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I'm proud to have worked at Amazon over 14 years so I guess I don't agree about the toxic part. At this point I'd be pretty surprised if we ever forced employee

I'm proud to have worked at Amazon over 14 years so I guess I don't agree about the toxic part. At this point I'd be pretty surprised if we ever forced employees back to the office. Amazon has always had very autonomous culture where teams and orgs have a lot of latitude in how they work. We value results above doctrine. Andy is also a very pragmatic leader who thinks very deeply about these kinds of decisions. I think offices are more and more going to become an out of home workspace for people who prefer them (and I think we should give everyone who can commit to coming in enough an actual office) ... and an occasional collaboration hub for everyone.

dominotw 4y ago
> I don't agree about the toxic part. I recently rejected an offer from AWS that paid significantly more that what i currently make because of this. I have family that work there ( on visa) that were adamant that i keep looking and not accept the offer. I am wondering if i made the right decision, haha. Does aws have a higher churn rate than a typical tech company?
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon, and am currently going through their interview process (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good offer from Amazon). My conclusions: 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged) 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good team.
  - belval 4y ago
    Bingo, I've had a hard time reconciling the HN's perception of AWS SDE work and my job. I have people telling me that it's horrible, attrition rate, constant grind and endless oncalls. Yet I've never experienced any of those things. Of all the places I've worked at in Canada, AWS was the nicest and I highly recommend it.
    - dont__panic 4y ago
      There are certainly some toxic teams out there, just like there are in any large org. I think an even bigger factor is the fact that Amazon is an enormous vertically-integrated monopoly that: - abuses its market position to run competitors out of business - mistreats its most vulnerable, low-level employees For many of us, that's a moral dealbreaker. But there are certainly some great teams and interesting projects in the SDE space if that's what you want!
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      I wonder how much of this is the perception of Amazon warehouse workers being transferred over to Amazon technology workers. I've heard a ton of bad things about the former, but the folks I personally know who work at Amazon / AWS as tech workers all seem to be happy with it. Of course, how Amazon treats its warehouse workers is an indictment on the overall company, so I think I'd have a difficult time choosing to work there.
      - azemetre 4y ago
        I don't think it started with warehouse workers, there was a famous NYT article talking about office workers at Amazon where entire teams would leave a meeting in tears: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...
      - marssaxman 4y ago
        Among folks I know in Seattle, Amazon had a bad reputation as a burnout factory before those stories about the warehouses ever really came out.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > I am wondering if i made the right decision Passing on a career building line on your resume and a significant increase of your salary on the possibility (far from guaranteed) that you may end up in a team so unbearable you would have to leave the company before reaping the aforementioned benefits is of course not the right decision. Some teams do truly suck at Amazon, either because of the manager or the work (or both), but in those situations you can always easily change team after a year if not less. And you will find such teams in any other company.
- colmmacc 4y ago
  AWS and Amazon is not for everyone, and that's not quite about us being 'elite' or the 'we only hire the top X%' (though statements like that are probably true too). It's more that the first part of "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History" is true at Amazon and long-time Amazon employees tend to be unusually driven and missionary and very much about shipping things. For those this suits, it's great, we tend to weed out bullshitters and we're vastly less political than other operations I've seen. But it's not for everyone and others move on, and that does contribute to some churn. If you're considering Amazon, it's important to think hard about whether this is for you or not. Our 'median tenure' numbers are constantly skewed by how much we've been growing. At times our doubling rate has been as little as 18-months, and so you get a lot of employees who haven't been here very long just from that too. Our actual attrition numbers are pretty middle of the range for tech. This year we has a spike in attrition at the beginning of the year - as did other tech companies - but we think we've been out-performing industry over the year as a whole. We were also ranked the #1 company where Americans want to work by LinkedIn, which is not nothing. Amazon is full of very long-tenured folks and tends to have very stable leadership teams too.
  - rnk 4y ago
    I worked back at microsoft when gates was still there. we had saturday meetings all the time. Like a couple of times a month. I was routinely doing work at 11pm trying to get things checked in before midnight. This was before gates had kids, we all joked. The stock made the job lucrative but it was killer, I can't believe I did that. Mostly I saw people retire, not quit or get fired. The difference with amazon is that everyone experienced knows a fair number of people who quit because of the stress and negatives, with lots of money on the table if it goes 2 or 3 months. I have two friends who quit, each with a quarter million coming if they stayed one more quarter. It would have to be pretty bad for that. I didn't see this happen at microsoft. We made progress in our jobs, and rest and vest wasn't even an ironic statement.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      If you work at any of the major tech companies and have been there for awhile, you are always “leaving money on the table” because of invested RSUs.
- okaram 4y ago
  One factor I haven't seen mentioned is that Amazon has a split-personality problem. AWS is a tech company. Reasonably comparable with other FAANGs, with wide variation within teams. Amazon is a logistics company with a web site. Logistics companies treat their employees very differently than tech companies. Amazon proper seems to me to have split personality. Warehouse employees are treated badly, but pretty well in many ways, compared to other warehouse employees. Tech employees at Amazon are treated well, but I can see an exec that came through the logistics part having a different mentality.
davidrupp 4y ago
[Everything that follows is my personal opinion. I do not speak for my company.] Seven years and counting for me, and likewise proud. I have found it a good experience, on balance. I have witnessed -- and been subjected to -- behavior by individuals that people would reasonably consider "toxic", and I've been fortunate to have avoided long-term impact. I do what I can to fight it where I find it. To the point of remote work, I've been primarily remote the whole time, and it's worked out well. If enforced RTO ever does happen (I don't expect it to), I'll have a decision to make, is all.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Do both of you just “not see” all the bad things your company does ? Your proud of what ? Worker exploitation ? The people in fulfilment centres are also employed by Amazon. They’re your peers. If I worked for a company where my peers are treated like dirt, I wouldn’t be proud of it. I’d quit.
  - throwaway9191aa 4y ago
    Certainly not speaking for the folks above. While I am critical of many things Amazon does, what I see in the media about AWS is usually laughably false. We aren't all in broken marriages due to on-call duty. The stories I read about drivers urinating in their pants because they have too many deliveries scheduled simply does not reflect the behavior I've seen from drivers in my area (I ride a bike everywhere, Amazon drivers are noticeably bike friendly in a way that makes me think they aren't under pants-urinating pressure). So when I see stories about the FCs, I assume the same. I guess I am biased towards thinking the media focuses on the negative and totally ignores anything good. So... yea I guess I "don't see" all the bad things. Still pro union... but treated like dirt is probably a little far. [edit, have worked for aws for about 5.5 years]
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      You riding your bike around waving at drivers disproves nothing. I often read warehouse workers are treated badly, threatening to strike, discouraged from unionizing and paid terribly.Are you telling me the news just makes this up? You're obviously seeing what you want to see, and that's OK, just don't try push it onto others. The context I made my comment was in regards to people saying "Amazon is awesome, I've worked there for 14 years.". I don't really see why warehouse workers shouldn't feel awesome too. If it's really a great company, they should feel pretty awesome. tl;dr I don't believe Amazon is an awesome company based on how I see it treat lower skill workers, people who think it's awesome probably only feel like that because they're needed, as soon as you can be replaced by someone cheaper, you will be.
_aaed 4y ago
Are you also proud about their numerous worker and human rights violations? Can't wait for the mental gymnastics on this one
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
You don't see a problem with the culture _because_ you have been there 14 years. If you had a negative impact of the culture, you likely would have left. Survivor bias. There are a significant amount of people who disagree with you (on blind, with amazon proof of employment). They would be in the non-survivor-bias group.
- kbelder 4y ago
  They'd show failure bias, the same problem but in reverse.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    Thats true. Thanks, I was trying to think of the name.

dominotw 4y ago

> I don't agree about the toxic part. I recently rejected an offer from AWS that paid significantly more that what i currently make because of this. I have family that work there ( on visa) that were adamant that i keep looking and not accept the offer. I am wondering if i made the right decision, haha. Does aws have a higher churn rate than a typical tech company?

cmeacham98 4y ago
I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon, and am currently going through their interview process (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good offer from Amazon). My conclusions: 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged) 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good team.
- belval 4y ago
  Bingo, I've had a hard time reconciling the HN's perception of AWS SDE work and my job. I have people telling me that it's horrible, attrition rate, constant grind and endless oncalls. Yet I've never experienced any of those things. Of all the places I've worked at in Canada, AWS was the nicest and I highly recommend it.
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    There are certainly some toxic teams out there, just like there are in any large org. I think an even bigger factor is the fact that Amazon is an enormous vertically-integrated monopoly that: - abuses its market position to run competitors out of business - mistreats its most vulnerable, low-level employees For many of us, that's a moral dealbreaker. But there are certainly some great teams and interesting projects in the SDE space if that's what you want!
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    I wonder how much of this is the perception of Amazon warehouse workers being transferred over to Amazon technology workers. I've heard a ton of bad things about the former, but the folks I personally know who work at Amazon / AWS as tech workers all seem to be happy with it. Of course, how Amazon treats its warehouse workers is an indictment on the overall company, so I think I'd have a difficult time choosing to work there.
    - azemetre 4y ago
      I don't think it started with warehouse workers, there was a famous NYT article talking about office workers at Amazon where entire teams would leave a meeting in tears: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...
    - marssaxman 4y ago
      Among folks I know in Seattle, Amazon had a bad reputation as a burnout factory before those stories about the warehouses ever really came out.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> I am wondering if i made the right decision Passing on a career building line on your resume and a significant increase of your salary on the possibility (far from guaranteed) that you may end up in a team so unbearable you would have to leave the company before reaping the aforementioned benefits is of course not the right decision. Some teams do truly suck at Amazon, either because of the manager or the work (or both), but in those situations you can always easily change team after a year if not less. And you will find such teams in any other company.
colmmacc 4y ago
AWS and Amazon is not for everyone, and that's not quite about us being 'elite' or the 'we only hire the top X%' (though statements like that are probably true too). It's more that the first part of "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History" is true at Amazon and long-time Amazon employees tend to be unusually driven and missionary and very much about shipping things. For those this suits, it's great, we tend to weed out bullshitters and we're vastly less political than other operations I've seen. But it's not for everyone and others move on, and that does contribute to some churn. If you're considering Amazon, it's important to think hard about whether this is for you or not. Our 'median tenure' numbers are constantly skewed by how much we've been growing. At times our doubling rate has been as little as 18-months, and so you get a lot of employees who haven't been here very long just from that too. Our actual attrition numbers are pretty middle of the range for tech. This year we has a spike in attrition at the beginning of the year - as did other tech companies - but we think we've been out-performing industry over the year as a whole. We were also ranked the #1 company where Americans want to work by LinkedIn, which is not nothing. Amazon is full of very long-tenured folks and tends to have very stable leadership teams too.
- rnk 4y ago
  I worked back at microsoft when gates was still there. we had saturday meetings all the time. Like a couple of times a month. I was routinely doing work at 11pm trying to get things checked in before midnight. This was before gates had kids, we all joked. The stock made the job lucrative but it was killer, I can't believe I did that. Mostly I saw people retire, not quit or get fired. The difference with amazon is that everyone experienced knows a fair number of people who quit because of the stress and negatives, with lots of money on the table if it goes 2 or 3 months. I have two friends who quit, each with a quarter million coming if they stayed one more quarter. It would have to be pretty bad for that. I didn't see this happen at microsoft. We made progress in our jobs, and rest and vest wasn't even an ironic statement.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    If you work at any of the major tech companies and have been there for awhile, you are always “leaving money on the table” because of invested RSUs.
okaram 4y ago
One factor I haven't seen mentioned is that Amazon has a split-personality problem. AWS is a tech company. Reasonably comparable with other FAANGs, with wide variation within teams. Amazon is a logistics company with a web site. Logistics companies treat their employees very differently than tech companies. Amazon proper seems to me to have split personality. Warehouse employees are treated badly, but pretty well in many ways, compared to other warehouse employees. Tech employees at Amazon are treated well, but I can see an exec that came through the logistics part having a different mentality.

davidrupp 4y ago

[Everything that follows is my personal opinion. I do not speak for my company.] Seven years and counting for me, and likewise proud. I have found it a good experience, on balance. I have witnessed -- and been subjected to -- behavior by individuals that people would reasonably consider "toxic", and I've been fortunate to have avoided long-term impact. I do what I can to fight it where I find it. To the point of remote work, I've been primarily remote the whole time, and it's worked out well. If enforced RTO ever does happen (I don't expect it to), I'll have a decision to make, is all.

bamboozled 4y ago
Do both of you just “not see” all the bad things your company does ? Your proud of what ? Worker exploitation ? The people in fulfilment centres are also employed by Amazon. They’re your peers. If I worked for a company where my peers are treated like dirt, I wouldn’t be proud of it. I’d quit.
- throwaway9191aa 4y ago
  Certainly not speaking for the folks above. While I am critical of many things Amazon does, what I see in the media about AWS is usually laughably false. We aren't all in broken marriages due to on-call duty. The stories I read about drivers urinating in their pants because they have too many deliveries scheduled simply does not reflect the behavior I've seen from drivers in my area (I ride a bike everywhere, Amazon drivers are noticeably bike friendly in a way that makes me think they aren't under pants-urinating pressure). So when I see stories about the FCs, I assume the same. I guess I am biased towards thinking the media focuses on the negative and totally ignores anything good. So... yea I guess I "don't see" all the bad things. Still pro union... but treated like dirt is probably a little far. [edit, have worked for aws for about 5.5 years]
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    You riding your bike around waving at drivers disproves nothing. I often read warehouse workers are treated badly, threatening to strike, discouraged from unionizing and paid terribly.Are you telling me the news just makes this up? You're obviously seeing what you want to see, and that's OK, just don't try push it onto others. The context I made my comment was in regards to people saying "Amazon is awesome, I've worked there for 14 years.". I don't really see why warehouse workers shouldn't feel awesome too. If it's really a great company, they should feel pretty awesome. tl;dr I don't believe Amazon is an awesome company based on how I see it treat lower skill workers, people who think it's awesome probably only feel like that because they're needed, as soon as you can be replaced by someone cheaper, you will be.

_aaed 4y ago

Are you also proud about their numerous worker and human rights violations? Can't wait for the mental gymnastics on this one

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

You don't see a problem with the culture _because_ you have been there 14 years. If you had a negative impact of the culture, you likely would have left. Survivor bias. There are a significant amount of people who disagree with you (on blind, with amazon proof of employment). They would be in the non-survivor-bias group.

kbelder 4y ago
They'd show failure bias, the same problem but in reverse.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  Thats true. Thanks, I was trying to think of the name.