4 ms·

Always remember that everything you see on the internet is false. Unless it comes from anywhere outside the internet, "some company is imploding guys believe m

Always remember that everything you see on the internet is false. Unless it comes from anywhere outside the internet, "some company is imploding guys believe me I totally work there" is always a lie and will appear in your feed before real non-hysterical news.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Yet to meet a person in real life who did not report a similar experience with Amazon. Have a couple ex colleagues there who at 4-6 months are already looking to get out. Yes, plenty on the internet lie, but all the smoke about terrible tech workplaces comes from Amazon. And they are pretty consistent on treating workers badly from devs to warehouse workers.
- manish_gill 5y ago
  Interviewed a candidate last month who was leaving Amazon (downgrading his salary as well) because acc to him, working there was having a big impact on his mental health.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I worked with a former Amazon dev who took a municipal government job (1/3rd the pay) back in Canada and no longer owned a computer at home (it was a problem when it come to WFH as the government had no laptop to give him) because of his experiences at Amazon.
  - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
    It is a really baffling experience - on my team in AWS we've had open roles for over 2 years; every time we pick someone up we lose someone else. The team is now smaller than it was when I joined and I know all 3 of the last people to leave have taken significant pay cuts to get out. Despite all that, I'm pretty happy! Of course I'd leave for more money if the opportunity arose, but I think I would also be eyeing up a boomerang back to AWS to go up a level. I wish I knew why my experience has been so vastly different from the people I was on a team with, but the nature of our work meant we mostly work solo or in coordination with people on other teams, rather than grouping up with each other. As a consequence I didn't really see what was causing them to be so dissatisfied.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      What are the work hours and on-call like for you? On-call is the biggest specific non-managerial gripe I hear about.
      - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
        Normal work hours, ie I could get away with 40 if I was willing to appear a bit relaxed but usually end up closer to 50. No on-call.
    - webmaven 5y ago
      > I wish I knew why my experience has been so vastly different from the people I was on a team with, but the nature of our work meant we mostly work solo or in coordination with people on other teams, rather than grouping up with each other. As a consequence I didn't really see what was causing them to be so dissatisfied. This is rank speculation on my part: Some people are lucky (or oblivious) enough to have passive aggressive BS just roll off their back without causing stress. This isn't an adaptive trait in any context where passive aggression is a possible precursor to overt aggression, but you may also have other traits (for example physical size and gender) that make it less likely for you to experience that sort of escalation. There are many possible variations on this (physical appearance, personality, social class, a supervisor's biases), but you'd have to share a lot more about yourself to narrow it down. Suffice it to say that you may just not be treated the same as your colleagues, or you may not experience similar treatment in similar ways.
      - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
        Interesting to consider - thanks. Me and the people who have left interact with very different crowds of external stakeholders, so perhaps they were just unlucky to end up with some who are difficult to tolerate. We are a team of white EU/US men, so I don't think discrimination is a factor in our different experiences. I do however think we are treated differently in some contexts; I am ~20 years younger than most of my team and can definitely see a tendency for people in AWS to see younger technical talent as a more useful resource, in that they are going to put up with more BS on average before quitting or burning out. I suppose that might just have become a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.
- mFixman 5y ago
  If Amazon has been a bad place to work for SWEs for the last many years, why would it be imploding now?

MattGaiser 5y ago

Yet to meet a person in real life who did not report a similar experience with Amazon. Have a couple ex colleagues there who at 4-6 months are already looking to get out. Yes, plenty on the internet lie, but all the smoke about terrible tech workplaces comes from Amazon. And they are pretty consistent on treating workers badly from devs to warehouse workers.

manish_gill 5y ago
Interviewed a candidate last month who was leaving Amazon (downgrading his salary as well) because acc to him, working there was having a big impact on his mental health.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I worked with a former Amazon dev who took a municipal government job (1/3rd the pay) back in Canada and no longer owned a computer at home (it was a problem when it come to WFH as the government had no laptop to give him) because of his experiences at Amazon.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  It is a really baffling experience - on my team in AWS we've had open roles for over 2 years; every time we pick someone up we lose someone else. The team is now smaller than it was when I joined and I know all 3 of the last people to leave have taken significant pay cuts to get out. Despite all that, I'm pretty happy! Of course I'd leave for more money if the opportunity arose, but I think I would also be eyeing up a boomerang back to AWS to go up a level. I wish I knew why my experience has been so vastly different from the people I was on a team with, but the nature of our work meant we mostly work solo or in coordination with people on other teams, rather than grouping up with each other. As a consequence I didn't really see what was causing them to be so dissatisfied.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    What are the work hours and on-call like for you? On-call is the biggest specific non-managerial gripe I hear about.
    - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
      Normal work hours, ie I could get away with 40 if I was willing to appear a bit relaxed but usually end up closer to 50. No on-call.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > I wish I knew why my experience has been so vastly different from the people I was on a team with, but the nature of our work meant we mostly work solo or in coordination with people on other teams, rather than grouping up with each other. As a consequence I didn't really see what was causing them to be so dissatisfied. This is rank speculation on my part: Some people are lucky (or oblivious) enough to have passive aggressive BS just roll off their back without causing stress. This isn't an adaptive trait in any context where passive aggression is a possible precursor to overt aggression, but you may also have other traits (for example physical size and gender) that make it less likely for you to experience that sort of escalation. There are many possible variations on this (physical appearance, personality, social class, a supervisor's biases), but you'd have to share a lot more about yourself to narrow it down. Suffice it to say that you may just not be treated the same as your colleagues, or you may not experience similar treatment in similar ways.
    - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
      Interesting to consider - thanks. Me and the people who have left interact with very different crowds of external stakeholders, so perhaps they were just unlucky to end up with some who are difficult to tolerate. We are a team of white EU/US men, so I don't think discrimination is a factor in our different experiences. I do however think we are treated differently in some contexts; I am ~20 years younger than most of my team and can definitely see a tendency for people in AWS to see younger technical talent as a more useful resource, in that they are going to put up with more BS on average before quitting or burning out. I suppose that might just have become a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.
mFixman 5y ago
If Amazon has been a bad place to work for SWEs for the last many years, why would it be imploding now?