3 ms·

Out of curiosity, I just did a few searches along the lines of "is MSFT/FB/GOOG bad place to work" and for each of them there were several results/websites abou

Out of curiosity, I just did a few searches along the lines of "is MSFT/FB/GOOG bad place to work" and for each of them there were several results/websites about how each of these companies is the worst place to work. If you look at the largest publicly available data set, Glassdoor, AWS does quite well - better than Microsoft and as well as Google. I have not worked for Amazon outside of AWS, so I can't really comment on that. However, as Amazon has more than 1,000,000 employees (400,000 of which were hired in 2020), I'd argue that you get more negative stories simply because of the larger population? Comparing Amazon to MSFT (163,000), FB (50,000) or GOOG (135,000) without taking its ginormous scale into account seems to be comparing apples to oranges. In terms of scale and typology, it would probably be better to compare AWS to these companies and I believe that the publicly available data paints a different picture than what you describe. I'm not trying to argue with you here, I've just had a quite few discussions in recent times with people who had very strong negative opinions about MSFT being a place for the lazy, Google being a place for the special snowflakes, Facebook being a place for the cultish, AWS being a place for those looking for a stepping stone in their career, etc....and I think that all of these companies actually are great places to work but there will always be a few percent who absolutely hated their time there.

jorblumesea 6y ago
Nothing like this exists for any other company in tech: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ Just filled with stories of people that felt extremely wronged. Are there stories of people that with terrible experiences at other companies? Of course. Are there people that have had good experiences at Amazon? Absolutely. Does anything like the above exist for any other company? Not that I can find. That's crazy and really speaks to the difference. If you believe that Amazon is "just another tech company" in how they treat their employees, I'd probably say you're turning a bit of a blind eye.
- JulianRaphael 6y ago
  Most of these stories are about Amazon and again, at the scale that Amazon operates I think that this would be expected? With 1,000,000 employees, if you assume a yearly turnover of just 1% that's 10,000 people leaving the company and I'm sure there are quite a few people in that group who had a bad experience - particularly as this includes the retail operation, which definitely had a bad reputation (most stories on the website that you linked are about retail teams). Post the NYT story in 2015 a LOT of things changed in retail, but I'm sure there are still issues. Not trying to be pedantic here, but this thread was about AWS and not Amazon, so I will just reiterate that I can't personally comment on Amazon as a whole, I can only comment on AWS and I think most people would agree that AWS can be put into the same category as FB, MSFT, GOOG, etc. I have highlighted this distinction several times, but you seem to not want to engage in a conversation about AWS and rather discuss Amazon as a whole. That's fine, but as AWS and Amazon are really two different companies, you are then comparing apples to oranges and in that case you should compare Amazon to e.g. WalMart?
  - AlphaSite 6y ago
    I don’t know if mentioning 1 million employees matters much without considering purely software engineering positions.
- tidepod12 6y ago
  I can't figure out why you're putting so much stock into that site. It's a random Google Sites page that looks like it took about an hour to set up. In the past 1.5 months, it's gotten a total of 5 submissions. 5 submissions from a company of over a million employees. And of those 5 submissions, 2-3 are from people who do not even work at the company. One of the submissions literally starts with "I've never worked at the company", and one of the others is a NIMBY upset that Amazon is building a warehouse in their town. If you're telling me that in 1.5 months, a company of 1+ million people only generated two complaints from employees, then that does not at all support the point you are making that Amazon is terrible to work for. That is an astonishingly low complaint rate. >Does anything like the above exist for any other company? Not that I can find. Have you never heard of glassdoor? Blind? There are plenty of sites that have literally hundreds of times more complaints against tech companies than what is shown in the site you linked.
  - jorblumesea 6y ago
    > Have you never heard of glassdoor? Blind? Blind completely corroborates that site. If you search "Amazon pip" or just "amazon" you'll find huge numbers of posts with terrible stories. More so than other tech companies. If anything the evidence looks even stronger if you consider Glassdoor and Blind. For example, Amazon's rating is 2/5 stars, the lowest of the large tech companies by far.
    - tidepod12 6y ago
      Yea, if you search for a term that is related to people having poor experiences at Amazon, on a website that is primarily only used by people who are unhappy with their jobs, of course you're going to find posts from people having poor experiences at Amazon. Duh. If I search "microsoft sucks" on blind I get a bunch of posts about how working at Microsoft sucks. If I do a Google search for "working at Google sucks", what are all of the top results? It's a bunch of articles about how working at Google sucks. If you search for bad reviews about a company, you are going to find bad reviews about a company. That's how search works. It's confirmation bias.

jorblumesea 6y ago

Nothing like this exists for any other company in tech: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ Just filled with stories of people that felt extremely wronged. Are there stories of people that with terrible experiences at other companies? Of course. Are there people that have had good experiences at Amazon? Absolutely. Does anything like the above exist for any other company? Not that I can find. That's crazy and really speaks to the difference. If you believe that Amazon is "just another tech company" in how they treat their employees, I'd probably say you're turning a bit of a blind eye.

JulianRaphael 6y ago
Most of these stories are about Amazon and again, at the scale that Amazon operates I think that this would be expected? With 1,000,000 employees, if you assume a yearly turnover of just 1% that's 10,000 people leaving the company and I'm sure there are quite a few people in that group who had a bad experience - particularly as this includes the retail operation, which definitely had a bad reputation (most stories on the website that you linked are about retail teams). Post the NYT story in 2015 a LOT of things changed in retail, but I'm sure there are still issues. Not trying to be pedantic here, but this thread was about AWS and not Amazon, so I will just reiterate that I can't personally comment on Amazon as a whole, I can only comment on AWS and I think most people would agree that AWS can be put into the same category as FB, MSFT, GOOG, etc. I have highlighted this distinction several times, but you seem to not want to engage in a conversation about AWS and rather discuss Amazon as a whole. That's fine, but as AWS and Amazon are really two different companies, you are then comparing apples to oranges and in that case you should compare Amazon to e.g. WalMart?
- AlphaSite 6y ago
  I don’t know if mentioning 1 million employees matters much without considering purely software engineering positions.
tidepod12 6y ago
I can't figure out why you're putting so much stock into that site. It's a random Google Sites page that looks like it took about an hour to set up. In the past 1.5 months, it's gotten a total of 5 submissions. 5 submissions from a company of over a million employees. And of those 5 submissions, 2-3 are from people who do not even work at the company. One of the submissions literally starts with "I've never worked at the company", and one of the others is a NIMBY upset that Amazon is building a warehouse in their town. If you're telling me that in 1.5 months, a company of 1+ million people only generated two complaints from employees, then that does not at all support the point you are making that Amazon is terrible to work for. That is an astonishingly low complaint rate. >Does anything like the above exist for any other company? Not that I can find. Have you never heard of glassdoor? Blind? There are plenty of sites that have literally hundreds of times more complaints against tech companies than what is shown in the site you linked.
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  > Have you never heard of glassdoor? Blind? Blind completely corroborates that site. If you search "Amazon pip" or just "amazon" you'll find huge numbers of posts with terrible stories. More so than other tech companies. If anything the evidence looks even stronger if you consider Glassdoor and Blind. For example, Amazon's rating is 2/5 stars, the lowest of the large tech companies by far.
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    Yea, if you search for a term that is related to people having poor experiences at Amazon, on a website that is primarily only used by people who are unhappy with their jobs, of course you're going to find posts from people having poor experiences at Amazon. Duh. If I search "microsoft sucks" on blind I get a bunch of posts about how working at Microsoft sucks. If I do a Google search for "working at Google sucks", what are all of the top results? It's a bunch of articles about how working at Google sucks. If you search for bad reviews about a company, you are going to find bad reviews about a company. That's how search works. It's confirmation bias.