6 ms·

yeah no. as someone who has worked at Amazon for 7 years I can tell you that it’s not true across the board and there are good “pockets” where there is respect

yeah no. as someone who has worked at Amazon for 7 years I can tell you that it’s not true across the board and there are good “pockets” where there is respect for people’s boundaries. To add to this, in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here). My work day included 8 hours at most. I would get in at around 8AM and leave at 4PM. (optimizing the commute) I started as an SDE 2 by the time I left I was a Principal SDE. Do good work, be in a good org. Amazon is not a huge, homogeneous entity. It’s more like hundreds of small companies that are forced to work together, bound together by senior leadership.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I am sure it is not all of Amazon, but that is where the horror stories are coming from. So Amazon as a whole may not have this culture, but the teams with this culture seem to disproportionately be at Amazon.
- rantwasp 6y ago
  so, the bigger an org, the higher the likelihood of stories like this popping up. also, the incentives and their structure play a part in how this unfolds. It’s also very curious to me that only a certain type of person runs into situations like these: either they don’t know better or they have accepted the conditioning that work is more important than themselves. it’s sad really. i think it’s really really important to have a good mentor with a strong set of values to help you navigate the corporate landscape. i also think it’s important to pull a Ghandi (ie be the change you want to see) as often as possible. for example: one think i would inoculate in young devs is that it’s not acceptable to set meetings earlier than 9am or later than 4pm. meetings during lunch were not accepted. i would be pretty vocal about morons that worked over the weekend because they had some free time. i would also push really hard against management that had their sick little practices to extract more work out of the drones. this mostly worked because i got the job done - but again: you have a voice. you are NOT a machine
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  law of numbers; Amazon Seattle headcount alone is 50K+ people. also, amazon has a service-oriented management model to match the general SoA architecture, where small teams are given massive leeway as to how exactly they run their services. managers and your leadership are thus very make or break.
ultraluminous 6y ago
"in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here)" Why wouldn't you count it? Do those days not-count somehow?
- rantwasp 6y ago
  i don’t count it as in: i worked more than 3 weekends, but not because i had a choice )
  - sulam 6y ago
    I'm trying to interpret your words as something other than "well, yeah, my weekends were interrupted, but it wasn't my choice so it's not worth mentioning." I can't come up with another way to read it, though. So, don't you think that, in the context of having to give up nights and weekends, you should mention on-call? Your choice or not, the weekends and nights are affected, in fact isn't it kind of worse when it's not your choice?
    - rantwasp 6y ago
      i agree with you that the oncall is not ideal. it is also widespread in the industry. so what’s the point to complain about something that is an essential part of the job? (advertised or not, if you don’t want to do it you will have to look for another job) i also think there is a huge difference between being oncall and having to respond in case something breaks vs mandatory death marches all day, every day.
      - sulam 6y ago
        I guess it depends on your definition of widespread. It is relatively common, but it's also far from universal, and there are companies that use on call which have a vastly different experience that what many people at Amazon report. In fact it seems like even different teams inside of Amazon have drastically different experience of on call. Treating it like a fact of life, like the weather, leaves you in a frame of mind that makes it impossible to advocate for change. Your own phrasing "be the change you want to see in the world" could as easily apply to on call as much as it does anything else -- but you won't take that stance if you think it's inescapable.
abdabab 6y ago
> I started as an SDE 2 by the time I left I was a Principal SDE. How many promotions was that? 4? How did you manage to do that in 7 years? That doesn’t sound easy at all.
- rantwasp 6y ago
  2 promotions. SDE2 -> SDE3 -> Principal First one was in 2 years. 2nd one took 3.5 years.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I am sure it is not all of Amazon, but that is where the horror stories are coming from. So Amazon as a whole may not have this culture, but the teams with this culture seem to disproportionately be at Amazon.

rantwasp 6y ago
so, the bigger an org, the higher the likelihood of stories like this popping up. also, the incentives and their structure play a part in how this unfolds. It’s also very curious to me that only a certain type of person runs into situations like these: either they don’t know better or they have accepted the conditioning that work is more important than themselves. it’s sad really. i think it’s really really important to have a good mentor with a strong set of values to help you navigate the corporate landscape. i also think it’s important to pull a Ghandi (ie be the change you want to see) as often as possible. for example: one think i would inoculate in young devs is that it’s not acceptable to set meetings earlier than 9am or later than 4pm. meetings during lunch were not accepted. i would be pretty vocal about morons that worked over the weekend because they had some free time. i would also push really hard against management that had their sick little practices to extract more work out of the drones. this mostly worked because i got the job done - but again: you have a voice. you are NOT a machine
bobthepanda 6y ago
law of numbers; Amazon Seattle headcount alone is 50K+ people. also, amazon has a service-oriented management model to match the general SoA architecture, where small teams are given massive leeway as to how exactly they run their services. managers and your leadership are thus very make or break.

ultraluminous 6y ago

"in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here)" Why wouldn't you count it? Do those days not-count somehow?

rantwasp 6y ago
i don’t count it as in: i worked more than 3 weekends, but not because i had a choice )
- sulam 6y ago
  I'm trying to interpret your words as something other than "well, yeah, my weekends were interrupted, but it wasn't my choice so it's not worth mentioning." I can't come up with another way to read it, though. So, don't you think that, in the context of having to give up nights and weekends, you should mention on-call? Your choice or not, the weekends and nights are affected, in fact isn't it kind of worse when it's not your choice?
  - rantwasp 6y ago
    i agree with you that the oncall is not ideal. it is also widespread in the industry. so what’s the point to complain about something that is an essential part of the job? (advertised or not, if you don’t want to do it you will have to look for another job) i also think there is a huge difference between being oncall and having to respond in case something breaks vs mandatory death marches all day, every day.
    - sulam 6y ago
      I guess it depends on your definition of widespread. It is relatively common, but it's also far from universal, and there are companies that use on call which have a vastly different experience that what many people at Amazon report. In fact it seems like even different teams inside of Amazon have drastically different experience of on call. Treating it like a fact of life, like the weather, leaves you in a frame of mind that makes it impossible to advocate for change. Your own phrasing "be the change you want to see in the world" could as easily apply to on call as much as it does anything else -- but you won't take that stance if you think it's inescapable.

abdabab 6y ago

> I started as an SDE 2 by the time I left I was a Principal SDE. How many promotions was that? 4? How did you manage to do that in 7 years? That doesn’t sound easy at all.

rantwasp 6y ago
2 promotions. SDE2 -> SDE3 -> Principal First one was in 2 years. 2nd one took 3.5 years.