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Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

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Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#241

Post by apexkid »

jkingsbery wrote: post #169

I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office. Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like th…

You seem to be a well conditioned Amazonian because you possess the same nature of dismissing concerns instantly rather than accepting that something is probably wrong and needs to be fixed.

If people have complained on similar lines throughout on Hacker news or NYC article or other sources, that means there is a pattern. Maybe you have been fortunate enough to not have experienced some of the misery faced by others, but please follow amazon's most important principle of being data driven and think about it.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#242

Post by uptownfunk »

jamdamu wrote: post #7

Amazon has taken steps to prevent abusive behavior from occurring, such as creating a process for engineers to challenge managerial pips and allowing engineers to transfer while on development plans. In my opinion, these steps seem more like treating the symptom than the cause. The overall culture remains the same. Engineers are still treated by management as resources to be allocated, and for me, this is the hardest…

Yep, that’s why I ran away fast and got my mba as soon as possible. As despised as the degree is here on HN, it’s a decent route to getting out of the now commoditized swe role.

Working in the role has taught me so much about how shitty it feels to be treated like a commodity, if I ever make a transition to management, one of my top priorities will be treating human beings like.. human beings.. just make sure the sprint gets done on time.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#243

Post by odonnellryan »

CalRobert wrote: post #92
sjapkee wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no free food/drinks It's sooooo important.

To each their own. I struggle with compulsive eating and free food at a workplace correlates with weight gain for me. Of course, that's just me. I'm not saying you should be deprived. I like getting a free beer or two on Thirsty Thursdays but if I were a recovering alcoholic I would hate it.

I agree. Nice to have free coffee though.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#244

Post by odonnellryan »

cm2012 wrote: post #16

The talk here about sticking at a job that makes you cry, when you have in demand skills and can work anywhere, is nuts to me.

Businesses do not want their employees to have mobility. They structure environments to prevent mobility.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#245

Post by BeetleB »

smueller1234 wrote: post #226
animex wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my limited experience PIPs are an HR process to document why they are firing you, not any real stab at recovery / rehabilitation.

That could well be the case at your employer. However, the reason why I wrote the lengthy post you're replying to is that this is by no means universal. This means that if every employee starts with the assumption that it's just a firing tool, the chance to succeed drops dramatically. That's because instead of heeding the warning and pulling oneself together, one might disengage, become cynical, and give up. So pleas…

>So please, before anyone checks out in that situation, pay close attention to what's been happening in the department

The issue is that much of this is an opaque process (for both good and bad reasons). People are forced to make an assumption one way or the other, because they have no access to the data. At that point, the prisoner's dilemma dominates.

I don't doubt companies like yours exist, but are they the norm? I've not met one person in real life who has been on a PIP and it was not a case of the manager trying to find an excuse to get rid of him. Netflix's HR got rid of them because they were being used by managers to get rid of employees.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#246

Post by BeetleB »

southphillyman wrote: post #167
CamTin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mainly a way to avoid having to pay out unemployment insurance: it provides documentation that you were fired "for cause". Most US companies do it, so you can't ever really count on getting unemployment benefits.

My understanding is that incompetence is not a justifiable cause for firing and denying unemployment benefits. The fire-able behavior has to be "intentional" in most states.

>My understanding is that incompetence is not a justifiable cause for firing and denying unemployment benefits. The fire-able behavior has to be "intentional" in most states.

Check your state. In my state, it is. Being fired for performance reasons disqualifies you from benefits. My company is "nice" enough that they openly state they will not challenge unemployment benefit claims if they fire you for that reason.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#247

Post by paxunix »

stone-monkey wrote: post #87
Cofike wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's insane. I can't tell if the people who say it isn't bad just have good teams or are lying. The fact that there is a chance of crying at work based on your manager is absurd and washes away any good of working at that company.

I can easily believe it. The overall structure may be designed to be ruthless to employees, but teams and orgs have a ton of leeway to form their own culture. They purposely break up teams that get too big in order to keep with the idea of "two pizza teams", that is, a team small enough that two pizzas would be enough to feed everyone. The team and managers set the tone of culture at this level. At the next level up,…

It is often said that people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. I've seen it be true much more often than not.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#248

Post by paxunix »

apexkid wrote: post #165

Nothing has changed. I have worked in Amazon for many years now in India. Jeff himself doesn't seem interested in taking work culture seriously. I have never seen any interviews of him after NYC article where he accepted that something was going wrong and needs to be fixed. Instead he turned the whole debate into work-life harmony rhetoric. In India, the situation is far worse than US. There is less transparency and…

Working for Amazon in India is almost like working for an entirely different company and is not a great comparison to working for Amazon in the US.

Cultural norms in the US apply in the US; cultural norms in India apply in India. I've generally found Indian managers and developers to approach the work entirely differently than their US counterparts. Not a negative--just an observation.

There does seem to be a pervasive undercurrent of "if I do good work on my team here in India, I can get out of here and go to the US as soon as my promo goes through". This sentiment naturally comes out in behaviour on teams and around coworkers.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#249

Post by paxunix »

jkingsbery wrote: post #169

I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office. Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like th…

To counter those objecting to your statement of "Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry":

Everyone likes to pick those nits. I also work in the retail org at Amazon and have only had a crunch time twice in the almost 11 years I've been here (and it lasted two to three weeks both times). Software is hard and planning its implementation and development is hard. Get over yourselves and accept occasional imperfections in the process. (If they are _not_ occasional in your work environment, consider that a suggestion that you get out--Amazon or otherwise).

Anyone saying Amazon is uniformly this or uniformly that is as full of shit as anyone saying it about any other company.

People who read these threads and decide "well, now that I've seen this, there's no way I'd work for Amazon" are doing themselves a disservice, just as much as if they substituted any other company for "Amazon". Collect your data; talk to people that work there--you will get a variety of opinions. Bash-posts on HN and Reddit suffer from severe confirmation bias.

People that like working at Amazon and have had an overwhelmingly positive experience (like me), often don't wade into these threads because separating their signal from noise is really tedious and we have other more fun things to be doing.

Re: Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now?

#250

Post by paxunix »

apexkid wrote: post #241
jkingsbery wrote: post #169

I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office. Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like th…

You seem to be a well conditioned Amazonian because you possess the same nature of dismissing concerns instantly rather than accepting that something is probably wrong and needs to be fixed. If people have complained on similar lines throughout on Hacker news or NYC article or other sources, that means there is a pattern. Maybe you have been fortunate enough to not have experienced some of the misery faced by others,…

One sometimes-unfortunate thing about the Internet and global accessibility to other peoples' opinions is that it's easy to find other people "just like you". This leads to a signal amplification that doesn't necessarily mean the problem is as bad or as far-reaching as the group would have you think. It certainly can be, but concluding that from a limited news sources with unspoken agendas isn't accurate. We can all get in a huddle and complain about things, but there is a non-small number of people who just ignore it--even though they would have a positive counter-argument to offer--and instead go on about their business because they don't want to get involved.

Remember that when you're reading the news (here or elsewhere, since rarely is news generated on HN) you and your outrage are being used for marketing (and possibly furthering some other agenda).

I agree with your closing sentence about being data driven and thinking about it--getting out of the news bubble and using your own brain to analyze something is good.

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