Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn’t know. Then, Microsoft, take notice. :-)
Perhaps it would be better to actually have knowledge about the topics on which you're commenting?
All of this is _very_ recent.
Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
191–200 of 268 posts
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#192I couldnt get into any of the companies you mentioned and picked Amazon as a last resort. What should I do now? Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.
Work to live, don't live to work. If Amazon is your last resort, you are clearly in an extremely (extremely!!!) lucky position and you should reflect upon that. For a lot of people, a "last resort" job is cleaning restaurant bathrooms or working in abattoirs. You've got options that are putting you in the upper-tier of working people.
yes, but cleaning bathrooms doesn't make you want to kill yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot cost of living. Converting your numbers from Seattle to San Francisco: $203,000 with a base of $148,400. I don't know what the extra $55,000 is. An expected bonus? Some rough guess regarding future value of stock options? Retirement fund matching? You didn't make the distinction for your friends. Where I am, your standard of living can be had for $90,160 with a base of $65,910. The needed pay drops by abou…
> It's like my dollars are almost 50% better than your dollars. Only if you're living paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't make sense to adjust your savings rate (or loan repayment rate) by cost of living. To illustrate, assuming you're living off of your base (a single 20-something can probably do better though), you're comparing saving a $39k bonus or a $24k bonus. That's over a 50% difference in savings rate. That's n…
Remember that the needed salary and the typical salary don't change at the same rate. Going from his place to mine, that equalizes things for roughly a 20% savings rate.
Somebody earning $200,000 in San Francisco who moved to Seattle would gain an extra $33,558 in disposable income, despite income dropping to $142,858. This is because costs drop to $176,414. To equalize the savings in dollars, the rate would need to be 59%. Is that person in San Francisco going to save 59% of their income? If not, they'd be better off in Seattle. Of course, Seattle itself is not cheap, and you can do much better.
And yes, there are other considerations, like being able to afford 3500-square-foot house on 5 acres of land and still get to work in under 20 minutes.
The cost of living has, baked into it, a sort of normal-for-the-area lifestyle. It is simply expected that less-urban people will have larger houses on larger lots.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#194I interned at Amazon last year in the Alexa org (non-frontline team in ML). My team was rarely in the office before 10:30 or after 6, even during crunch time (we launched our feature during my internship) but i did see code review responses at odd hours sometimes. I enjoyed the project a bunch, and while my coworkers werent the most social bunch they were pretty smart and effective. I did pretty well and exceeded man…
> The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before. This isn't a very healthy outlook. By that I mean using prestige and income level as your optimization function isn't a great way to achieve [fulfillment / joy / making life worth living]. I'm not trying to preach a specific optimization function…
Im of the opinion thats the only optimization function worth using. I dont know of any others in the state Im in - I just graduated from a mediocre state school and cant pass interview loops, but everyone that has attempted to convince me otherwise hasnt, from what i can tell, experienced my long string of getting barely anything for my 10+ years of dilligence and work. Unlike my friends im not a crypto millionaire, an FB employee, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#195Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some would argue it's more of a "start looking for a new job, we're about to fire you" warning.
I don't know whether you're making this statement about Amazon, in which case I have no insight and you can stop reading now, or whether that's intended as a more general statement. If it's the latter, I'd like to challenge the assertion that a PIP is necessarily the company trying to get rid of someone. In my experience as a manager, I've always made sure that PIPs are as honestly designed to get people back on trac…
In my limited experience PIPs are an HR process to document why they are firing you, not any real stab at recovery / rehabilitation.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#197I interned at Amazon last year in the Alexa org (non-frontline team in ML). My team was rarely in the office before 10:30 or after 6, even during crunch time (we launched our feature during my internship) but i did see code review responses at odd hours sometimes. I enjoyed the project a bunch, and while my coworkers werent the most social bunch they were pretty smart and effective. I did pretty well and exceeded man…
Sorry, but is this a serious post? Honest question. > My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more like $180k-$230k by comparison. Heaven forbid someone is making more money than they know what to do with than you are. > Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time and i will never be…
>Surely you can be hired on technical merit.
My dozens of failed interview loops after 4 years of interview preparation have proven that I do not, in fact, have technical merit.
If I can't pass a new grad loop at Google I doubt I can pass an L3 experienced hire loop.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work to live, don't live to work. If Amazon is your last resort, you are clearly in an extremely (extremely!!!) lucky position and you should reflect upon that. For a lot of people, a "last resort" job is cleaning restaurant bathrooms or working in abattoirs. You've got options that are putting you in the upper-tier of working people.
yes, but cleaning bathrooms doesn't make you want to kill yourself.
Speak for yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Heaven forbid someone is making more money than they know what to do with than you are. I see what you're saying; however, all things being equal, I would want compensation comparable to my peers if we were doing the same job. Why do the same job at two-thirds pay?
Because you probably aren't doing the same job. Speaking as an employee of one of the big cos, the engineers who get paid $100k base vs $140 base have lower expectations of performance attached to their work.
New grads at Amazon, FB, Google etc have about the same responsibilities. The only thing that affects pay significantly is other offers for matching, education (sometimes Masters/PhD get more) and location (+10% in more expensive areas for Amazon, slight COLA adjustments at Google. None at FB though). Otherwise the bands and responsibilities are fairly consistent.
If anything, since Amazon engineers are expected to be on call for the same things that Google hires SREs to handle, I'll be doing more.
Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?
#200I couldnt get into any of the companies you mentioned and picked Amazon as a last resort. What should I do now? Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.
Now that you're in Amazon your chances of getting into F, G, etc are higher. Believe it or not but the first tier hires plenty from the second tier - and I think Amazon is above second tier.
I have no doubt I'll get another interview at Google at minimum, the question is if I'll be able to pass it. The answer is a resounding "no" if I couldn't pass it now.