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Paraphrasing his own words, he learned a lot, met some good people, found some good practices that he's going to carry forward with him... isn't that a successf

by vanusa 5y ago

Paraphrasing his own words, he learned a lot, met some good people, found some good practices that he's going to carry forward with him... isn't that a successful outcome? I agree that it definitely doesn't read like a straight tale of horror and abuse. But I don't see how can you sum it up it by saying "he found some good practices" when he takes care to point out, for example: Everything is Urgent (but takes forever) Sounds like a grind, day-in, day-out, with lots of made up stress. Unfortunately, the majority of my time is spent doing “program” style work which leaves about 10% of my time for technical work. Ultimately this is not what I want to be doing with my career. So the work sucked basically. And definitely wasn't what he was expecting. One of the projects I was assigned to had an engineer who had never done web development (didn’t know HTTP, HTML, CSS or Javascript) was tasked with doing the front end system design for a React application (and the API that would power the UI). Standard sweatshop practices, sounds like. Oh and did we mention on-call? About which he says: To be blunt: it sucks. Which (among other reasons) is why he quit after 10 months. Which is definitely not a step to be taken lightly, because (aside from losing on the compensation) it basically amounts to a resume stain. Now of course he said positive things as well, and it wasn't a simple condemnation of Amazon, by any stretch. But still -- it strikes me as rather strange that you are somehow able sum it up as "he had good things happen to him there" and it was a "succesful outcome". To my ears, his experience there read like a very mixed bag. My paraphrase of his report would be: "You learn a lot there, but it's a grind that will suck you dry before you know it."

strgcmc 5y ago
The good practices I was referring to, were things like: his praise of the documentation culture, the obsession with data security (which I read as a good thing, on behalf of customers). Of course you are right that it was definitely a mixed bag. Your paraphrase isn't wrong either, but I would suggest a modification to it: "it will suck you dry, if either (1) you don't fit in with the company culture, or (2) you are placed in a bad situation on a team with poor leadership and high attrition". Perhaps shockingly, not every team at Amazon is constantly quitting (e.g. my direct team in the last two years has had 1 person voluntarily leave for a better opportunity - and we wished them well, and 0 attrition otherwise), and also some people actually appreciate and gravitate towards some things like, what the author calls "team are fragile" culture (because it is in fact a kind of durability/resiliency that there is less reliance on special rockstars, irreplaceable dependencies, and that teams can be fluid but the product mostly works/lives-on).

by vanusa 5y ago

strgcmc 5y ago

The good practices I was referring to, were things like: his praise of the documentation culture, the obsession with data security (which I read as a good thing, on behalf of customers). Of course you are right that it was definitely a mixed bag. Your paraphrase isn't wrong either, but I would suggest a modification to it: "it will suck you dry, if either (1) you don't fit in with the company culture, or (2) you are placed in a bad situation on a team with poor leadership and high attrition". Perhaps shockingly, not every team at Amazon is constantly quitting (e.g. my direct team in the last two years has had 1 person voluntarily leave for a better opportunity - and we wished them well, and 0 attrition otherwise), and also some people actually appreciate and gravitate towards some things like, what the author calls "team are fragile" culture (because it is in fact a kind of durability/resiliency that there is less reliance on special rockstars, irreplaceable dependencies, and that teams can be fluid but the product mostly works/lives-on).