3 ms·

Why is it that amongst all the tech Co's, Amazon seems to have the highest proportion of horror stories? It's almost a meme at this point. I mean the forced at

Why is it that amongst all the tech Co's, Amazon seems to have the highest proportion of horror stories? It's almost a meme at this point. I mean the forced attrition and PIP culture is a known thing (x% of employees must be let go each year). Google/Apple/etc. do not have forced attrition or a known PIP culture. Bezos is on the record for having said "humans are lazy and we need to give them incentives to quit". No other Tech CEO has said that. So perhaps your story is the anomaly?

dan-robertson 5y ago
I find it easy to believe that Amazon is a shit place to work (as a SWE) and that Amazon is a massive company with different bits being different. But I also find it easy to believe that a meme could just be wrong. It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer. If everyone at Google is convinced at orientation that Google is some great company with great engineering then that can create a brand outside the company by the force of the size of their workforce. Maybe Amazon just has a different employer brand. Don’t Netflix also hire relatively many employees also? Perhaps I’m just misremembering. And wasn’t stack ranking and the like quite popular say 20 years ago? It isn’t obvious that the Google or Facebook of Apple or Amazon way is the best way to manage a business. Lots of people online have complaints about each. And I’m not even particularly put off by your Jeff Bezos quote: it doesn’t need to be a bad thing for someone to have an incentive to quit something they are not suited to as they could then go on to something they are better suited to, and it’s true that a lot of people (even well-paid with alternatives) will spend a long time going to a job they dislike because it is easier to stay with the status quo than to leap. I still feel like the hire-to-fire stories are directionally right (and so are eg stories about shipping new products being the only way to get promotions at Google leading to warped incentives)
- andreilys 5y ago
  It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer To be fair there is a website dedicated to all the things killed by Google - https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com No other tech co has a website like that, partly because it's incredibly difficult to get promoted at Google so you get a bunch of competing products that get spun up.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    You have the cause and effect backwards. Memes motivate people to make websites. Also, other large tech companies have shutdown websites as the meme has spread from Google.
amzn-throw 5y ago
Even in my charitable view of my company, Amazon is INTENSE. We set extremely ambitious goals, and orgs are only expected to meet 70-80% of them. It's an environment that indexes extremely high on autonomy and flexibility for each person and each team. It is without a doubt a sink-or-swim environment. But, by and large, the ability to swim is based on individual merit.

dan-robertson 5y ago

I find it easy to believe that Amazon is a shit place to work (as a SWE) and that Amazon is a massive company with different bits being different. But I also find it easy to believe that a meme could just be wrong. It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer. If everyone at Google is convinced at orientation that Google is some great company with great engineering then that can create a brand outside the company by the force of the size of their workforce. Maybe Amazon just has a different employer brand. Don’t Netflix also hire relatively many employees also? Perhaps I’m just misremembering. And wasn’t stack ranking and the like quite popular say 20 years ago? It isn’t obvious that the Google or Facebook of Apple or Amazon way is the best way to manage a business. Lots of people online have complaints about each. And I’m not even particularly put off by your Jeff Bezos quote: it doesn’t need to be a bad thing for someone to have an incentive to quit something they are not suited to as they could then go on to something they are better suited to, and it’s true that a lot of people (even well-paid with alternatives) will spend a long time going to a job they dislike because it is easier to stay with the status quo than to leap. I still feel like the hire-to-fire stories are directionally right (and so are eg stories about shipping new products being the only way to get promotions at Google leading to warped incentives)

andreilys 5y ago
It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer To be fair there is a website dedicated to all the things killed by Google - https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com No other tech co has a website like that, partly because it's incredibly difficult to get promoted at Google so you get a bunch of competing products that get spun up.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
- 1123581321 5y ago
  You have the cause and effect backwards. Memes motivate people to make websites. Also, other large tech companies have shutdown websites as the meme has spread from Google.

amzn-throw 5y ago

Even in my charitable view of my company, Amazon is INTENSE. We set extremely ambitious goals, and orgs are only expected to meet 70-80% of them. It's an environment that indexes extremely high on autonomy and flexibility for each person and each team. It is without a doubt a sink-or-swim environment. But, by and large, the ability to swim is based on individual merit.