4 ms·

Reading this saddens me. Amazon is where I'm hoping to end up in about 5 years...

by RegEx 14y ago

phene 14y ago
Don't do it! Go find a small start-up doing something that interests you.
enjo 14y ago
That's the thing about "culture". It's defined very much by the people involved most directly in it. Within a company like Amazon you will have teams that foster amazing environments. You'll also have teams that hand out toy ninjas. The trick is to figure out how to land yourself in the former.
- jmduke 14y ago
  This is a great point. I think the big difference in 'culture' at BigCos is that when you're thinking about scales of thousands of employees, its impossible to try and really instill cultural values at a micro level, especially with things like bean bag chairs. It occurs at a much smaller level -- the team.
jmduke 14y ago
As someone who's currently working at Amazon -- don't worry. I love it here.
TheCowboy 14y ago
Corporations are temporal things, tools to achieve a purpose. Don't put your dreams in them or make it a goal to make one of them part of your identity in X timeyearthings. Identify what you think is attractive and a positive value and pursue that in 5 years time.
potatolicious 14y ago
Don't be too married to the idea. I know many, many, many Amazon alumnus, and not a single one wishes they were back there. There are a few beacons of light in the giant swamp that is Amazon, but IMO there are very few redeeming corners of the company. Overall, in general, the place is a dump (employer-quality speaking, the work they do is unquestionably amazing). Try asking your recruiter about the average tenure of an Amazon engineer and see them scramble madly to dodge the question (I know the number, but for the sake of politeness I won't put it out there). They are, culturally, very much a big-giant-corp pretending like they are a small nimble startup. Everything from the "two pizza team" concept down to "frugal like a startup" (read: this is code to mean that your dev machine won't have been built in the last 5 years) is meant to evoke it, but really just elicits frustration and anger instead. Even in the "good" teams it will constantly feel like your boss is waging an epic battle against Evil just so you can have the peace to get your work done. Fun note: circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. My codebase took a whopping 15 minutes to build even though a $1000 machine could have built it in a tenth the time. I knew incrediby talented, amazing engineers who were given 2 15" monitors dating circa 2002 and told to live with it. I'm not one for exorbitant gear, but this is entirely indicative of Amazon's internal culture. I'm glad I cut my teeth at Amazon out of college, but I am extremely glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, and have found much happier employment and residence elsewhere.
- justinmk 14y ago
  > circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. Of all the negative anecdotes I've read about Amazon, this is the most effective. > glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, care to elaborate on Seattle?
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    Seattle has terrible weather. You can tell by the quality of the raincoats everyone is wearing.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      Seriously. This fucking sunshine is like being in an oven.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "care to elaborate on Seattle?" It was a city that was wholly incompatible with me, and many others. I'm not going to come out and strictly say that Seattle is a bad place to be - because I know some people who are very happily situated there. There were a few things that greatly bothered myself and many of my peers at Amazon/Microsoft: - weather. I grew up in the Northwest, so this wasn't a big deal for me, but I know a lot of people were particularly annoyed at the constant overcast drizzliness. Note that Seattle doesn't actually rain very much, it's mostly just constantly damp, cold, and cloudy instead. Some time in September the sun will disappear behind clouds, and be completely absent until the following April. People in Seattle are extremely active and outdoorsy during the summers, but that's sort of like handing a starving man a bucket full of cheeseburgers. - really limited social scene. Seattle isn't a convergent city - i.e., the vast majority of its population are locals, born and raised. Their social groups do not at all intersect with that of transplant workers who arrived later. There's a thinly veiled contempt by the locals for perceived transplant invaders driving up their cost of living (a belief that is IMO mostly true). The transplant demographic is extremely limited, and is almost entirely software people. These two factors put together means that 99% of your friends will be software people, and every party you go to will be full of software people. I had some crazier hobbies (read: hipster) that mitigated this to some extent, but even that wasn't enough. The social isolation and the homogeneous transplant population really gets to me. Compare with where I am now (SF), where despite the dominance of tech, I still end up meeting tons of people from different walks of life just in daily life. - transportation. I'm a pretty staunch urbanist, and while many neighorhoods in Seattle boast of the urban, carless experience, it doesn't actually pan out. Downtown, Belltown, Capitol Hill all try to execute on this lifestyle, but it's pretty half-assed - a lot of resources you will need are not accessible by transit or walking, and you are depriving yourself of the region's best food and sights if you go carless. Cars are not optional for a high quality of life in Seattle, even if you live centrally. Oh, your friends are talking about this amazing K-BBQ place in Federal Way? Welp, get a car. There's awesome dumplings up in Shoreline? Get a car. Want to do something other than drink on a weekend? Welp, car or you're hosed. Overall, King County Metro is the second-worst transit system I've ever used. It is somewhere between "ass-tastic" and "complete clusterfuck".
jaimebuelta 14y ago
Don't think of big companies as a one, gigantic and monolithic culture. The fact is that inside big companies there are lots of departments, and they can be quite different one for the other... I had this experience with different big corporations, where department A is a really nice place to work and department B is awful... There are some shared things, of course, but it could be different enough to make a huge difference...

Reading this saddens me. Amazon is where I'm hoping to end up in about 5 years...

by RegEx 14y ago

Reading this saddens me. Amazon is where I'm hoping to end up in about 5 years...

phene 14y ago

Don't do it! Go find a small start-up doing something that interests you.

enjo 14y ago

That's the thing about "culture". It's defined very much by the people involved most directly in it. Within a company like Amazon you will have teams that foster amazing environments. You'll also have teams that hand out toy ninjas. The trick is to figure out how to land yourself in the former.

jmduke 14y ago
This is a great point. I think the big difference in 'culture' at BigCos is that when you're thinking about scales of thousands of employees, its impossible to try and really instill cultural values at a micro level, especially with things like bean bag chairs. It occurs at a much smaller level -- the team.

jmduke 14y ago

As someone who's currently working at Amazon -- don't worry. I love it here.

TheCowboy 14y ago

Corporations are temporal things, tools to achieve a purpose. Don't put your dreams in them or make it a goal to make one of them part of your identity in X timeyearthings. Identify what you think is attractive and a positive value and pursue that in 5 years time.

potatolicious 14y ago

Don't be too married to the idea. I know many, many, many Amazon alumnus, and not a single one wishes they were back there. There are a few beacons of light in the giant swamp that is Amazon, but IMO there are very few redeeming corners of the company. Overall, in general, the place is a dump (employer-quality speaking, the work they do is unquestionably amazing). Try asking your recruiter about the average tenure of an Amazon engineer and see them scramble madly to dodge the question (I know the number, but for the sake of politeness I won't put it out there). They are, culturally, very much a big-giant-corp pretending like they are a small nimble startup. Everything from the "two pizza team" concept down to "frugal like a startup" (read: this is code to mean that your dev machine won't have been built in the last 5 years) is meant to evoke it, but really just elicits frustration and anger instead. Even in the "good" teams it will constantly feel like your boss is waging an epic battle against Evil just so you can have the peace to get your work done. Fun note: circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. My codebase took a whopping 15 minutes to build even though a $1000 machine could have built it in a tenth the time. I knew incrediby talented, amazing engineers who were given 2 15" monitors dating circa 2002 and told to live with it. I'm not one for exorbitant gear, but this is entirely indicative of Amazon's internal culture. I'm glad I cut my teeth at Amazon out of college, but I am extremely glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, and have found much happier employment and residence elsewhere.

justinmk 14y ago
> circa 2011 my dev machine was a Celeron 1.5GHz. Of all the negative anecdotes I've read about Amazon, this is the most effective. > glad to have graduated out of both Amazon and Seattle, care to elaborate on Seattle?
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  Seattle has terrible weather. You can tell by the quality of the raincoats everyone is wearing.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Seriously. This fucking sunshine is like being in an oven.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "care to elaborate on Seattle?" It was a city that was wholly incompatible with me, and many others. I'm not going to come out and strictly say that Seattle is a bad place to be - because I know some people who are very happily situated there. There were a few things that greatly bothered myself and many of my peers at Amazon/Microsoft: - weather. I grew up in the Northwest, so this wasn't a big deal for me, but I know a lot of people were particularly annoyed at the constant overcast drizzliness. Note that Seattle doesn't actually rain very much, it's mostly just constantly damp, cold, and cloudy instead. Some time in September the sun will disappear behind clouds, and be completely absent until the following April. People in Seattle are extremely active and outdoorsy during the summers, but that's sort of like handing a starving man a bucket full of cheeseburgers. - really limited social scene. Seattle isn't a convergent city - i.e., the vast majority of its population are locals, born and raised. Their social groups do not at all intersect with that of transplant workers who arrived later. There's a thinly veiled contempt by the locals for perceived transplant invaders driving up their cost of living (a belief that is IMO mostly true). The transplant demographic is extremely limited, and is almost entirely software people. These two factors put together means that 99% of your friends will be software people, and every party you go to will be full of software people. I had some crazier hobbies (read: hipster) that mitigated this to some extent, but even that wasn't enough. The social isolation and the homogeneous transplant population really gets to me. Compare with where I am now (SF), where despite the dominance of tech, I still end up meeting tons of people from different walks of life just in daily life. - transportation. I'm a pretty staunch urbanist, and while many neighorhoods in Seattle boast of the urban, carless experience, it doesn't actually pan out. Downtown, Belltown, Capitol Hill all try to execute on this lifestyle, but it's pretty half-assed - a lot of resources you will need are not accessible by transit or walking, and you are depriving yourself of the region's best food and sights if you go carless. Cars are not optional for a high quality of life in Seattle, even if you live centrally. Oh, your friends are talking about this amazing K-BBQ place in Federal Way? Welp, get a car. There's awesome dumplings up in Shoreline? Get a car. Want to do something other than drink on a weekend? Welp, car or you're hosed. Overall, King County Metro is the second-worst transit system I've ever used. It is somewhere between "ass-tastic" and "complete clusterfuck".

jaimebuelta 14y ago

Don't think of big companies as a one, gigantic and monolithic culture. The fact is that inside big companies there are lots of departments, and they can be quite different one for the other... I had this experience with different big corporations, where department A is a really nice place to work and department B is awful... There are some shared things, of course, but it could be different enough to make a huge difference...