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My Amazon Burnout Experience

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Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#81

Post by bduerst »

dragontamer wrote: post #79
bduerst wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no evidence here that they have dunning krugers. In fact, their continued employment at a company that routinely cuts the lower performers is probably evidence against them having dunning krugers.

The guy's entire 2794 word anonymous rant is 100% about himself. If he wasn't a narcissist, he'd have managed to fit at least a few words about how a coworker was mistreated.

The 2794 word post is 100% about his experience at Amazon.

Not writing stories about your co-workers qualifies you for NPD now? Why are you splitting hairs?

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#82

Post by therobot24 »

tuyguntn wrote: post #78
therobot24 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> why the fuck does it matter if they are a "great person to work with" Cause no one wants to work with an asshole, no matter how smart they are. There's plenty of other engineers out there that can build systems and save money, maybe not to the specific degree that OP claims to be able to, but unlike OP they'll work with their team.

Cause no one wants to work with an asshole, no matter how smart they are. I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them, where is the equality then? Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms, so wha…

>> I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them

What? Who suggested that.

>> Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms.

No one claimed that everyone/anyone needs to better in social situations. However, there's a clear and obvious difference between lack of social skills and being an asshole.

>> so what? should they die? should they always live in dirt?

Or they could stop being an asshole? They could try to resist their urges to consistently alienate and discredit the work of their team mates. Maybe give that a shot.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#83

Post by tsunamifury »

amzn_throwaway wrote: post #80
tsunamifury wrote: post #26

It seems obvious that this person is aware they don't work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot. He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that 'got in his way' were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospe…

I wasn't planning on responding to anything, but your comment has enough truth that the criticism is worth responding to. I am aware that I don't work as well as I could with others, especially those who hold lots of power but little technical aptitude. Its not out of a smug sense of superiority...I recognize these people are very much my superior in other ways. It is probably limitations of my vocabulary and inexper…

I've been in an identical position, at a more tradition place. I worked on the Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger and I couldn't figure out if everyone around me was an idiot or if I was.

The best thing that ever happened to me was that I was fired. I did a few critical things during that transition for their IT, but in the end I didn't really matter, even though I could claim hundreds of billions of dollars in new transactions.

Wells wasn't wrong and I wasn't either -- we were just wrong for each other.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#84

Post by tuyguntn »

therobot24 wrote: post #82
tuyguntn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause no one wants to work with an asshole, no matter how smart they are. I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them, where is the equality then? Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms, so wha…

>> I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them What? Who suggested that. >> Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms. No one claimed that everyone/anyone needs to better in social situations. How…

What? Who suggested that.

Everyone has their own opinion on that topic, but if we rely on Wikipedia [1]

Human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a function in organizations designed to -->maximize employee performance

another topic tells

Organizations will engage in a broad range of human resource management practices to capitalize on those assets.[2]

If your HR cannot capitalize assets, if your HR cannot maximize performance, if your HR hired asshole, who is the responsible? HR

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#85

Post by [deleted] »

amzn_throwaway wrote: post #80
tsunamifury wrote: post #26

It seems obvious that this person is aware they don't work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot. He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that 'got in his way' were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospe…

I wasn't planning on responding to anything, but your comment has enough truth that the criticism is worth responding to. I am aware that I don't work as well as I could with others, especially those who hold lots of power but little technical aptitude. Its not out of a smug sense of superiority...I recognize these people are very much my superior in other ways. It is probably limitations of my vocabulary and inexper…

[deleted]

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#86

Post by dragontamer »

bduerst wrote: post #81
dragontamer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's entire 2794 word anonymous rant is 100% about himself. If he wasn't a narcissist, he'd have managed to fit at least a few words about how a coworker was mistreated.

The 2794 word post is 100% about his experience at Amazon. Not writing stories about your co-workers qualifies you for NPD now? Why are you splitting hairs?

He's talking about his management and how it affected himself.

The fact that he has failed to account for how his management effects his team is very telling about the guy's personality.

I'm not asking for much, just a paragraph or two that proves that this "throwaway" account isn't 100% narcissistic.

But again, nearly 3000 words and nothing about teammates or coworkers in there. That's pretty telling honestly.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#87

Post by ubercore »

bduerst wrote: post #75
dragontamer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the author is capable of developing systems that save the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year, why the fuck does it matter if they are a "great person to work with"? If the author is a narcissist, they would be mistaken about saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Remember, this is from the author's point of view. Allegedly, he was working with PH.Ds and others who disagreed wi…

There is absolutely no evidence here that they have dunning krugers. In fact, their continued employment at a company that routinely cuts the lower performers is probably evidence against them having dunning krugers.

It's not a disorder, like something that someone "has". It's a logical fallacy that affects most (all?) human brains to varying degrees.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#88

Post by dragontamer »

ubercore wrote: post #87
bduerst wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no evidence here that they have dunning krugers. In fact, their continued employment at a company that routinely cuts the lower performers is probably evidence against them having dunning krugers.

It's not a disorder, like something that someone "has". It's a logical fallacy that affects most (all?) human brains to varying degrees.

Good read.

This is an important note. _Everyone_ has the Dunning Kruger effect. It is a glitch that occurs in virtually all human brains, including myself and yourself.

That's why its very important to keep coworkers in mind. You can be a lot more objective about other people than you can be about yourself.

Its like the eternal joke goes. If you ask a team "who is the best programmer", everyone will probably say "me" or "myself".

However, if you want to _really_ know the best programmer, ask the team who the 2nd best programmer is.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#89

Post by nsfyn55 »

Polymath? Pshhhaw. And I thought referring to oneself as a "genius" was the pinnacle of self-aggrandizement. Sorry friend you are not a genius, you are not a polymath, and given amazon's volume a 6 or 7 figure savings is likely indistinguishable from a rounding error. And while we're on the subject. Why doesn't he share the nature of his advanced degree in a quantitative discipline that puts him on equal footing with the world's leading econometricians rather than pulling the old neo bullet dodge?

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#90

Post by therobot24 »

tuyguntn wrote: post #84
therobot24 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them What? Who suggested that. >> Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms. No one claimed that everyone/anyone needs to better in social situations. How…

What? Who suggested that. Everyone has their own opinion on that topic, but if we rely on Wikipedia [1] Human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a function in organizations designed to -->maximize employee performance another topic tells Organizations will engage in a broad range of human resource management practices to capitalize on those assets. [2] If your HR cannot capitalize assets, if your HR cannot ma…

ok so i misunderstood your previous comment, i took "should create working environment for them" as segregating employees based on things like social skills.

I definitely agree that HR should use other measures of accepting an applicant other than possible performance. But that doesn't mean that someone being an asshole is HR's fault. You're basically saying that there is consistent negative correlation between performance and social skills - which is not true.

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