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It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the ar
by Twirrim 7y ago
It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as long as it wasn't on competing technology.
The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)
- onion2k 7y ago(Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!) https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's based on CryEngine.
- solarkraft 7y agoSure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making their own games? If anything it seems like the engines could benefit from it.
- abj 7y agoNot defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
- mabbo 7y agoI'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but we'll sue you later if we disagree with your interpretation".
- vkou 7y agoThat's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.
- nefitty 7y agoI heard this from a Tim Ferriss guest, forgot who, but he said contractual agreements are really for when there are disagreements. I thought that was a novel way to think about them.
- vkou 7y agoThe problem is that you have no idea whether or not Amazon will find something in your behaviour to disagree with. And if they do, you have no idea whether it will be a reasonable disagreement.
- sbarre 7y agoYeah that's true, but it's also important to have a solid mutual understanding of your arrangement up front, when all parties can be objective and (hopefully) fair-minded, as opposed to when there is an actual problem and everything is subjective and everyone is self-interested. An old boss used to say "good friends make for good paperwork".
- Twirrim 7y agoAmazon seems to start taking legal action every year or so over non-competes, makes a splash in the tech press, and then comes to an agreement. I'm at least half convinced it's just to ensure the non-compete can't be argued to be null and void via failure to enforce. IIRC the non-compete is pretty wide ranging from Amazon. Makes it almost impossible to get another tech job, depending on how you interpret certain phrases. Fun stuff.
- greglindahl 7y agoHave you considered moving to California? The economic benefit of states experimenting with laws is that you can choose what makes sense for you, instead of just accepting what's on offer in Seattle.
- Rafuino 7y agoAmazon for sure has a game studio: https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ They bought Twitch, they control a massive physical and digital distribution platform, and it's just a matter of time before they launch games that are exclusive to Prime/Twitch members. They literally control the whole pipeline. Yet another reason to break them up.