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At this point, I'm not sure why anyone would choose to work at Amazon over other companies. What do they offer over their competitors? Same work and pay at oth

At this point, I'm not sure why anyone would choose to work at Amazon over other companies. What do they offer over their competitors? Same work and pay at other big tech, but you don't have to worry about potentially crazy hours or getting fired for no reason. Or any of the other great companies outside of big tech. Good pay, good impact, no PIP culture. Recruiters from AMZN are trying to lure me away from Google (as recruiters do), but why on earth would I leave my good job and risk being a sacrificial fire?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
desi_ninja 5y ago
you are forgetting Facebook. it is Amazon culture on steroids
- asdfman123 5y ago
  Right, I could work at Facebook, where they seem to be betting the company on an idea that Mark Zuckerberg got after watching a sci-fi movie -- that I'm not sure anyone is remotely excited about.
- mistyislands 5y ago
  I'm suprised to hear Facebook is this way. Almost everyone in Facebook that I know is chilling 50% of the time :)
  - ingres 5y ago
    I'm at FB currently, maybe it's a problem on other orgs but my experience has been very good (2 years). It's not perfect but I haven't heard horror stories like this, and my manager and pms are happy to let eng set project estimates.
    - schrute 5y ago
      Hey so I have to ask, do you actually like what you do? I don't mean that in a rude way or anything. I just honestly don't know what people do at FB anymore. Do you work on the core platform or are you working on Mark's new idea?
      - ingres 5y ago
        Yoooo, not offended at all. I work on the backend that powers navigation. I do like what I do. Of course it’s not as sexy as a 0-1 project at a startup but there are plenty of interesting problems and I really like the people. What makes me happy might not work for others of course. There are always trade offs
- dymk 5y ago
  It's really not
- jaromir_ 5y ago
  not really and happy to help to disprove your misconceptions
- otterley 5y ago
  That can’t possibly be true. Facebook can’t be customer-obsessed in the same way Amazon is, because Facebook’s customers are advertisers. This puts Facebook’s product teams and engineers in a position where they often have to avoid doing what would be best for their users in order to satisfy the needs of advertisers. Amazon is largely free of this kind of conflict: Customers and users are the same group of people.
dymk 5y ago
Amazon is the "foot in the door" for many junior engineers. They start there, and they leave for greener pastures at some point (probably before two years). The sheer number of engineers that they hire (due to sheer turnover from people leaving) means you have a better chance of getting hired there than any other MANGA.
amzn-throw 5y ago
I work at Amazon and love it and don't want to work at Google because I want to work on meaningful big projects that deliver real value to customers rather than re-writing a Chat app for the 6th time, or spending time on mandatory-top-down monorepo merges. I think I would be deathly bored at Google from everything I hear.
- asdfman123 5y ago
  I work at Google and my team is working very hard on some greenfield stuff, although there's good work-life balance as well. Don't believe everything you hear (although I suppose that works both directions).
femto113 5y ago
I've worked at Amazon, I won't work there again, but I have (and likely will again) recommend it on occasion for other people as a hugely valuable learning experience. The reason is that Amazon has a strong bias towards getting stuff done, and because it's Amazon that means getting stuff done at scale. You are extremely unlikely to spend much time there without participating in shipping something that gets used by (or at least affects) millions of people, and you will have to struggle against the tooling and culture and even your coworkers to make it happen. I contrast that with say Microsoft or Google where devs may commonly spend years on stuff that never gets past a research project, all while enjoying the support of excellent tools and a collegial atmosphere.
- shurane 5y ago
  Makes it sound like working in Amazon builds character, so you can know how good you have it elsewhere. Which is a good idea in itself, but seems like it's best to just skip on that experience. Kind of like a type 2 kind of fun. I've also heard of good experiences at Amazon, so maybe it's just particular organizations inside it that suffer a lot from this problem?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

desi_ninja 5y ago

you are forgetting Facebook. it is Amazon culture on steroids

asdfman123 5y ago
Right, I could work at Facebook, where they seem to be betting the company on an idea that Mark Zuckerberg got after watching a sci-fi movie -- that I'm not sure anyone is remotely excited about.
mistyislands 5y ago
I'm suprised to hear Facebook is this way. Almost everyone in Facebook that I know is chilling 50% of the time :)
- ingres 5y ago
  I'm at FB currently, maybe it's a problem on other orgs but my experience has been very good (2 years). It's not perfect but I haven't heard horror stories like this, and my manager and pms are happy to let eng set project estimates.
  - schrute 5y ago
    Hey so I have to ask, do you actually like what you do? I don't mean that in a rude way or anything. I just honestly don't know what people do at FB anymore. Do you work on the core platform or are you working on Mark's new idea?
    - ingres 5y ago
      Yoooo, not offended at all. I work on the backend that powers navigation. I do like what I do. Of course it’s not as sexy as a 0-1 project at a startup but there are plenty of interesting problems and I really like the people. What makes me happy might not work for others of course. There are always trade offs
dymk 5y ago
It's really not
jaromir_ 5y ago
not really and happy to help to disprove your misconceptions
otterley 5y ago
That can’t possibly be true. Facebook can’t be customer-obsessed in the same way Amazon is, because Facebook’s customers are advertisers. This puts Facebook’s product teams and engineers in a position where they often have to avoid doing what would be best for their users in order to satisfy the needs of advertisers. Amazon is largely free of this kind of conflict: Customers and users are the same group of people.

dymk 5y ago

Amazon is the "foot in the door" for many junior engineers. They start there, and they leave for greener pastures at some point (probably before two years). The sheer number of engineers that they hire (due to sheer turnover from people leaving) means you have a better chance of getting hired there than any other MANGA.

amzn-throw 5y ago

I work at Amazon and love it and don't want to work at Google because I want to work on meaningful big projects that deliver real value to customers rather than re-writing a Chat app for the 6th time, or spending time on mandatory-top-down monorepo merges. I think I would be deathly bored at Google from everything I hear.

asdfman123 5y ago
I work at Google and my team is working very hard on some greenfield stuff, although there's good work-life balance as well. Don't believe everything you hear (although I suppose that works both directions).

femto113 5y ago

I've worked at Amazon, I won't work there again, but I have (and likely will again) recommend it on occasion for other people as a hugely valuable learning experience. The reason is that Amazon has a strong bias towards getting stuff done, and because it's Amazon that means getting stuff done at scale. You are extremely unlikely to spend much time there without participating in shipping something that gets used by (or at least affects) millions of people, and you will have to struggle against the tooling and culture and even your coworkers to make it happen. I contrast that with say Microsoft or Google where devs may commonly spend years on stuff that never gets past a research project, all while enjoying the support of excellent tools and a collegial atmosphere.

shurane 5y ago
Makes it sound like working in Amazon builds character, so you can know how good you have it elsewhere. Which is a good idea in itself, but seems like it's best to just skip on that experience. Kind of like a type 2 kind of fun. I've also heard of good experiences at Amazon, so maybe it's just particular organizations inside it that suffer a lot from this problem?