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>"We launched Career Choice almost ten years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even fur

>"We launched Career Choice almost ten years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study.” They acknowledge the two key constraints but aside from one program for AWS that supposedly provides on the job training, they failed to mention how they helped on the time aspect, only money. 40 hours at Amazon from my anecdata seems highly optimistic, it's probably 50 for many. I'm highly cyninical of any of these such programs. The last thing I want is a privatized business like Amazon trying to educate and having incentives to lock people into their ecosystem at a fundamental level such as education. Education should acknowledge the downsides of Amazon as well as the upsides and I doubt you'll see much of any of the former. On a likely related note, I had 4 Amazon recruiters contact me in the past two days which is higher than normal (at least, for me) even after I've told multiple recruiters I'm not interested in working at Amazon until they have a shift in how they treat their labor culture. Frankly I'm not even a good fit for most the types of development Amazon is interested in. My, again, cynical view here from anecdata of Amazon employees is that Amazon is struggling more than most to hire in tech careers, largely because they've turned off many who have other options. Higher pay to many isn't worth higher associated stress and instability. This looks like a new flailing attempt to plug the hole or perhaps set the stage to request special exemptions or drastic increases on H1B programs to again try and drive down labor rates while also help meet their demand.

the_only_law 5y ago
> On a likely related note, I had 4 Amazon recruiters contact me in the past two days which is higher than normal (at least, for me) even after I've told multiple recruiters I'm not interested in working at Amazon until they have a shift in how they treat their labor culture. Frankly I'm not even a good fit for most the types of development Amazon is interested in. They must be desperate. They’re the closest thing to a tech company that has recruiters send me a message and the only FAANG that ever would contact me. That being said the recruiter messages always feel robotic and impersonal, even worse than the keyword dumps from guys shilling there shitty low paid c2h enterprise roles. I just ignore them. Not interested in the FAANG interview circus anyway.
gruez 5y ago
>I'm highly cyninical of any of these such programs. The last thing I want is a privatized business like Amazon trying to educate and having incentives to lock people into their ecosystem at a fundamental level such as education. Education should acknowledge the downsides of Amazon as well as the upsides and I doubt you'll see much of any of the former. Is that's what's actually happening though? It looks like they're paying for employee to go to certain (community?) colleges, not for them to get AWS certs.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  I haven't looked at it in depth, but they have a list of approved "partner" institutions. Those institutions will have incentives and pressures to tote a false narrative of preference towards Amazon, especially as universities have been struggling prior to the pandemic. You can tailor select those to tote the propoganda you want and they'll have every interest in appeasing. If those partners include large reputable institutions that arent under financial shortfalls then I would mostly tend to agree with you. I went to school and later worked at a state university that had substantial ties to the fossil fuel industry, including a lot of donations for infrastructure and research. Whenever we published something or taught something there was always a behind the scenes discussion about how we had to tred lightly about biting the hand that fed us ("don't say bad things about oil and coal, they give us tens of millions a year"). Heck, it even influenced the lines and the types of research the university would promote publications or sometimes even allow. Not sure if the pandemic helped or hindered public university revenue streams, but I have to suspect all the economic downturn hurt admissions and revenue more than helped. They were already hurting across the country prior to the pandemic so I only imagine it's worse now. That means piles of money can carry even more influence than before.
leetcrew 5y ago
one of the odd (but kinda nice) things about the amazon hiring process is they dont really care whether your background is a good fit for the position. if you pass their general interview, they will give you a chance on any team with an opening at your level. it can be a good opportunity to reskill in a totally different domain without sacrificing comp.

the_only_law 5y ago

> On a likely related note, I had 4 Amazon recruiters contact me in the past two days which is higher than normal (at least, for me) even after I've told multiple recruiters I'm not interested in working at Amazon until they have a shift in how they treat their labor culture. Frankly I'm not even a good fit for most the types of development Amazon is interested in. They must be desperate. They’re the closest thing to a tech company that has recruiters send me a message and the only FAANG that ever would contact me. That being said the recruiter messages always feel robotic and impersonal, even worse than the keyword dumps from guys shilling there shitty low paid c2h enterprise roles. I just ignore them. Not interested in the FAANG interview circus anyway.

gruez 5y ago

>I'm highly cyninical of any of these such programs. The last thing I want is a privatized business like Amazon trying to educate and having incentives to lock people into their ecosystem at a fundamental level such as education. Education should acknowledge the downsides of Amazon as well as the upsides and I doubt you'll see much of any of the former. Is that's what's actually happening though? It looks like they're paying for employee to go to certain (community?) colleges, not for them to get AWS certs.

Frost1x 5y ago
I haven't looked at it in depth, but they have a list of approved "partner" institutions. Those institutions will have incentives and pressures to tote a false narrative of preference towards Amazon, especially as universities have been struggling prior to the pandemic. You can tailor select those to tote the propoganda you want and they'll have every interest in appeasing. If those partners include large reputable institutions that arent under financial shortfalls then I would mostly tend to agree with you. I went to school and later worked at a state university that had substantial ties to the fossil fuel industry, including a lot of donations for infrastructure and research. Whenever we published something or taught something there was always a behind the scenes discussion about how we had to tred lightly about biting the hand that fed us ("don't say bad things about oil and coal, they give us tens of millions a year"). Heck, it even influenced the lines and the types of research the university would promote publications or sometimes even allow. Not sure if the pandemic helped or hindered public university revenue streams, but I have to suspect all the economic downturn hurt admissions and revenue more than helped. They were already hurting across the country prior to the pandemic so I only imagine it's worse now. That means piles of money can carry even more influence than before.

leetcrew 5y ago

one of the odd (but kinda nice) things about the amazon hiring process is they dont really care whether your background is a good fit for the position. if you pass their general interview, they will give you a chance on any team with an opening at your level. it can be a good opportunity to reskill in a totally different domain without sacrificing comp.