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For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn
by mabbo 4y ago
For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn't interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because "we find that works out best".
Now I'm at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn't even seem like an outlier.
One thing I've noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren't encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I've worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.
Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.
- itsmemattchung 4y agoEx-AWS here and echo what you said. Although there are some outliers (like myself, in terms of non-linear path) at AWS, most SDEs more or less traveled a similar paths: 1. Undergrad CS -> FAANG 2. (International) Undergrad {CS, Math, Computer Engineering} -> Masters {CS, Math, Computer Engineering} -> FAANG Awesome to hear (at Shopify) that the company welcomes more diverse (technical/academic) backgrounds.
- diob 4y agoIt also keeps the base those that have the privilege to turn down other jobs and focus solely on getting hired at Amazon (or other FAANG) right out of college. A good chunk of folks (among whom exist great developers) are those that are focused on working a job while graduating, and getting to a point where they have stable finances. Then they focus on things like "what kind of job" do I want, and "where do I want to work". That could be years and years down the line though. So it enforces an aristocracy / pedigree of sorts, but folks are hesitant to admit as such.
- r-s 4y agoDid Shopify have a choice? Many Canadians who got computer science degrees left to work for American companies for 2x-3x more money.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoShopify is a remote company. They can hire wherever they want. I suspect it’s a cultural preference. Anecdotally, I know a senior dev who moved back to Canada from SF to work for Shopify.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoThey can't hire people who prefer to work in the US for higher salaries though, which is the point.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoYes they can. In fact they do. They have a San Francisco office, and they employ people in the US. They can also pay US level wages in Canada.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoThen the rebuttal to OP isn't that they're remote, it's that they can pay salaries competitive with other US companies.
- mabbo 4y agoShopify's salaries are pretty competitive. They aren't "Bay Area" levels, but you can also live wherever you want, so your after-housing take home pay works out better. Amazon Toronto doesn't pay much better than Shopify- I can say first hand.
- 908B64B197 4y ago> but you can also live wherever you want, so your after-housing take home pay works out better. "After-housing" doesn't really mean anything: buying a house means you build equity into the house which you can later sell (and pocket the appreciation).
- xthrown1 4y agoAmazon is universally known as the shit tier of tech. They can't hire top grads and people with experience because everyone has heard the horror stories. Sounds like they are optimizing their hiring strategy to mitigate this.
- klysm 4y agoI guess you can subsidize shitty working environments with large salaries
- ambicapter 4y agoYou can make big money as a tech recruiter. Why work for one big salary if you can take a percentage commission off of many big salaries over the course of a year?
- mabbo 4y agoMost don't. There are some very talented recruiters that are very well-connected, very good at what they do, and very hard working, and they can make quite a bit of money. But most recruiters are working for one company or one agency on a salary or hourly basis and it's not much money.
- whatever1 4y agoModern software engineering / data analytics jobs require 3 month prep (from 0 background) in total to be hire-ready. Of course people from other fields are jumping ship.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dleslie 4y agoA major difference between Amazon and Shopify is that the latter is a Canadian company. The hiring and work culture is quite different here.
- tennisflyi 4y agoI was told degree to FANG wasn't a common path and you had to "cut your teeth." lol
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwawaylinux 4y agoThat's interesting, most women I know were heavily encouraged and incentivized to go into computer science and engineering from university. Do you not live in a western country? I would expect similar incentives and pushes all over. I don't really know about the background of the (few) women I know in my industry now though, except for the Indian ones who do seem to have a higher represenation and do I think seem to have engineering/cs degrees. It sounds like the incentivization in the west is not working then, it is not getting to the right people or not going about things the right way. It actually doesn't surprise me if it does become a disincentivization for many women. It does seem pretty patronizing, shallow, and tone-deaf IMO, more likely designed by and for the political and grievance industries rather than actually being honest about women in technology and working to remove real barriers they face.