a lip-service kind of way. There was a flurry of discussion and proposals when the article was published, but it's all died down and we're back to where we were beforehand. Compensation, culture, and perks are infinitely better at Google, Facebook, Lyft, Uber, etc. All of them start vesting your stock monthly after 1 year, whereas Amazon has a ridiculous vesting schedule (5% after year 1, 15% after year 2, 20% every 6 months thereafter). Not to mention the awful 401k matching, no free food/drinks, terrible drab offices, etc. All in the name of "frugality." Leadership claims that our competitors waste their money on these things, despite all of them being insanely profitable with higher employee happiness and retention. I'm working on moving to one of the above competitors now. I recommend avoiding Amazon, even if the role you've been offered sounds cool.
- tinderliker 8y ago
  Thanks, this made things clear. I was seriously considering joining until the responses in this thread. Its better to wait for another offer for few more months rather than suffering for the next 2-3 years.
  - ImSkeptical 8y ago
    I think it really depends on the team you're on at Amazon. (well, the vesting, free drinks etc doesn't). I never found the NYT article to be even slightly representative of my time at Amazon, and the group I was in at the time made additional changes to help improve morale that really worked. I believe you can find a good, or bad, team to work on at Amazon, and I assume the same is true of other big companies too (I have worked at another big company and it was true there too).
    - pc86 8y ago
      If anyone here honestly believes free food and office decor stack up as benefits right alongside retirement benefits and vesting schedules, please take a step back and evaluate your life. I'd rather live on a software developer's salary with no 401k access and a 6 year vesting cliff than live on 2/3rd the salary with immediate vesting and a generous 401k match.
codeonfire 8y ago
Thanks to linked in, I saw who was on a 1st level connection with the ex-director there who was arrested for running ads for prostitutes in Bellevue. Those 1st level contacts are still there and in higher positions now. Being 1st level on linkedin doesn't mean they are the same character or were part of the crime, but they are all in management positions. I emailed some women that still worked there and told them they should leave.
- codeonfire 8y ago
  To answer your question, I hope it has changed. I was uneasy there with how managers would chat up the young women employees in their offices (with the sliding roller doors) for hours. In a few instances I felt uneasy with the way some people were obviously drooling in close proximity to women, staring, etc. That's what you get when there is tons of alcohol in the office. If the place has not changed I would recommend a no outside alcohol policy and training to prevent sexual assault.
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    " I was uneasy there with how managers would chat up the young women employees in their offices (with the sliding roller doors) for hours" Maybe they were, you know, working together.
    - codeonfire 8y ago
      Yeah, I considered that, managers there are always trying to hire women they want to fuck and have heard anecdotes of interns who think using sex will get them a full time position. This was not that case.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  That's a really bizarre way of thinking. 1st level connection doesn't mean personally close. Are you willing to be held responsible for the misdeeds your own 1st level connections might get up to?
mproust 8y ago
I was at Amazon for 8 years, left in January of this year. VP I worked for routinely belittled very senior engineers, made some of them cry/move teams/quit. The VP was never disciplined or had his scope reduced. Had projects cancelled on a whim without an actual replacement/reason. At Amazon, I wasn't a person, but some resource. Some orgs were fine, most are not. A manager from a "no jerk policy" org told me there is a culture of cruelty in Amazon management, and if he played the game he would have been at a higher level. ymmv.
- deleted 8y ago
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sadamznintern 8y ago
I interned at Amazon last year in the Alexa org (non-frontline team in ML). My team was rarely in the office before 10:30 or after 6, even during crunch time (we launched our feature during my internship) but i did see code review responses at odd hours sometimes. I enjoyed the project a bunch, and while my coworkers werent the most social bunch they were pretty smart and effective. I did pretty well and exceeded managers expectations for my project to get a return offer. I shopped around a bunch after and interviewed at all the companies I could but got rejected by all of the top ones (FB after phone, Google after onsite, Airbnb and Cruise after coding challenge..) so I ultimately picked the return offer despite getting a 3 other offers in the fintech space because I liked the project and location at Amazon. Does that mean I’m a happy camper? Fuck no. My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more like $180k-$230k by comparison. Perks are also nonexistent. The worst part, though, is knowing that i have become stuck in a company with a significantly lower hiring bar. Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time and i will never be able to get into a more prestigious company. The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before.
- kajecounterhack 8y ago
  > The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before. This isn't a very healthy outlook. By that I mean using prestige and income level as your optimization function isn't a great way to achieve [fulfillment / joy / making life worth living]. I'm not trying to preach a specific optimization function but I hope you'll talk to people you trust to get some objectivity about what is [healthy / unhealthy] for being a fulfilled, long term contributor to society.
  - sadamznintern 8y ago
    Im of the opinion thats the only optimization function worth using. I dont know of any others in the state Im in - I just graduated from a mediocre state school and cant pass interview loops, but everyone that has attempted to convince me otherwise hasnt, from what i can tell, experienced my long string of getting barely anything for my 10+ years of dilligence and work. Unlike my friends im not a crypto millionaire, an FB employee, etc.
sadamznintern 8y ago
I couldnt get into any of the companies you mentioned and picked Amazon as a last resort. What should I do now? Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  Quit today. https://xkcd.com/1768/ https://xkcd.com/1768/ You'll be OK.
- tinderliker 8y ago
  Same here. Looks like AMZN these days is way easier to get into compared to Google and Microsoft. I couldn't even clear the first rounds at others, but got an offer from Amazon.
  - leohutson 8y ago
    The person you replied to is considering suicide, and your only response is to ignore that and agree with the rationale that led them there?
    - tinderliker 8y ago
      I think he is trolling people with the suicide talk.
      - Eldandan 8y ago
        Sounded like a dark, tongue-in-cheek response to the "never work for amazon" advice. Like, his only other option is death according to HN commenters, since the only place he got an offer from was amazon. Or so I hope...
        leohutson 8y ago
        I didn't interpret that way at all, read their other comments. Even if they are just trolling they clearly aren't healthy right now, because that's a pretty fucked joke. I know people here as a rule aren't very empathetic, but the responses to this person are particularly cold.
alagu 8y ago
Can someone share the mentioned NYT Article mentioned?
- et-al 8y ago
  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-... (And an ad-infested blurb on Bezos's follow-up: http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-report-amazon-working-conditions-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-repor...)
- rambojazz 8y ago
  I think it's this one: 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-...
- akerro 8y ago
  More stories here https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home
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wizardofmysore 8y ago
In my team and all the orgs under my manager's manager is pretty chill. We are a team out of India. In India the comp is really high compared to other Indian companies. The vesting cycle is same as US though. I have heard about the bad culture in US. I have never seen anyone cry or even stressed. We don't have many crunch days.
- tinderliker 8y ago
  TBH Amazon Indian org is known (from the Seattle folks I spoke to) for being sub-par filled with employees from service companies, so no surprises there.
  - wizardofmysore 8y ago
    On the contrary I think the frugality strategy has lead to hiring the top talent in India and not in the US. Therefore the pay here is higher compared to the bigger companies (not MNCs but product as well), I am from an Indian unicorn startup and the pay was very competitive. The US opinion of any Indians IT worker seems to be the same, that is that we are service oriented workers who don't code, therefore I'd take it with a grain of salt on what they say. But yeah, the talent here is good since hiring talent is cheaper here compared to US. If you have to pay 170k$ to hire the best in US then in India you'll be able to hire the best at 50 LPA which is about 70k$. I have been part of many interview panels and they haven't been any easy interviews as such.
    - vthallam 8y ago
      I'm curious as how are the salaries in top start ups in India compared to the likes of Amazon/Google? Like for a mid-senior engineer. Appreciate any numbers you know off.
  - thatoneguytoo 8y ago
    ^this. Part of my team at AMZN is in Bangalore, and they really are way below average compared to US. Usually its taken as low cost centre to send less lucrative work there, like operational stuff...
dewiz 8y ago
Check this out https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really-that-bad-to-work-for-OApSnQ7V https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really-that... and more topics on the same site
exBarrelSpoiler 8y ago
Anyone who's worked at both Amazon and Apple want to compare the two?
pontianak 8y ago
I joined fresh out of college about a year back, no one respects your gender identity and everyone almost always purposefully refuses to use the correct pronouns
leoharsha2 8y ago
I interned at Amazon a 11 months ago at Hyderabad, India. I used to go to the office at 1PM and return home at 2AM. So much work pressure. They literally treated as a robots. Yes, we did work as a robot because they lure us by offering PPO( Pre- placement offer). They used to give us a weekly task which was never supposed to complete if you work even for 60 hours/week. Thus our whole weekend was ruined in completing this task. I have got a mentor who himself can't able to complete the given task so he gives his some of his work to interns. Amazon is a great place to learn but not for the work.
uji 8y ago
Worked in an AWS team, and the biggest issue was constant fire-fighting and oncall/operational load. Code quality is really bad across all teams in AWS due to constant prioritization of features over stability. We use to get 20 pages a day, and it was very common to get 2-3 pages in the middle of night. It was horrible and yet management didn't pay much attention on fixing it. At the end devs starting leaving the team one by one. Recently I heard that the team hired twice the number of devs to reduce frequency of oncall rotation.
- jononor 8y ago
  Include managers in overnight pager duty and I bet it would quickly become a priority.
- mabbo 8y ago
  Fulfillment was like that 5 years ago. Just widely reputed to be the worst place. New upper management came in and started rating the L6/L7 management on their highsev counts. Things got a lot better very quickly.
  - shanghaiaway 8y ago
    What's highsev?
    - mabbo 8y ago
      Every software team is their own operational team as well. A highsev is a high severity ticket/incident, leading to someone being paged in for immediate assistance.
amzn12124 8y ago
We lost "anytime feedback" and end of year reviews changed dramatically. This is a horrible loss. Previously, the anytime feedback tool had you, at any time, give anyone else in the company feedback (positive and negative) in the form of "Situation, Behavior, Impact". What happened, how did the person react, how did it impact me. It went to the person's manager and into a record somewhere. At the end of every year, you were asked to give additional anytime feedback to you entire team and anyone who asked for it. Managers read through all that feedback, summarized and gave you a full year end review that was the source of a lot of my personal growth. The NYT referred to this as "ratting out your coworkers", so now that's gone. Instead, there's a short, stupid and less-than-anonymous version that takes about 5 minutes and is done just once per year. Your manager doesn't read any of that feedback before they give you your year end review and pay changes, but they do give you a verbatim copy of what was said- you can figure out who said what pretty easily. The problem was that 1% of the managers were sociopaths who abused their power. The response was to increase their power. But I'm still here, for some reason. Edit: no, let's be fair here. I'm still here because I like what I do. I like the problem space, and I like the people I work with.
alehul 8y ago
Could anyone here comment on Amazon Robotics? What would I expect as a SWE working there? Is it different (better/worse) than Amazon as a whole?
apexkid 8y ago
Nothing has changed. I have worked in Amazon for many years now in India. Jeff himself doesn't seem interested in taking work culture seriously. I have never seen any interviews of him after NYC article where he accepted that something was going wrong and needs to be fixed. Instead he turned the whole debate into work-life harmony rhetoric. In India, the situation is far worse than US. There is less transparency and more opportunities by senior leadership to rule with an iron fist without any accountability. Concerns are suppressed instantly. One might have been an excellent employee for couple of years but for some reason if you are not on top of your game for even a quarter, you will start hearing complains from everyone and the situation can go upto PIP (Performance Improvement). The culture completely lacks the emotion of "Let me help you". It is heavily influenced by politics and survival of the fittest which might be fine for a small period but takes a toll on you in long term. Probably this explains why attrition is so high in Amazon.
- paxunix 8y ago
  Working for Amazon in India is almost like working for an entirely different company and is not a great comparison to working for Amazon in the US. Cultural norms in the US apply in the US; cultural norms in India apply in India. I've generally found Indian managers and developers to approach the work entirely differently than their US counterparts. Not a negative--just an observation. There does seem to be a pervasive undercurrent of "if I do good work on my team here in India, I can get out of here and go to the US as soon as my promo goes through". This sentiment naturally comes out in behaviour on teams and around coworkers.
jkingsbery 8y ago
I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office. Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like the projects I work on. I like my coworkers. I'm happy with my compensation. In terms of perks, there aren't free lunches every day, but most orgs that I know of have some budget for a snack shelf. There are also other perks though - there are are opportunities to learn from other software engineers in the form of tech talks, internal conferences and the like. There are also opportunities to learn about the business side as an engineer. I've generally found other people at Amazon very willing to help. I've had people outside of my team review designs and give feedback (and I've done likewise for other teams). I'm currently working on a project that's required me to reach out to a bunch of different teams to get input on how to approach a problem, and all of them have either accepted a meeting invite or responded to my email with the info I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time (a couple days). Amazon has 14 Leadership Principles, and I've found that people mostly take them to heart. For example, it doesn't mean that you can use "Insisting on the Highest Standards" as a blank check to refactor your code to the point that it's immaculate, but it does mean that most of the product people I work with get that tech debt is a real thing and slows down product development at some point, and they will budget time to address tech debt when given suggestions by engineers. Most of the people who have left our team in the past 12 months have left to go work on other teams. Some of them left to work for a different org, some because they wanted to work in a different office. Amazon's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and most of the things that are frequently raised as issues on HackerNews are, in my experience and the experience of everyone I've talked to at Amazon, generally not issues.
- therico 8y ago
  The only thing that sounds out in your message is "crunch time". You didn't go into detail but regular crunch time is unacceptable imo.
- actf 8y ago
  > Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry I would like to point out that this is just objectively wrong. There are many employers in our industry that do not impose crunch time, and who view crunch time as indicative of poor engineering practices. Maybe your statement came out wrong, but I was surprised enough when reading it that I felt compelled to let others know that this is not reality. There are lots of good employers that practice sustainable development practices in our industry. Reading this thread, I'm having a very hard time understanding why anyone would want to work at Amazon (other then the somewhat high salary). Judging by responses to many of the parent comments, I'd say that others seem surprised as well. I hope this surprise reflects the abnormality of the practices described in this thread because they are not as common in the industry as you suggest.
throwaway243424 8y ago
Joined Amazon Dublin in the Summer of last year as SDE2 (that's the category where most engineers will fall into), so way after the NYT article. Pay is very good for Europe - AFAIK one of the best for the position and above G/F/MS in Dublin (according to Glassdoor), though I think that at the end of the day you might take more home if you're working for G/F and living in London/Switzerland (due to lower taxes). As for the work environment, like in all big companies, it really depends in which team and project you land. My team and adjacent teams are full of respectful people and work is pretty good. We're building some "large scale" systems, and technology wise it's pretty cool. But I've heard stories from people in other teams where they were relegated to doing oncall and fixing bugs. I also know 1 person that didn't make it through the probation period (he was in one of those oncall teams). The company is big and has a lot of different projects, so YM(will definitely)V. I've had to interact with a lot of different people across the company and my impression is overall positive. In terms of work load, it's not light. At the same time, right now, it's not that high, but that will probably change once we're closer to the deadlines. I enjoy it, it keeps me active and not bored at work. I know people who do 8-17 (1 lunch hour) EVERY DAY. Pretty much everyone around me works 8-9 hours. The teams around me are also very flexible with remote work (a lot of us work remotely 1-2 days a week). In term of the actual work, me and my team have had to design systems, write documents (the 6 pagers, design reviews, etc), and we're implementing them. A lot of technical freedom. I also hear manager refer to people as resources and I dislike it - not sure why/where that terminology comes from, but I think it's something common inside and outside the company. Yes, perks are pretty much non-existent. No snacks, no free lunch/dinner, no gym, just water, fruit, and coffee. Heck, not even free tshirts and the employee discount is ridiculous. But if that's what you're looking for in a company, then I'm sorry, you won't find it here. Yes, you'll also get stack ranked at the beginning of the year, and getting promoted to SDE3 is not easy. One interesting thing, at least around me, the vast majority of people seems to be 30+ old. From the teams around me, I think no one (apart from me) reads HN. People come from all around Europe (and some from Asia).
tmaly 8y ago
I am curious outside of the other companies of FANG, does Amazon represent median representation of workplace culture or are they an outlier? I have not worked at Amazon, but I have seen worse types of workplace culture in some cases over my career.
user68858788 8y ago
Twelve managers in three years. Quality of life changes dramatically depending on who you get. Left after being put on a PIP - stack ranking in action. Not worth trying to fight it with that particular manager.
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thelastidiot 8y ago
Ex-Amazonian here (for real). Put up with almost 4 years of what I would now consider some serious sweatshop practices from my managers (had a few in that time lapse), for not much at the end but it felt good to leave the place. After that, I took two months off to recover from stress and work exhaustion. Work only, no life. Crunch mode was a daily pill. The mission sounded cool and staying that long because it felt that we were helping each other in a prison camp with my team. Frugality is a joke, because top execs will get rewarded. I would never consider this company again and never will recommend anyone to work there.
gregdunn 8y ago
I've been with Amazon for coming up on 5 years. I love it here, and have for the entirety of the time I've been here. There are some minor changes I would make if I could wave a magic wand, but I can't imagine any workplace is perfect, and when I say minor, I really mean it. I don't really have a lot to say about things as they relate to the New York Times article, because the workplace described in said article was never even remotely close to the experiences I've had. I work on a fantastic team, and I work with some amazing teams. Some of the smartest people I've ever met. I don't see myself leaving the company any time soon.
amazon62835 8y ago
A friend of mine got kicked out days before vesting a chunk of shares because he had an offer from another company and asked to match it.

284 points by tinderliker 8y ago

Was there any change from the time New York Times article was published? And does the pay + stock compensate for the bad work culture (if there is?)

lazypanda 8y ago

depends on team

erikb 8y ago
This is only very small amount of information, though. Of course it depends on the team. I think even at the crappiest of employers you will find a team or two that are not as painful to work with. And since this platform here allows more than one person to answer a question, it is totally valid to just describe your own, personal, non-objective experience and let the reader make conclusions based on the sum of what they are reading.
goostavos 8y ago
It does entirely. In an org consisting of hundreds of thousands of people, "culture" is a pretty local phenomenon. The Amazon experience is entirely dictated by the team on which you land.
- ssalazars 8y ago
  I agree. But in my experience, even when VPs expose a vision of their culture, directors/GMs are the ones who end up exercising their vision/culture to their teams.

frmramzn 8y ago

Moved to Google and TBH have cried once or twice because I didn't realize an employer could be so humane. Amazon was terrifying, but the academic culture I came from normalized self brutalization to succeed,so I didn't realize how much they were relying on my lack of a sense of boundaries and personal priorities to extract excess labor.

frmramzn 8y ago
And, I'm already making 50% more at Google than I was at Amazon, after a bit more than a year.
- some_account 8y ago
  That self brutalization stuff works on people who needs outside approval to feel good, and it's encouraged behavior in specially American culture to work hard and compete your entire life. Sounds pretty terrible to me. When are you supposed to enjoy life if you are in constant competition?
  - doubt_me 8y ago
    enjoy life? people have to value life to enjoy it first.
  - ikeyany 8y ago
    > That self brutalization stuff works on people who needs outside approval to feel good Prestige and the perception of it is a huge part of self-worth.
dieterrams 8y ago
Mind if I ask what team(s) you were on at Amazon? Looking to avoid the worst. I’m starting to get the impression, though, that if I want to be happiest as a Big Tech Co. engineer, I really just need to work at Google.
- throwaway84742 8y ago
  I heard FB is good as well, though I still don’t get why they need so many people to do what they do. Heck, even MS is probably better than Amazon. I delete all Amazon recruiter emails (of which I receive about 2 per week) as soon as they arrive.
  - stevenwoo 8y ago

akerro 8y ago

New entries are still being added, so probably great https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home

jamdamu 8y ago

Amazon has taken steps to prevent abusive behavior from occurring, such as creating a process for engineers to challenge managerial pips and allowing engineers to transfer while on development plans. In my opinion, these steps seem more like treating the symptom than the cause. The overall culture remains the same. Engineers are still treated by management as resources to be allocated, and for me, this is the hardest pill to swallow. Even though my manager, my skip, and my peers tell me I do good work, at the end of the day, I feel that all I am is X capacity points per sprint. The feeling of being disposable in the huge machine that is Amazon is quite depressing.

some_account 8y ago
You are. The software engineer profession is becoming like traditional factory workers, only this time they have ping pong tables and free snacks. Also the salary is very high. But the downside is that you are still at the bottom of the pyramid.
- walshemj 8y ago
  That would be the warehouse workers not tech
  - lithos 8y ago
    Warehouse workers are treated like equipment. And will eventually be replaced with real equipment.
gigatexal 8y ago
What gave it away? The fact that there’s a department called Human Resources? The only way to not feel like a cog in a wheel is to be your own boss.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  > a department called Human Resources And in that phrase, "Human" is the adjective...

BigTex420 8y ago

Out of the 6 coworkers I’m close with, I’ve seen every single one of them cry for work related reasons at least once over the past year. Peak is hell.

stone-monkey 8y ago
I can only think of one former coworker who cried from stress during work. Strangely enough, she's one of only two devs I know still on that team out of the original ten members when I joined. (I'm not the other dev)
akerro 8y ago
Either your friends are emotionally unstable or should report abuse and leave the company. Seriously, why be so unhappy with your workplace? Do they work in North Korea?
- rurban 8y ago
  Happens in South Korea and Japan also.
  - pc86 8y ago
    I don't think I could make up a better example of missing the point if I tried.
alimbada 8y ago
Then why are they (and you after witnessing this) still there?
not_real_acct 8y ago
I'm a software consultant so I've had the opportunity to work at nearly a hundred different offices. I've seen employees driven to tears at two companies, and both of them were wretched to work for. It became my barometer of whether the company was a good place to work for. I really like working for companies in finance. They're generally laid back and the pay is decent, not great.

kevan 8y ago

I joined in mid-2016, My team is in a pretty good spot now.

cm2012 8y ago

The talk here about sticking at a job that makes you cry, when you have in demand skills and can work anywhere, is nuts to me.

Cofike 8y ago
Yeah it's insane. I can't tell if the people who say it isn't bad just have good teams or are lying. The fact that there is a chance of crying at work based on your manager is absurd and washes away any good of working at that company.
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  I can easily believe it. The overall structure may be designed to be ruthless to employees, but teams and orgs have a ton of leeway to form their own culture. They purposely break up teams that get too big in order to keep with the idea of "two pizza teams", that is, a team small enough that two pizzas would be enough to feed everyone. The team and managers set the tone of culture at this level. At the next level up, the smaller teams coalesce into the upper org headed by a vp or whatever. The upper management here and the team managers sets the culture for cross team interactions. It can therefore be possible to be on a good team if your managers are proactive and shield their team, but managers also have a ton on their plate and are beholden to the same power structures that are attempting to grind them into dust. There was one manager that was beloved by all in the org because he took care of his direct reports - he saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to a greenfield project in a different org. A bunch of senior engineers followed along shortly after.
  - paxunix 8y ago
    It is often said that people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. I've seen it be true much more often than not.
Insanity 8y ago
I'm guessing brand popularity had something to do with it. Along with perceived 'prestige' of working at that company. But yeah it does sound a bit crazy to me as well. Perhaps some of their employees are there on work visa and don't want to risk them and their family having to relocate to another country again. But I don't think that's the case for all the people whom complain.

ssalazars 8y ago

1. It depends on the company (Amazon vs AWS) and it varies from org to org, and team to team. Just like in every place there's going to be great and crapy people. In 3 years at Amazon I had the opportunity to work next to great people, but also with people at the complete opposite side. 2. In my case, it did not. I decided my happiness/wellness and health (physical and mental) were more important.

mter 8y ago

I work under 40 hours a week with no pressure to work more, I get along with my coworkers and look forward to going to work in the morning. I have worked a crunch time that was pretty terrible, but that was a once off. It's been almost 2 years since my last crunch time. The comp is decent. It doesn't match google/fb but it's better than a non tech company. I have a target of ~170 total comp as an SDE II with just under 4 years of experience out of college. This is my last year of my initial stock grant so my take home is quite a bit over 170. I've never seen anyone cry at work. Closest was a guy that got pip'd, but he was genuinely struggling. I can/could see glimmers of truth in the NYT article but I've never seen it that bad. That said, I am aware that tech (SDEs in particular) tend to be treated a bit better than everyone else.

stochastic_monk 8y ago
What does “pip’d” mean?
- Cofike 8y ago
  Performance improvement plan. Basically a chance to get your act together before they fire you.
  - jamiethompson 8y ago
    Some would argue it's more of a "start looking for a new job, we're about to fire you" warning.
    - smueller1234 8y ago
      I don't know whether you're making this statement about Amazon, in which case I have no insight and you can stop reading now, or whether that's intended as a more general statement. If it's the latter, I'd like to challenge the assertion that a PIP is necessarily the company trying to get rid of someone. In my experience as a manager, I've always made sure that PIPs are as honestly designed to get people back on track as could be. In, say, the last five years as a manager, and in my organisation of a couple hundred engineers, there were exactly two cases (and the key point is that I recall both specifically) where a PIP was primarily motivated to document the already extremely obvious (to anyone far and wide) underperformance and attitude problem. And even then, the managers in question had the professionalism to design the PIP to be eminently achievable. Generally speaking, I find the likelihood of a PIP to be adversarial and/or a tool to be able to fire somebody to be much more strongly connected to whether there has been an adversarial relationship between the employee and their manager. For that reason, I found that it paid off hugely to make sure people move to different teams & managers and get a reset there before taking any drastic action. In the same way as people are said to leave due to their managers, not jobs, it's key to take that personal component out of a bad situation.

anonazon123 8y ago

No change since the NYT article. Amazon only changes things when it has to, and only in a lip-service kind of way. There was a flurry of discussion and proposals when the article was published, but it's all died down and we're back to where we were beforehand. Compensation, culture, and perks are infinitely better at Google, Facebook, Lyft, Uber, etc. All of them start vesting your stock monthly after 1 year, whereas Amazon has a ridiculous vesting schedule (5% after year 1, 15% after year 2, 20% every 6 months thereafter). Not to mention the awful 401k matching, no free food/drinks, terrible drab offices, etc. All in the name of "frugality." Leadership claims that our competitors waste their money on these things, despite all of them being insanely profitable with higher employee happiness and retention. I'm working on moving to one of the above competitors now. I recommend avoiding Amazon, even if the role you've been offered sounds cool.

tinderliker 8y ago
Thanks, this made things clear. I was seriously considering joining until the responses in this thread. Its better to wait for another offer for few more months rather than suffering for the next 2-3 years.
- ImSkeptical 8y ago
  I think it really depends on the team you're on at Amazon. (well, the vesting, free drinks etc doesn't). I never found the NYT article to be even slightly representative of my time at Amazon, and the group I was in at the time made additional changes to help improve morale that really worked. I believe you can find a good, or bad, team to work on at Amazon, and I assume the same is true of other big companies too (I have worked at another big company and it was true there too).
  - pc86 8y ago
    If anyone here honestly believes free food and office decor stack up as benefits right alongside retirement benefits and vesting schedules, please take a step back and evaluate your life. I'd rather live on a software developer's salary with no 401k access and a 6 year vesting cliff than live on 2/3rd the salary with immediate vesting and a generous 401k match.

codeonfire 8y ago

Thanks to linked in, I saw who was on a 1st level connection with the ex-director there who was arrested for running ads for prostitutes in Bellevue. Those 1st level contacts are still there and in higher positions now. Being 1st level on linkedin doesn't mean they are the same character or were part of the crime, but they are all in management positions. I emailed some women that still worked there and told them they should leave.

codeonfire 8y ago
To answer your question, I hope it has changed. I was uneasy there with how managers would chat up the young women employees in their offices (with the sliding roller doors) for hours. In a few instances I felt uneasy with the way some people were obviously drooling in close proximity to women, staring, etc. That's what you get when there is tons of alcohol in the office. If the place has not changed I would recommend a no outside alcohol policy and training to prevent sexual assault.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  " I was uneasy there with how managers would chat up the young women employees in their offices (with the sliding roller doors) for hours" Maybe they were, you know, working together.
  - codeonfire 8y ago
    Yeah, I considered that, managers there are always trying to hire women they want to fuck and have heard anecdotes of interns who think using sex will get them a full time position. This was not that case.
jonhendry18 8y ago
That's a really bizarre way of thinking. 1st level connection doesn't mean personally close. Are you willing to be held responsible for the misdeeds your own 1st level connections might get up to?

mproust 8y ago

I was at Amazon for 8 years, left in January of this year. VP I worked for routinely belittled very senior engineers, made some of them cry/move teams/quit. The VP was never disciplined or had his scope reduced. Had projects cancelled on a whim without an actual replacement/reason. At Amazon, I wasn't a person, but some resource. Some orgs were fine, most are not. A manager from a "no jerk policy" org told me there is a culture of cruelty in Amazon management, and if he played the game he would have been at a higher level. ymmv.

deleted 8y ago
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sadamznintern 8y ago

I interned at Amazon last year in the Alexa org (non-frontline team in ML). My team was rarely in the office before 10:30 or after 6, even during crunch time (we launched our feature during my internship) but i did see code review responses at odd hours sometimes. I enjoyed the project a bunch, and while my coworkers werent the most social bunch they were pretty smart and effective. I did pretty well and exceeded managers expectations for my project to get a return offer. I shopped around a bunch after and interviewed at all the companies I could but got rejected by all of the top ones (FB after phone, Google after onsite, Airbnb and Cruise after coding challenge..) so I ultimately picked the return offer despite getting a 3 other offers in the fintech space because I liked the project and location at Amazon. Does that mean I’m a happy camper? Fuck no. My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more like $180k-$230k by comparison. Perks are also nonexistent. The worst part, though, is knowing that i have become stuck in a company with a significantly lower hiring bar. Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time and i will never be able to get into a more prestigious company. The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before.

kajecounterhack 8y ago
> The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before. This isn't a very healthy outlook. By that I mean using prestige and income level as your optimization function isn't a great way to achieve [fulfillment / joy / making life worth living]. I'm not trying to preach a specific optimization function but I hope you'll talk to people you trust to get some objectivity about what is [healthy / unhealthy] for being a fulfilled, long term contributor to society.
- sadamznintern 8y ago
  Im of the opinion thats the only optimization function worth using. I dont know of any others in the state Im in - I just graduated from a mediocre state school and cant pass interview loops, but everyone that has attempted to convince me otherwise hasnt, from what i can tell, experienced my long string of getting barely anything for my 10+ years of dilligence and work. Unlike my friends im not a crypto millionaire, an FB employee, etc.

sadamznintern 8y ago

I couldnt get into any of the companies you mentioned and picked Amazon as a last resort. What should I do now? Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.

CalRobert 8y ago
Quit today. https://xkcd.com/1768/ https://xkcd.com/1768/ You'll be OK.
tinderliker 8y ago
Same here. Looks like AMZN these days is way easier to get into compared to Google and Microsoft. I couldn't even clear the first rounds at others, but got an offer from Amazon.
- leohutson 8y ago
  The person you replied to is considering suicide, and your only response is to ignore that and agree with the rationale that led them there?
  - tinderliker 8y ago
    I think he is trolling people with the suicide talk.
    - Eldandan 8y ago
      Sounded like a dark, tongue-in-cheek response to the "never work for amazon" advice. Like, his only other option is death according to HN commenters, since the only place he got an offer from was amazon. Or so I hope...
      - leohutson 8y ago
        I didn't interpret that way at all, read their other comments. Even if they are just trolling they clearly aren't healthy right now, because that's a pretty fucked joke. I know people here as a rule aren't very empathetic, but the responses to this person are particularly cold.

alagu 8y ago

Can someone share the mentioned NYT Article mentioned?

et-al 8y ago
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-... (And an ad-infested blurb on Bezos's follow-up: http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-report-amazon-working-conditions-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-repor...)
rambojazz 8y ago
I think it's this one: 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-...
akerro 8y ago
More stories here https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home

deleted 8y ago

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deleted 8y ago

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wizardofmysore 8y ago

In my team and all the orgs under my manager's manager is pretty chill. We are a team out of India. In India the comp is really high compared to other Indian companies. The vesting cycle is same as US though. I have heard about the bad culture in US. I have never seen anyone cry or even stressed. We don't have many crunch days.

tinderliker 8y ago
TBH Amazon Indian org is known (from the Seattle folks I spoke to) for being sub-par filled with employees from service companies, so no surprises there.
- wizardofmysore 8y ago
  On the contrary I think the frugality strategy has lead to hiring the top talent in India and not in the US. Therefore the pay here is higher compared to the bigger companies (not MNCs but product as well), I am from an Indian unicorn startup and the pay was very competitive. The US opinion of any Indians IT worker seems to be the same, that is that we are service oriented workers who don't code, therefore I'd take it with a grain of salt on what they say. But yeah, the talent here is good since hiring talent is cheaper here compared to US. If you have to pay 170k$ to hire the best in US then in India you'll be able to hire the best at 50 LPA which is about 70k$. I have been part of many interview panels and they haven't been any easy interviews as such.
  - vthallam 8y ago
    I'm curious as how are the salaries in top start ups in India compared to the likes of Amazon/Google? Like for a mid-senior engineer. Appreciate any numbers you know off.
- thatoneguytoo 8y ago
  ^this. Part of my team at AMZN is in Bangalore, and they really are way below average compared to US. Usually its taken as low cost centre to send less lucrative work there, like operational stuff...

dewiz 8y ago

Check this out https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really-that-bad-to-work-for-OApSnQ7V https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really-that... and more topics on the same site

exBarrelSpoiler 8y ago

Anyone who's worked at both Amazon and Apple want to compare the two?

pontianak 8y ago

I joined fresh out of college about a year back, no one respects your gender identity and everyone almost always purposefully refuses to use the correct pronouns

leoharsha2 8y ago

I interned at Amazon a 11 months ago at Hyderabad, India. I used to go to the office at 1PM and return home at 2AM. So much work pressure. They literally treated as a robots. Yes, we did work as a robot because they lure us by offering PPO( Pre- placement offer). They used to give us a weekly task which was never supposed to complete if you work even for 60 hours/week. Thus our whole weekend was ruined in completing this task. I have got a mentor who himself can't able to complete the given task so he gives his some of his work to interns. Amazon is a great place to learn but not for the work.

uji 8y ago

Worked in an AWS team, and the biggest issue was constant fire-fighting and oncall/operational load. Code quality is really bad across all teams in AWS due to constant prioritization of features over stability. We use to get 20 pages a day, and it was very common to get 2-3 pages in the middle of night. It was horrible and yet management didn't pay much attention on fixing it. At the end devs starting leaving the team one by one. Recently I heard that the team hired twice the number of devs to reduce frequency of oncall rotation.

jononor 8y ago
Include managers in overnight pager duty and I bet it would quickly become a priority.
mabbo 8y ago
Fulfillment was like that 5 years ago. Just widely reputed to be the worst place. New upper management came in and started rating the L6/L7 management on their highsev counts. Things got a lot better very quickly.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  What's highsev?
  - mabbo 8y ago
    Every software team is their own operational team as well. A highsev is a high severity ticket/incident, leading to someone being paged in for immediate assistance.

amzn12124 8y ago

We lost "anytime feedback" and end of year reviews changed dramatically. This is a horrible loss. Previously, the anytime feedback tool had you, at any time, give anyone else in the company feedback (positive and negative) in the form of "Situation, Behavior, Impact". What happened, how did the person react, how did it impact me. It went to the person's manager and into a record somewhere. At the end of every year, you were asked to give additional anytime feedback to you entire team and anyone who asked for it. Managers read through all that feedback, summarized and gave you a full year end review that was the source of a lot of my personal growth. The NYT referred to this as "ratting out your coworkers", so now that's gone. Instead, there's a short, stupid and less-than-anonymous version that takes about 5 minutes and is done just once per year. Your manager doesn't read any of that feedback before they give you your year end review and pay changes, but they do give you a verbatim copy of what was said- you can figure out who said what pretty easily. The problem was that 1% of the managers were sociopaths who abused their power. The response was to increase their power. But I'm still here, for some reason. Edit: no, let's be fair here. I'm still here because I like what I do. I like the problem space, and I like the people I work with.

alehul 8y ago

Could anyone here comment on Amazon Robotics? What would I expect as a SWE working there? Is it different (better/worse) than Amazon as a whole?

apexkid 8y ago

Nothing has changed. I have worked in Amazon for many years now in India. Jeff himself doesn't seem interested in taking work culture seriously. I have never seen any interviews of him after NYC article where he accepted that something was going wrong and needs to be fixed. Instead he turned the whole debate into work-life harmony rhetoric. In India, the situation is far worse than US. There is less transparency and more opportunities by senior leadership to rule with an iron fist without any accountability. Concerns are suppressed instantly. One might have been an excellent employee for couple of years but for some reason if you are not on top of your game for even a quarter, you will start hearing complains from everyone and the situation can go upto PIP (Performance Improvement). The culture completely lacks the emotion of "Let me help you". It is heavily influenced by politics and survival of the fittest which might be fine for a small period but takes a toll on you in long term. Probably this explains why attrition is so high in Amazon.

paxunix 8y ago
Working for Amazon in India is almost like working for an entirely different company and is not a great comparison to working for Amazon in the US. Cultural norms in the US apply in the US; cultural norms in India apply in India. I've generally found Indian managers and developers to approach the work entirely differently than their US counterparts. Not a negative--just an observation. There does seem to be a pervasive undercurrent of "if I do good work on my team here in India, I can get out of here and go to the US as soon as my promo goes through". This sentiment naturally comes out in behaviour on teams and around coworkers.

jkingsbery 8y ago

I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office. Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like the projects I work on. I like my coworkers. I'm happy with my compensation. In terms of perks, there aren't free lunches every day, but most orgs that I know of have some budget for a snack shelf. There are also other perks though - there are are opportunities to learn from other software engineers in the form of tech talks, internal conferences and the like. There are also opportunities to learn about the business side as an engineer. I've generally found other people at Amazon very willing to help. I've had people outside of my team review designs and give feedback (and I've done likewise for other teams). I'm currently working on a project that's required me to reach out to a bunch of different teams to get input on how to approach a problem, and all of them have either accepted a meeting invite or responded to my email with the info I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time (a couple days). Amazon has 14 Leadership Principles, and I've found that people mostly take them to heart. For example, it doesn't mean that you can use "Insisting on the Highest Standards" as a blank check to refactor your code to the point that it's immaculate, but it does mean that most of the product people I work with get that tech debt is a real thing and slows down product development at some point, and they will budget time to address tech debt when given suggestions by engineers. Most of the people who have left our team in the past 12 months have left to go work on other teams. Some of them left to work for a different org, some because they wanted to work in a different office. Amazon's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and most of the things that are frequently raised as issues on HackerNews are, in my experience and the experience of everyone I've talked to at Amazon, generally not issues.

therico 8y ago
The only thing that sounds out in your message is "crunch time". You didn't go into detail but regular crunch time is unacceptable imo.
actf 8y ago
> Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry I would like to point out that this is just objectively wrong. There are many employers in our industry that do not impose crunch time, and who view crunch time as indicative of poor engineering practices. Maybe your statement came out wrong, but I was surprised enough when reading it that I felt compelled to let others know that this is not reality. There are lots of good employers that practice sustainable development practices in our industry. Reading this thread, I'm having a very hard time understanding why anyone would want to work at Amazon (other then the somewhat high salary). Judging by responses to many of the parent comments, I'd say that others seem surprised as well. I hope this surprise reflects the abnormality of the practices described in this thread because they are not as common in the industry as you suggest.

throwaway243424 8y ago

Joined Amazon Dublin in the Summer of last year as SDE2 (that's the category where most engineers will fall into), so way after the NYT article. Pay is very good for Europe - AFAIK one of the best for the position and above G/F/MS in Dublin (according to Glassdoor), though I think that at the end of the day you might take more home if you're working for G/F and living in London/Switzerland (due to lower taxes). As for the work environment, like in all big companies, it really depends in which team and project you land. My team and adjacent teams are full of respectful people and work is pretty good. We're building some "large scale" systems, and technology wise it's pretty cool. But I've heard stories from people in other teams where they were relegated to doing oncall and fixing bugs. I also know 1 person that didn't make it through the probation period (he was in one of those oncall teams). The company is big and has a lot of different projects, so YM(will definitely)V. I've had to interact with a lot of different people across the company and my impression is overall positive. In terms of work load, it's not light. At the same time, right now, it's not that high, but that will probably change once we're closer to the deadlines. I enjoy it, it keeps me active and not bored at work. I know people who do 8-17 (1 lunch hour) EVERY DAY. Pretty much everyone around me works 8-9 hours. The teams around me are also very flexible with remote work (a lot of us work remotely 1-2 days a week). In term of the actual work, me and my team have had to design systems, write documents (the 6 pagers, design reviews, etc), and we're implementing them. A lot of technical freedom. I also hear manager refer to people as resources and I dislike it - not sure why/where that terminology comes from, but I think it's something common inside and outside the company. Yes, perks are pretty much non-existent. No snacks, no free lunch/dinner, no gym, just water, fruit, and coffee. Heck, not even free tshirts and the employee discount is ridiculous. But if that's what you're looking for in a company, then I'm sorry, you won't find it here. Yes, you'll also get stack ranked at the beginning of the year, and getting promoted to SDE3 is not easy. One interesting thing, at least around me, the vast majority of people seems to be 30+ old. From the teams around me, I think no one (apart from me) reads HN. People come from all around Europe (and some from Asia).

tmaly 8y ago

I am curious outside of the other companies of FANG, does Amazon represent median representation of workplace culture or are they an outlier? I have not worked at Amazon, but I have seen worse types of workplace culture in some cases over my career.

user68858788 8y ago

Twelve managers in three years. Quality of life changes dramatically depending on who you get. Left after being put on a PIP - stack ranking in action. Not worth trying to fight it with that particular manager.

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thelastidiot 8y ago

Ex-Amazonian here (for real). Put up with almost 4 years of what I would now consider some serious sweatshop practices from my managers (had a few in that time lapse), for not much at the end but it felt good to leave the place. After that, I took two months off to recover from stress and work exhaustion. Work only, no life. Crunch mode was a daily pill. The mission sounded cool and staying that long because it felt that we were helping each other in a prison camp with my team. Frugality is a joke, because top execs will get rewarded. I would never consider this company again and never will recommend anyone to work there.

gregdunn 8y ago

I've been with Amazon for coming up on 5 years. I love it here, and have for the entirety of the time I've been here. There are some minor changes I would make if I could wave a magic wand, but I can't imagine any workplace is perfect, and when I say minor, I really mean it. I don't really have a lot to say about things as they relate to the New York Times article, because the workplace described in said article was never even remotely close to the experiences I've had. I work on a fantastic team, and I work with some amazing teams. Some of the smartest people I've ever met. I don't see myself leaving the company any time soon.

amazon62835 8y ago

A friend of mine got kicked out days before vesting a chunk of shares because he had an offer from another company and asked to match it.