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Hi, I am a half decent engineer. I say that as objectively as one can say something like this about themselves. I worked at Amazon. Twice. In total about a de

by swaits 1y ago

Hi, I am a half decent engineer. I say that as objectively as one can say something like this about themselves. I worked at Amazon. Twice. In total about a decade as a Principal Engineer. I left voluntarily a few months ago. I have zero regrets about my time at Amazon. I learned lots, worked with some incredible people, and had fun doing it. And the culture? It was life changing for me, especially when I first joined. In all the best ways. And Amazon today? All I’ll say is that at their size, maintaining solid culture is damn hard. The hiring spree peri-Covid definitely added unimaginable stress to maintaining the culture the company was built on. They’re a big company, and thus a big target. It’s easy, cheap, and even lazy to kick them with stuff like this. The truth is that while it’s changed a lot over time, anyone fortunate enough to work there should embrace it.

president_zippy 1y ago
I gotta be candid with you: "anyone fortunate enough to work there" is exactly the kind of arrogance that rubs job candidates the wrong way. A lot of people don't see it the way you do, and you would do well to take a moment of honest self reflection and consider the reason why. Before you reflexively jump to "Amazon is just not for everybody", it's only fair to warn you that a lot of people around here have heard this phrase and don't buy it. My former landlord said the same thing at least 9 times in the 8 times I've interacted with him face to face... right up until he got fired. Management conveniently put him on a PIP 4 months before a vesting cliff on his 2-year RSU vesting schedule. Yeah, Amazon is not for everybody- just the kind of people who either perpetrate or fall victim to pyramid schemes.
- Arainach 1y ago
  Amazon, on the engineering side, is rough for high-end software engineers, but let's be very real: it pays better than the vast majority of careers available in America, even right out of college, and while it's stressful so is being a teacher or working in the food industry, and those jobs pay peanuts compared to an Amazon SWE. It is fortunate to get a job there. It may be even more fortunate to get a job at another high-end software company but that doesn't change the fact that a job at Amazon is life changing money for most people. To pre-empt hyperbolic responses: I live in Seattle. I personally know plenty of people who have worked at Amazon. I know plenty of local teachers. The teachers work as many hours for a tenth the pay and burn out just as fast.
  - president_zippy 1y ago
    You might be right about the hours the teachers work, but they're not doing it to avoid being fired. It is entirely self-imposed stress. Teachers have unions and tenure. I'll help people, but I won't martyr myself in a hospital, let alone a frickin' tech company. I don't consider 60 hour work weeks a privilege to be coveted, especially if I'm capturing less than 1% of the value I produce. I'm sorry man, but white collar serfdom is still serfdom. If you're really going to keep begging this hard to be a serf on someone else's fiefdom, I'll tell you what: you can keep overworking yourself as serf on fiefdoms in which I might own shares, and increase the value of my portfolio for me, so I can draw even more passive income every month. I formally withdraw my protest to your "Protestant" work ethic. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I'm just hoping you take what I'm saying burns into your subconscious and something in you changes: that work into which you've placed so much of your self-esteem is just funding other peoples' passive income to either not work or live ostentatiously. If that's a great privilege to you, God bless you. I'm sure my wife would love it if I just retired- please make it happen, she would love me even more for it. EDIT: P.S. Your "privilege" of working for Jeff Bezos' portfolio sounds a lot like a biblical curse. Specifically, 1 Samuel 8:10-18 and Psalm 105:44. "He gave them the lands of the nations, that they might inherit the fruit of others’ labor"
    - Arainach 1y ago
      >You might be right about the hours the teachers work, but they're not doing it to avoid being fired. It is entirely self-imposed stress. Teachers have unions and tenure. No, and no. Your perception of modern labor markets is dated and disconnected from reality. Schools are constantly facing budget cuts and a huge chunk of teachers aren't even full time (instead getting things like a 60% time position - less pay, no security, but enough hours that good luck working a second job). Those that get full time positions still face the elimination of their positions.
      - president_zippy 1y ago
        I guess I just assumed teachers have the same protections in deep blue Washington state that they have in Illinois and Minnesota. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. However, there's a fix for that: move to a state where the job prospects are better. That sounds like "let them eat cake", except that moving to another state as an American citizen is a lot easier than what of people went through fleeing the Sicilian Mafia or the Irish Potato Famine, let alone WW2 European front or the fall of Saigon.
- swaits 1y ago
  I shared my experience. And in my experience anyone who gets the opportunity to work there should do it. Is it fortunate? Working at a place that holds a high bar on hiring, pays extremely well, and provides extremes of learning and growth in tech? Yeah, that’s a pretty good spot to most rational people. Building systems for 20M request/second teaches you cool stuff. So yes, it’s fortunate. Of course it’s not for everybody. I never said it was. Nobody is going to take seriously a person that thinks working at Amazon is a pyramid scheme. After you work at Amazon please report back your experience.
  - president_zippy 1y ago
    I don't think you understand the fundamental difference in motivation between you and most of us here. Most people here would rather be the CEO of a garage with a couple computers than an SVP at Amazon. Nobody needs Amazon to have a door desk. Do you know why? It's because most programmers don't like being told what to do, let alone by people who are not programmers. Most people around here DESPISE corporate HR, and Amazon has it in spades. As for the pyramid scheme comment, my reasoning is not only sound; it's Puget sound... Amazon entices new grad hires with RSUs on a backloaded vesting schedule and then fires them very shortly before the vesting cliff. If "they should have read the fine print" is Amazon values, I think you need a new set of values.
footy 1y ago
I don't know you or your life. > anyone fortunate enough to work there strikes me as an insane thing to say based on the people I do know who have worked there. Horrible work life balance, mobbing, being hired to be fired by a manager who wanted to keep their team but had to stack ranking. Every one of them has described the culture as a cult, and reading comments like this one makes me think even moreso that they're right.

by swaits 1y ago

president_zippy 1y ago

I gotta be candid with you: "anyone fortunate enough to work there" is exactly the kind of arrogance that rubs job candidates the wrong way. A lot of people don't see it the way you do, and you would do well to take a moment of honest self reflection and consider the reason why. Before you reflexively jump to "Amazon is just not for everybody", it's only fair to warn you that a lot of people around here have heard this phrase and don't buy it. My former landlord said the same thing at least 9 times in the 8 times I've interacted with him face to face... right up until he got fired. Management conveniently put him on a PIP 4 months before a vesting cliff on his 2-year RSU vesting schedule. Yeah, Amazon is not for everybody- just the kind of people who either perpetrate or fall victim to pyramid schemes.

Arainach 1y ago
Amazon, on the engineering side, is rough for high-end software engineers, but let's be very real: it pays better than the vast majority of careers available in America, even right out of college, and while it's stressful so is being a teacher or working in the food industry, and those jobs pay peanuts compared to an Amazon SWE. It is fortunate to get a job there. It may be even more fortunate to get a job at another high-end software company but that doesn't change the fact that a job at Amazon is life changing money for most people. To pre-empt hyperbolic responses: I live in Seattle. I personally know plenty of people who have worked at Amazon. I know plenty of local teachers. The teachers work as many hours for a tenth the pay and burn out just as fast.
- president_zippy 1y ago
  You might be right about the hours the teachers work, but they're not doing it to avoid being fired. It is entirely self-imposed stress. Teachers have unions and tenure. I'll help people, but I won't martyr myself in a hospital, let alone a frickin' tech company. I don't consider 60 hour work weeks a privilege to be coveted, especially if I'm capturing less than 1% of the value I produce. I'm sorry man, but white collar serfdom is still serfdom. If you're really going to keep begging this hard to be a serf on someone else's fiefdom, I'll tell you what: you can keep overworking yourself as serf on fiefdoms in which I might own shares, and increase the value of my portfolio for me, so I can draw even more passive income every month. I formally withdraw my protest to your "Protestant" work ethic. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I'm just hoping you take what I'm saying burns into your subconscious and something in you changes: that work into which you've placed so much of your self-esteem is just funding other peoples' passive income to either not work or live ostentatiously. If that's a great privilege to you, God bless you. I'm sure my wife would love it if I just retired- please make it happen, she would love me even more for it. EDIT: P.S. Your "privilege" of working for Jeff Bezos' portfolio sounds a lot like a biblical curse. Specifically, 1 Samuel 8:10-18 and Psalm 105:44. "He gave them the lands of the nations, that they might inherit the fruit of others’ labor"
  - Arainach 1y ago
    >You might be right about the hours the teachers work, but they're not doing it to avoid being fired. It is entirely self-imposed stress. Teachers have unions and tenure. No, and no. Your perception of modern labor markets is dated and disconnected from reality. Schools are constantly facing budget cuts and a huge chunk of teachers aren't even full time (instead getting things like a 60% time position - less pay, no security, but enough hours that good luck working a second job). Those that get full time positions still face the elimination of their positions.
    - president_zippy 1y ago
      I guess I just assumed teachers have the same protections in deep blue Washington state that they have in Illinois and Minnesota. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. However, there's a fix for that: move to a state where the job prospects are better. That sounds like "let them eat cake", except that moving to another state as an American citizen is a lot easier than what of people went through fleeing the Sicilian Mafia or the Irish Potato Famine, let alone WW2 European front or the fall of Saigon.
swaits 1y ago
I shared my experience. And in my experience anyone who gets the opportunity to work there should do it. Is it fortunate? Working at a place that holds a high bar on hiring, pays extremely well, and provides extremes of learning and growth in tech? Yeah, that’s a pretty good spot to most rational people. Building systems for 20M request/second teaches you cool stuff. So yes, it’s fortunate. Of course it’s not for everybody. I never said it was. Nobody is going to take seriously a person that thinks working at Amazon is a pyramid scheme. After you work at Amazon please report back your experience.
- president_zippy 1y ago
  I don't think you understand the fundamental difference in motivation between you and most of us here. Most people here would rather be the CEO of a garage with a couple computers than an SVP at Amazon. Nobody needs Amazon to have a door desk. Do you know why? It's because most programmers don't like being told what to do, let alone by people who are not programmers. Most people around here DESPISE corporate HR, and Amazon has it in spades. As for the pyramid scheme comment, my reasoning is not only sound; it's Puget sound... Amazon entices new grad hires with RSUs on a backloaded vesting schedule and then fires them very shortly before the vesting cliff. If "they should have read the fine print" is Amazon values, I think you need a new set of values.

footy 1y ago

I don't know you or your life. > anyone fortunate enough to work there strikes me as an insane thing to say based on the people I do know who have worked there. Horrible work life balance, mobbing, being hired to be fired by a manager who wanted to keep their team but had to stack ranking. Every one of them has described the culture as a cult, and reading comments like this one makes me think even moreso that they're right.