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What is really problematic is that from a management perspective they're doing really great: company is growing and extremely valueable, stock price is doing gr

by ako 5y ago

What is really problematic is that from a management perspective they're doing really great: company is growing and extremely valueable, stock price is doing great, revenue and profits are doing great, and bezos is the richest person in the world. Management has zero incentive to change any of problems you signal, and probably don't see them as an issue. Probably the opposite, they see this as a winning system, and who can blaim them. AWS practices are often used as examples of best practices: you build it, you run it, 2 pizza teams, api first, etc. Survivorship bias and all, the probably regard the other characterestics of the current system as best practices as well.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Management has zero incentive to change any of problems you signal, and probably don't see them as an issue. It sounds like management intentionally created these practices. This is from a recent NY Times article about Amazon warehouse workers, but it wouldn't surprise me if this attitude was applied to all workers in the company to some degree: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-wareho...: > 5. Many of Amazon’s most contentious policies go back to Jeff Bezos’ original vision. Some of the practices that most frustrate employees — the short-term-employment model, with little opportunity for advancement, and the use of technology to hire, monitor and manage workers — come from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive. > He believed that an entrenched work force created a “march to mediocrity,” said David Niekerk, a former long-serving vice president who built the company’s original human resources operations in the warehouses. > Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need,” Mr. Niekerk said. That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees. In many cases software engineers overestimate their own value to the company, often to the point were they'll ape the attitudes of owners and management (e.g. rejecting the the idea of a union out of hand). But the fact of the matter is they're cogs just like warehouse workers, and in many situations competent management will exploit the hell out of them to extract maximum value for the shareholders.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  When did humane treatment, job security, and the worker's collective voice leave the picture? Are we to simply praise everything laid out here?
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    Some time in the 1980s, when people were convinced that if they stabbed themselves in the back, they had a shot at being millionaires.
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    Honestly ? When communist stopped being a real threat sometimes in 80s. As horrific as communism was, the average worker in the west probably indirectly benefited from capitalist being scared of something similar happening closer to home, and gave concessions. After the fall of communism that trend reversed and workers are steadily loosing ground. As someone who was born in one of those communist countries I am glad that its dead, and I don't want it to ever come back, but It did serve as an example of what can happen if you try to squeeze too much out of people.
- WJW 5y ago
  It's a pretty interesting take given that Bezos himself is the most entrenched person that Amazon has.
- kazen44 5y ago
  > Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need,” If this was truly the case, humans would have evolved very differently (and it's needs would be substantially smaller. Also, what about all those people working for little gain?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    We'll it might be true from Bezos's perspective, even if it's not true generally. Basically Bezo's goal is to get people working as hard as possible to enrich him and his shareholders. I think in many cases people expend more energy than needed to get what they want or need, but it's almost never in the service of getting some asshole billionaire they've never met a little richer. The energy people get from a novel job or from trying to prove themselves to a new community is short lived. Also, as another data-point: slaveholders of all eras could not stop complaining about how lazy their slaves were. They expected the slaves to give their all, even though practically nothing was in it for them.
ipaddr 5y ago
They are doing a great job from a management perspective but it is not good place on average for a developer. Both can be true. Management only needs to change if all developers go else where.
taway_zonian257 5y ago
> Management has zero incentive to change any of problems you signal, and probably don't see them as an issue. SDE1 here, I might be completely wrong but I'm inclined to believe that upper management is kept practically blind about the real struggles and issues experienced on lower-levels, and this scenario is abused by managers to scapegoat their way out of problems they have to deal with, specially the ones they created. I'm not going to provide examples as they could be easily traced back, but I can say that I've witnessed a L7 overpromissing on a project in spite of callouts from lower levels, and once postponing the delivery of some milestones started to become inevitable then I've started hearing said manager frequently mention "firing offenses" on dailies.
- mter 5y ago
  You're completely wrong. Upper management is where the policies come from. They don't push back on URA targets because they either don't care or don't have the backbone to. If your L7 is doing that, look to change teams. Incompetent people can't be fixed.
singlewind 5y ago
Exactly, big company works for Wall street not for their founder, employees and small investors.

by ako 5y ago

tablespoon 5y ago

> Management has zero incentive to change any of problems you signal, and probably don't see them as an issue. It sounds like management intentionally created these practices. This is from a recent NY Times article about Amazon warehouse workers, but it wouldn't surprise me if this attitude was applied to all workers in the company to some degree: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-wareho...: > 5. Many of Amazon’s most contentious policies go back to Jeff Bezos’ original vision. Some of the practices that most frustrate employees — the short-term-employment model, with little opportunity for advancement, and the use of technology to hire, monitor and manage workers — come from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive. > He believed that an entrenched work force created a “march to mediocrity,” said David Niekerk, a former long-serving vice president who built the company’s original human resources operations in the warehouses. > Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need,” Mr. Niekerk said. That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees. In many cases software engineers overestimate their own value to the company, often to the point were they'll ape the attitudes of owners and management (e.g. rejecting the the idea of a union out of hand). But the fact of the matter is they're cogs just like warehouse workers, and in many situations competent management will exploit the hell out of them to extract maximum value for the shareholders.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
When did humane treatment, job security, and the worker's collective voice leave the picture? Are we to simply praise everything laid out here?
- rodgerd 5y ago
  Some time in the 1980s, when people were convinced that if they stabbed themselves in the back, they had a shot at being millionaires.
- unionpivo 5y ago
  Honestly ? When communist stopped being a real threat sometimes in 80s. As horrific as communism was, the average worker in the west probably indirectly benefited from capitalist being scared of something similar happening closer to home, and gave concessions. After the fall of communism that trend reversed and workers are steadily loosing ground. As someone who was born in one of those communist countries I am glad that its dead, and I don't want it to ever come back, but It did serve as an example of what can happen if you try to squeeze too much out of people.
WJW 5y ago
It's a pretty interesting take given that Bezos himself is the most entrenched person that Amazon has.
kazen44 5y ago
> Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need,” If this was truly the case, humans would have evolved very differently (and it's needs would be substantially smaller. Also, what about all those people working for little gain?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  We'll it might be true from Bezos's perspective, even if it's not true generally. Basically Bezo's goal is to get people working as hard as possible to enrich him and his shareholders. I think in many cases people expend more energy than needed to get what they want or need, but it's almost never in the service of getting some asshole billionaire they've never met a little richer. The energy people get from a novel job or from trying to prove themselves to a new community is short lived. Also, as another data-point: slaveholders of all eras could not stop complaining about how lazy their slaves were. They expected the slaves to give their all, even though practically nothing was in it for them.

ipaddr 5y ago

They are doing a great job from a management perspective but it is not good place on average for a developer. Both can be true. Management only needs to change if all developers go else where.

taway_zonian257 5y ago

> Management has zero incentive to change any of problems you signal, and probably don't see them as an issue. SDE1 here, I might be completely wrong but I'm inclined to believe that upper management is kept practically blind about the real struggles and issues experienced on lower-levels, and this scenario is abused by managers to scapegoat their way out of problems they have to deal with, specially the ones they created. I'm not going to provide examples as they could be easily traced back, but I can say that I've witnessed a L7 overpromissing on a project in spite of callouts from lower levels, and once postponing the delivery of some milestones started to become inevitable then I've started hearing said manager frequently mention "firing offenses" on dailies.

mter 5y ago
You're completely wrong. Upper management is where the policies come from. They don't push back on URA targets because they either don't care or don't have the backbone to. If your L7 is doing that, look to change teams. Incompetent people can't be fixed.

singlewind 5y ago

Exactly, big company works for Wall street not for their founder, employees and small investors.