3 ms·

As far as I can tell, working in the AWS teams is perhaps the best software engineering place to be at Amazon (e.g. note Tim Bray's joining the Vancouver office

As far as I can tell, working in the AWS teams is perhaps the best software engineering place to be at Amazon (e.g. note Tim Bray's joining the Vancouver office.). The positivity from there I've seen echoed by other diverse sources, so unlikely to be just kool aid. Everywhere else, stay away, unless it is something you have a very very strong passion for. (Perhaps the Games teams might be another AWS like atmosphere in the making, hard to say yet). Don't get bait-and-switched with AWS buzzwords, make sure it is AWS doing the hiring. From my experience working for Amazon, they seem to grind engineers down, so they are regularly churning through a constant supply of graduates to keep employee numbers up. So a large chunk of engineering is new to 2 years. Stack Ranking (the cross-over of staff between Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle means the same people drawing up employee performance processes. They may insist it isn't stack ranking, but looking at how the review process works is inescapable that the nastiness of stack ranking is present) Edit: there are a handful of genuinely good engineering teams at Amazon, but their ability to make a positive impact is tainted by the volume of garbage that surrounds them.

nefarioustim 12y ago
Seconded. Having been a Senior Engineering Manager in an Amazon business, I can confirm that the stack ranking process is the single worse treatment of employees I have ever experienced. Furthermore, it is not based on an honest and truthful assessment of individuals, but rather who is best at standing up in a room full of managers across one division and arguing that their developers are better than someone else's, even if they've never met or seen the output of the developers they are arguing against. In fact, I've even seen people judged on the _amount_ of commits they've made (not the quality) and the _amount_ of wiki edits they have published. It was the single worst employment period of my life, resulting in depression and stress that was off any scale you'd care to mention. I cannot recommend enough that you avoid at all costs.

nefarioustim 12y ago

Seconded. Having been a Senior Engineering Manager in an Amazon business, I can confirm that the stack ranking process is the single worse treatment of employees I have ever experienced. Furthermore, it is not based on an honest and truthful assessment of individuals, but rather who is best at standing up in a room full of managers across one division and arguing that their developers are better than someone else's, even if they've never met or seen the output of the developers they are arguing against. In fact, I've even seen people judged on the _amount_ of commits they've made (not the quality) and the _amount_ of wiki edits they have published. It was the single worst employment period of my life, resulting in depression and stress that was off any scale you'd care to mention. I cannot recommend enough that you avoid at all costs.