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I had a professor who worked on security at Amazon 12 years ago. He would always go on and on about how terrible his job was there, and how much better it was b

I had a professor who worked on security at Amazon 12 years ago. He would always go on and on about how terrible his job was there, and how much better it was being a teacher and getting to see the sun. Looked him up on LinkedIn 6 years later, and he was back at Amazon.

throwaway8877 3y ago
Doesn't mean he wants to be there. Sometimes life is not fair.
- ambicapter 3y ago
  Yes the job sucks, but they pay me so much! Life is not fair.
- laidoffamazon 3y ago
  In my experience professors are very good candidates for top tech companies - many have management experience, many have taught algorithms at one point or are good at them already. I doubt this professor didn’t have a choice.
  - khazhoux 3y ago
    Yikes, I’ve had the opposite experience, uniformly. Professors join to great acclaim, and everyone then slowly learns (again for the Nth time) that “managing” students, writing grant proposals, and running research projects, has very little carryover to managing a team of engineers inside a large complex project.
    - laidoffamazon 3y ago
      Ok, but that doesn’t change the fact that they get offers and thus have many choices.
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    My experience (at a BigCo) has been the opposite. The below applies to about 60% of them; the other 40% are good or great. Our academic gets tired of terrible wages and thinks “I’ll do a tour of duty at a tech company and pay off my mortgage.” They arrive and freak out because the incentives are totally different. They spend their days trying to replicate the vibe of graduate seminars or R&D projects (e.g. “hey everyone, let’s explore type systems!”), but the working developers around them are not buying it. They rant and rave about how they can’t get approval to publish this or that IP. Oh, and it turns out their coding skills are below that of the incoming junior engineers who they used to teach. Ultimately they fail to make any impact, so their project is cancelled — an indignity which they would never experience at uni. So they leave, but during that 1-2 year adventure they have been paid 10x they would have made at a university. And now they can return to academia having paid off some debts and with a shiny entry on their resume that says they have Real World experience at a BigCo. Again, that’s not everyone, and I sort of rolled all the bad problems into one scenario. But I have seen it many times - just last month I watched a team of academics get torn down due to this type of square-peg-round-hole mismatch.
    - laidoffamazon 3y ago
      This sounds like a Google experience - not something that happens at Amazon. Which is perhaps why OPs professor joined Amazon again after complaining.
      - shermantanktop 3y ago
        I worked at Amazon too, and this scenario has happened there as well.
    - analognoise 3y ago
      > e.g. “hey everyone, let’s explore type systems!” Oh my God, I laughed way too hard.
- goostavos 3y ago
  I quit and went back. "Boomerangs" are extremely common. The golden handcuffs are hard to shed. Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people.
  - mjr00 3y ago
    > Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people. yep, working at Amazon (AWS specifically) is like playing for the 2000/10s Patriots. Belicheck will work you to the bone and indoctrinate you into the AWS Leadership Princip... er, I mean the "Patriot Way", and your SVP Tom Brady will chew you out in the "correction of error" process. But if you want to be at a place where people want to win at all costs--with all of the pros and cons that entails--there's no better place to be. Amazon hate comes from people who don't see a problem with getting the Washington Commanders giving you a $100 million contract to put in the bare minimum effort. To some people that's a dream deal, but not for everyone. To each their own.
    - caslon 3y ago
      Given the average tenure of an NFL player is relatively short, wouldn't it make more sense to go for what would offer the highest reward with lowest CTE risk? A hundred million dollars is a hundred million dollars. Washington doesn't even have income tax.
      - finnh 3y ago
        The "Washington" in "Washington Commanders" is Washington, DC. Not Washington State (which has no income tax).
      - mjr00 3y ago
        That's what I mean, it depends on what the "highest reward" means for each person. $100m is $100m, but what's Tom Brady remembered for, and what's Albert Haynesworth remembered for? One is near-unanimously considered the greatest of all time, and the other is known for being one of the worst free agent acquisitions of all time. They both have more money than they know what to do with, but one probably feels a bit better about his career. This isn't a perfect analogy with Amazon since they also pay near top of market, but in terms of what you can potentially accomplish, it's similar. Some people are willing to put up with demanding work and long hours in order to be able to say things like "I built S3" or "I built RDS", which gives you instant credibility. To some people that doesn't matter and they're perfectly fine building an internal enterprise app that nobody will ever see if they have less stressful hours. And that's fine too! There's room on the planet for both types of companies, thankfully.
hef19898 3y ago
Oh, Amazon absolutely is cut throat and ruthless. But always within the law, never caught cheating. And it moves incredible fast at incredible scale, so you learn more in a year there than you do in 5 elsewhere. Some people are repulsed by that, others drawn to it and some thrive under these conditions. Heck, I really enjoy my life and job after Amazon. And still I miss the speed, the fast feedback on decisions and actions, the laser focused pursuit of a common goal, ruthlessly focused on efficiency, risk and details. Thought about going back there myself, lucky I didn't. Propably wouod have been equally lucky if I did. Amazon is a peculiar place.
- milkshakes 3y ago
  amazon seems to be the place where the worst leaders i've experienced who have been forced out of the organizations i've been a part of all inevitably wind up. based on this, i don't think i'd ever like to work there.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Usually, people quality follows a normally distributed curve at any place I worked that had enougj peoole in each grouo to make it mathematically work. Amazon transfromed tgat, IMHO, into a bathtub curve, really great (and ruthless, driven, qualified) folks at the top end, then nothing, finally those only checking one of the above mentioned boxes and offsetting the others with excelling at politics. S I said, a peculiar place. Something else I learned the very hard way: what constitutes a good or bad leader, or employee, is nost of the time highly subjective. That being said, realizing Amazon is not a place for you before joining is the best thing you can do. I have seen my fair share of people that realized after being hired, and for them the place was hell. Careerwise, and I explicity talk about white collar folks, Amazon had no negative impact on them. But going through personell hell 50+ hours a week for months until ypu found something else or you are let go during probation is torture. I know, I had the same thing after Amazon once, it sucks and drains you dry.
    - milkshakes 3y ago
      > what constitutes a good or bad leader, or employee, is nost of the time highly subjective. for myself, and the organizations i worked for, it was about results. these leaders swooped in from other prestigeous organizations, introduced toxic politics to completely disrupt existing cultures and working processes, and in the end, for all that drama, they never delivered

throwaway8877 3y ago

Doesn't mean he wants to be there. Sometimes life is not fair.

ambicapter 3y ago
Yes the job sucks, but they pay me so much! Life is not fair.
laidoffamazon 3y ago
In my experience professors are very good candidates for top tech companies - many have management experience, many have taught algorithms at one point or are good at them already. I doubt this professor didn’t have a choice.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  Yikes, I’ve had the opposite experience, uniformly. Professors join to great acclaim, and everyone then slowly learns (again for the Nth time) that “managing” students, writing grant proposals, and running research projects, has very little carryover to managing a team of engineers inside a large complex project.
  - laidoffamazon 3y ago
    Ok, but that doesn’t change the fact that they get offers and thus have many choices.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  My experience (at a BigCo) has been the opposite. The below applies to about 60% of them; the other 40% are good or great. Our academic gets tired of terrible wages and thinks “I’ll do a tour of duty at a tech company and pay off my mortgage.” They arrive and freak out because the incentives are totally different. They spend their days trying to replicate the vibe of graduate seminars or R&D projects (e.g. “hey everyone, let’s explore type systems!”), but the working developers around them are not buying it. They rant and rave about how they can’t get approval to publish this or that IP. Oh, and it turns out their coding skills are below that of the incoming junior engineers who they used to teach. Ultimately they fail to make any impact, so their project is cancelled — an indignity which they would never experience at uni. So they leave, but during that 1-2 year adventure they have been paid 10x they would have made at a university. And now they can return to academia having paid off some debts and with a shiny entry on their resume that says they have Real World experience at a BigCo. Again, that’s not everyone, and I sort of rolled all the bad problems into one scenario. But I have seen it many times - just last month I watched a team of academics get torn down due to this type of square-peg-round-hole mismatch.
  - laidoffamazon 3y ago
    This sounds like a Google experience - not something that happens at Amazon. Which is perhaps why OPs professor joined Amazon again after complaining.
    - shermantanktop 3y ago
      I worked at Amazon too, and this scenario has happened there as well.
  - analognoise 3y ago
    > e.g. “hey everyone, let’s explore type systems!” Oh my God, I laughed way too hard.
goostavos 3y ago
I quit and went back. "Boomerangs" are extremely common. The golden handcuffs are hard to shed. Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people.
- mjr00 3y ago
  > Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people. yep, working at Amazon (AWS specifically) is like playing for the 2000/10s Patriots. Belicheck will work you to the bone and indoctrinate you into the AWS Leadership Princip... er, I mean the "Patriot Way", and your SVP Tom Brady will chew you out in the "correction of error" process. But if you want to be at a place where people want to win at all costs--with all of the pros and cons that entails--there's no better place to be. Amazon hate comes from people who don't see a problem with getting the Washington Commanders giving you a $100 million contract to put in the bare minimum effort. To some people that's a dream deal, but not for everyone. To each their own.
  - caslon 3y ago
    Given the average tenure of an NFL player is relatively short, wouldn't it make more sense to go for what would offer the highest reward with lowest CTE risk? A hundred million dollars is a hundred million dollars. Washington doesn't even have income tax.
    - finnh 3y ago
      The "Washington" in "Washington Commanders" is Washington, DC. Not Washington State (which has no income tax).
    - mjr00 3y ago
      That's what I mean, it depends on what the "highest reward" means for each person. $100m is $100m, but what's Tom Brady remembered for, and what's Albert Haynesworth remembered for? One is near-unanimously considered the greatest of all time, and the other is known for being one of the worst free agent acquisitions of all time. They both have more money than they know what to do with, but one probably feels a bit better about his career. This isn't a perfect analogy with Amazon since they also pay near top of market, but in terms of what you can potentially accomplish, it's similar. Some people are willing to put up with demanding work and long hours in order to be able to say things like "I built S3" or "I built RDS", which gives you instant credibility. To some people that doesn't matter and they're perfectly fine building an internal enterprise app that nobody will ever see if they have less stressful hours. And that's fine too! There's room on the planet for both types of companies, thankfully.

hef19898 3y ago

Oh, Amazon absolutely is cut throat and ruthless. But always within the law, never caught cheating. And it moves incredible fast at incredible scale, so you learn more in a year there than you do in 5 elsewhere. Some people are repulsed by that, others drawn to it and some thrive under these conditions. Heck, I really enjoy my life and job after Amazon. And still I miss the speed, the fast feedback on decisions and actions, the laser focused pursuit of a common goal, ruthlessly focused on efficiency, risk and details. Thought about going back there myself, lucky I didn't. Propably wouod have been equally lucky if I did. Amazon is a peculiar place.

milkshakes 3y ago
amazon seems to be the place where the worst leaders i've experienced who have been forced out of the organizations i've been a part of all inevitably wind up. based on this, i don't think i'd ever like to work there.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Usually, people quality follows a normally distributed curve at any place I worked that had enougj peoole in each grouo to make it mathematically work. Amazon transfromed tgat, IMHO, into a bathtub curve, really great (and ruthless, driven, qualified) folks at the top end, then nothing, finally those only checking one of the above mentioned boxes and offsetting the others with excelling at politics. S I said, a peculiar place. Something else I learned the very hard way: what constitutes a good or bad leader, or employee, is nost of the time highly subjective. That being said, realizing Amazon is not a place for you before joining is the best thing you can do. I have seen my fair share of people that realized after being hired, and for them the place was hell. Careerwise, and I explicity talk about white collar folks, Amazon had no negative impact on them. But going through personell hell 50+ hours a week for months until ypu found something else or you are let go during probation is torture. I know, I had the same thing after Amazon once, it sucks and drains you dry.
  - milkshakes 3y ago
    > what constitutes a good or bad leader, or employee, is nost of the time highly subjective. for myself, and the organizations i worked for, it was about results. these leaders swooped in from other prestigeous organizations, introduced toxic politics to completely disrupt existing cultures and working processes, and in the end, for all that drama, they never delivered