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Amazon employee here, though I do not speak for the company. At any big company, your management chain is the #1 influence on the quality of your culture. My e

Amazon employee here, though I do not speak for the company. At any big company, your management chain is the #1 influence on the quality of your culture. My experience at Amazon has been extremely positive, but then my org head is a great guy, so it's all been in line with my expectations. I've also left critical feedback through the Amazon Connect survey for my immediate manager and not suffered for it. That manager, as far as I can tell, made no effort to deanonymize the feedback, and addressed the issue fairly in a team meeting. So, YMMV, but I would certainly encourage skilled devs, artists and designers to come help us make great games. :-)

ardit33 8y ago
Former Amazon employee here, my experience was terrible. (see my other comment). While it is great you are happy and defend your company, your experience might not match others.
- madrox 8y ago
  I think that's the point the parent post is trying to make
jkingsbery 8y ago
I am also an Amazon employee (and also do not speak for the company), and I agree with this assessment. My manager has told me and my teammates on multiple occasions to take care of family stuff first, to make sure we're working sustainably (i.e., not super late all the time) and so on. I also have scored some questions low on the same survey and not suffered retribution. I don't want to claim that anyone's experience isn't valid, just that it doesn't match mine.
- kazinator 8y ago
  The thing is, your manager is from a decent background as a human, they probably aren't going to do otherwise no matter where they work!
  - supergauntlet 8y ago
    At any reasonably sized company individual managers are going to have a lot of control over their subordinates, and their underlings aren't going to have any say pretty much at all. What are they going to do, complain to HR? HR at any large company isn't in the business of keeping people employed, it's in the business of keeping the company safe. If you rock the boat, you are now the problem. It's no wonder that all of the negative comments about Amazon boil down to either "this job was absolute shit" - bad manager from the start - or "this job was amazing and then turned to shit" - either the good manager quit/was fired by their superior for not being shit/was promoted and their replacement was garbage, or they were a sociopath that slowly turned up the heat so the proverbial frogs wouldn't notice the boil until they were cooked. Remember, your boss is ultimately not your friend, certainly not in a professional setting. An individual contributor/manager relationship fundamentally must be adversarial, because one side holds all the power, and even if the manager breaks trust the worst thing that will happen is the IC's replacement will be less productive for a few months. When managers have this much power over their reports and there's no way for someone to fight back against their manager, it's no wonder that shitty managers are so common. It's a situation ripe for abuse.
    - natalyarostova 8y ago
      While my manager is of course my manager first, we are also friends. It helps that we'd be good friends naturally due to shared interests and age.
taurath 8y ago
That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon: "I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon, and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and being forced to choose between their child's health and their job I'd want to know how the company is putting a stop to it. It seems that everyone believes that the people complaining are doing so for attention, but from the outside it seems like there's been a lot of reports that are credible - and this is the white collar stuff, not even warehouse worker things. Its hard to know: Is everyone indoctrinated? Are they addicted to the paychecks? Is the sense that there are bad things happening but its being handled properly?
- whoisjuan 8y ago
  That's because Amazon doesn't work like a cohesive monolithic organization. Two teams that seat next to each other may have complete different cultures and ways of working. By design, Amazon is an aggregator of many small "startups" with different budgets, different issues, different approaches to solving problems. The connecting tissues are the leadership principles, the infrastructure, the resources, the mobility and the top-down strategic guidance on how and when to tackle different opportunites. This is also probably the reason why many Amazon acquisitions like Twitch thrive under them. They get integrated into the Amazon ecosystem and get all the efficiencies from the larger machine but they don't get consumed into a strategic vacuum. They're left to figure out all the potential synergies and paths to move forward themselves. They don't need high C-level leadership to help them figure and execute on all the internal collaboration opportunities and increased efficiency. They just do it because the system allows them to do it. All the data and mechanisms are there. Most impactful innitiatives start with a six-pager that almost anybody can write, and they exist mostly just to unlock budgets. That's basically what Amazon leaderships does: "Someone is saying that we should throw money and resources into this? Should we? Will this make the company stronger? Will this generate more synergies and opportunities?... Yes or no? ...Move on" So it's not that people don't care. It simply feels too foreign, too abstracted from your own personal reality and day to day. It's almost feels like if those claims were coming from a completey different company that happens to have the same name.
lemmsjid 8y ago
As someone who had a very positive experience at Amazon, but knew people who did not, agreed. In a way, it's better not to think of Amazon as a single company, but as hundreds of startups under an umbrella organization. You cannot generalize from a single one of those organizations. It is impossible, IMHO, for a company to have as many employees as Amazon and maintain a normalized employee experience. Really the poisonous thing that stands out for me is the Visa experience. Amazon (now) has a pretty liberal internal transfer system that I have seen work really well for a lot of people. But a truly vindictive and sufficiently interpersonally skilled manager can still pin down an employee with what happened to the OP. In such a case, a citizen can walk away and find another company that's a better fit for them. But when they're in H1B land, it is so much harder. It would be so much better for the industry if the system were much more flexible.
Pfhreak 8y ago
As someone who worked for Amazon for a long time, I agree with you -- most managers I worked for took anonymous negative feedback well, making changes at the team level. Import Caveat to your last point: If you make games for Amazon, you give up your ability to make them in your spare time. Amazon has pretty aggressive game development policies around side projects.
flavmartins 8y ago
As an org head in a tech organization experiences I try to find managers/supervisors like this and actually move them out of the organization. I know that you direct management and peers can be one of the greatest influences for good or bad for the broader team. A person like the Manager in this situation is a clearly going to create more problems for other team members in the future.
btilly 8y ago
Ex-Amazon employee here, and I definitely do not speak for the company. Amazon, more than any other company that I know of, has a ton of ex employees whose opinion either amounts to "Amazon was horrible" or "I thought Amazon was great for a long time, then it went south and in retrospect can't believe I put up with it for so long." So despite your current positive opinion, there is a good chance that you will some day be singing a very different song. I am personally glad I worked there, because it was a fascinating experience. But I wouldn't want to work there again, nor would I recommend it to a friend.
firstplacelast 8y ago
That’s fantastc! Seriously, it’s good that you feel great about the work you do and have a management team that allows you to breathe easy, is supportive, and helps you out put the best work possible. BUT, and I truly believe this in the depths of my soul, everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive. Everyone is contributing to the same bottom line, some people just sell out for less. Whose more evil, the hitman that won’t kill for under 1 million or the hitman that will do it for minimum wage?

ardit33 8y ago

Former Amazon employee here, my experience was terrible. (see my other comment). While it is great you are happy and defend your company, your experience might not match others.

madrox 8y ago
I think that's the point the parent post is trying to make

jkingsbery 8y ago

I am also an Amazon employee (and also do not speak for the company), and I agree with this assessment. My manager has told me and my teammates on multiple occasions to take care of family stuff first, to make sure we're working sustainably (i.e., not super late all the time) and so on. I also have scored some questions low on the same survey and not suffered retribution. I don't want to claim that anyone's experience isn't valid, just that it doesn't match mine.

kazinator 8y ago
The thing is, your manager is from a decent background as a human, they probably aren't going to do otherwise no matter where they work!
- supergauntlet 8y ago
  At any reasonably sized company individual managers are going to have a lot of control over their subordinates, and their underlings aren't going to have any say pretty much at all. What are they going to do, complain to HR? HR at any large company isn't in the business of keeping people employed, it's in the business of keeping the company safe. If you rock the boat, you are now the problem. It's no wonder that all of the negative comments about Amazon boil down to either "this job was absolute shit" - bad manager from the start - or "this job was amazing and then turned to shit" - either the good manager quit/was fired by their superior for not being shit/was promoted and their replacement was garbage, or they were a sociopath that slowly turned up the heat so the proverbial frogs wouldn't notice the boil until they were cooked. Remember, your boss is ultimately not your friend, certainly not in a professional setting. An individual contributor/manager relationship fundamentally must be adversarial, because one side holds all the power, and even if the manager breaks trust the worst thing that will happen is the IC's replacement will be less productive for a few months. When managers have this much power over their reports and there's no way for someone to fight back against their manager, it's no wonder that shitty managers are so common. It's a situation ripe for abuse.
  - natalyarostova 8y ago
    While my manager is of course my manager first, we are also friends. It helps that we'd be good friends naturally due to shared interests and age.

taurath 8y ago

That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon: "I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon, and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and being forced to choose between their child's health and their job I'd want to know how the company is putting a stop to it. It seems that everyone believes that the people complaining are doing so for attention, but from the outside it seems like there's been a lot of reports that are credible - and this is the white collar stuff, not even warehouse worker things. Its hard to know: Is everyone indoctrinated? Are they addicted to the paychecks? Is the sense that there are bad things happening but its being handled properly?

whoisjuan 8y ago
That's because Amazon doesn't work like a cohesive monolithic organization. Two teams that seat next to each other may have complete different cultures and ways of working. By design, Amazon is an aggregator of many small "startups" with different budgets, different issues, different approaches to solving problems. The connecting tissues are the leadership principles, the infrastructure, the resources, the mobility and the top-down strategic guidance on how and when to tackle different opportunites. This is also probably the reason why many Amazon acquisitions like Twitch thrive under them. They get integrated into the Amazon ecosystem and get all the efficiencies from the larger machine but they don't get consumed into a strategic vacuum. They're left to figure out all the potential synergies and paths to move forward themselves. They don't need high C-level leadership to help them figure and execute on all the internal collaboration opportunities and increased efficiency. They just do it because the system allows them to do it. All the data and mechanisms are there. Most impactful innitiatives start with a six-pager that almost anybody can write, and they exist mostly just to unlock budgets. That's basically what Amazon leaderships does: "Someone is saying that we should throw money and resources into this? Should we? Will this make the company stronger? Will this generate more synergies and opportunities?... Yes or no? ...Move on" So it's not that people don't care. It simply feels too foreign, too abstracted from your own personal reality and day to day. It's almost feels like if those claims were coming from a completey different company that happens to have the same name.

lemmsjid 8y ago

As someone who had a very positive experience at Amazon, but knew people who did not, agreed. In a way, it's better not to think of Amazon as a single company, but as hundreds of startups under an umbrella organization. You cannot generalize from a single one of those organizations. It is impossible, IMHO, for a company to have as many employees as Amazon and maintain a normalized employee experience. Really the poisonous thing that stands out for me is the Visa experience. Amazon (now) has a pretty liberal internal transfer system that I have seen work really well for a lot of people. But a truly vindictive and sufficiently interpersonally skilled manager can still pin down an employee with what happened to the OP. In such a case, a citizen can walk away and find another company that's a better fit for them. But when they're in H1B land, it is so much harder. It would be so much better for the industry if the system were much more flexible.

Pfhreak 8y ago

As someone who worked for Amazon for a long time, I agree with you -- most managers I worked for took anonymous negative feedback well, making changes at the team level. Import Caveat to your last point: If you make games for Amazon, you give up your ability to make them in your spare time. Amazon has pretty aggressive game development policies around side projects.

flavmartins 8y ago

As an org head in a tech organization experiences I try to find managers/supervisors like this and actually move them out of the organization. I know that you direct management and peers can be one of the greatest influences for good or bad for the broader team. A person like the Manager in this situation is a clearly going to create more problems for other team members in the future.

btilly 8y ago

Ex-Amazon employee here, and I definitely do not speak for the company. Amazon, more than any other company that I know of, has a ton of ex employees whose opinion either amounts to "Amazon was horrible" or "I thought Amazon was great for a long time, then it went south and in retrospect can't believe I put up with it for so long." So despite your current positive opinion, there is a good chance that you will some day be singing a very different song. I am personally glad I worked there, because it was a fascinating experience. But I wouldn't want to work there again, nor would I recommend it to a friend.

firstplacelast 8y ago

That’s fantastc! Seriously, it’s good that you feel great about the work you do and have a management team that allows you to breathe easy, is supportive, and helps you out put the best work possible. BUT, and I truly believe this in the depths of my soul, everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive. Everyone is contributing to the same bottom line, some people just sell out for less. Whose more evil, the hitman that won’t kill for under 1 million or the hitman that will do it for minimum wage?