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Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

nytimes.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#41

Post by [deleted] »

parennoob wrote: post #15
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

I see a lot of comments on the Times regarding unions. We take a lot of things like weekends for granted, and many of these tech companies seem to treat them as a flexible inconvenience. I wonder if a hundred years from now we will look on the taxes to our mental health today as similarly as we imagine the truly backbreaking labor of the 19th century.

Why wait a hundred years? If we have any 60+ year olds on HN that have worked in tech all their life (I can recall of at least one person like this chiming in on discussions in the past) -- then they can probably comment on what sort of toll this takes on your life in the longer term.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#42

Post by [deleted] »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #36
MCRed wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, your internship is not representative. They are trying got trick you into working there. You were treated special in a number of ways. Further, AWS is isolated to some extend from the abusive nature of the company by being a separate division. A lot of what you say is right out of the amazon weltanshaung-- its cult has seeped in to some extent. You're giving us rationalizations for the abusive nature of the wo…

It'd be more appropriate to respond to this comment's assertions than downvoting it.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#43

Post by musesum »

When it was my own company, I loved the excitement of the hunt. I slept under my desk. We kicked ass. Even though some of us had lives outside of work.

More recently, I worked at at a startup where it was possible to have a family and get stuff done. It was pretty cool!

It seems like, for work-life balance, the US is somewhere between Japan and Switzerland. What would it take to be more like the Swiss?

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#44

Post by Bahamut »

MCRed wrote: post #34
pacala wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where on earth do they find money to pay the wages for each wave of employees? Are their shareholders blind?

Well, they pay less money when people leave, and one of their approaches to "solve" the "problem" of people leaving is to get increasingly junior and inexperienced people. The team now is made up mostly of people whose programming experience is a 6 week boot camp designed to take non programmers and teach them how to program... led by two people who seem to be also-rans who never learned anything after the java boom…

I once worked for a startup that did this - pretty much fired a lot of the competent engineers, or they quit. A lot of engineers complained about the ungodly hours many had to put in for unrealistic deadlines that were pushed down by sales.

Supposedly the executives heard about the complaints that their best engineers were ready to walk out, and promised to change the way things were run - I got word recently that they were still continuing the same overpromising, which led to unsurprising unstable backend & frontend issues of various degrees. One product manager described it to me as setting everyone up for failure.

I'm increasingly convinced that it is the sign of bad leadership, and people with no business being in management or an executive position.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#45

Post by cthalupa »

libber wrote: post #22

I found this interesting, feels like the most realistic account so far - http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3 I just feel bad for amazon people I meet, the 2 year cliff and high pressure oncall simply isn't a thing at the other tech companies. At least for me and ive worked at a few of them (plural of anicdote isn't data but still) Life seems strictly worse at amazon.

> high pressure oncall simply isn't a thing at the other tech companies. At least for me and ive worked at a few of them

I think you've been pretty lucky. I've never had a job in IT where there wasn't high pressure oncall.

But... I work in ops. I suppose that might be where the difference lies. I don't know anyone that works on the Ops site of IT that hasn't had to deal with on cal responsibilities.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#46

Post by Crito »

MCRed wrote: post #30
onaplane wrote: post #21

Okay, these articles are getting really ridiculous. I just finished a Summer internship at Amazon. While it's true that there's more pressure on employees than other places I've worked, it's really not that bad. It definitely doesn't feel cutthroat, and an 80-85 hour work week is definitely not normal! The vast majority (I'd say >70%, and I think that's conservative) of people work 35-45, depending on what needs to g…

Sorry, your internship is not representative. They are trying got trick you into working there. You were treated special in a number of ways. Further, AWS is isolated to some extend from the abusive nature of the company by being a separate division. A lot of what you say is right out of the amazon weltanshaung-- its cult has seeped in to some extent. You're giving us rationalizations for the abusive nature of the wo…

From my experience, AWS is one of the more egregious offenders when it comes to overworking workers.

The joke, when I was there, was that if you work in Kindle you don't have oncall, but you'll put in 80 hours a week anyway. If you work in AWS, you'll be able to do 9 to 5, but you'll be putting in 80 hours with oncall anyway.

From my experience as well, Amazon treats their interns as they treat their regular employees. You don't do oncall, but interns definitely get wrapped up in working way more than 40 hours, depending on the team. When I quit, my team had an intern that was pulling the same hours that I was. What you have to understand is these interns are straight out of college, where they do 80 hour weeks (and PAY for the experience!), and many are a bit 'starstruck' to be working for a brand-name tech company. They put up with shit that they shouldn't.

> He downvoters: I know HN teaches you that silencing people you disagree with is good, but try making a counter argument.

The above quotation is the reason I downvoted you. Stop worrying about karma, stop complaining about it, and just let conversations flow naturally. If other people think your post is neglected, they'll vote it back up or say so. Your post hasn't even been up for an hour, so relax.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#47

Post by Crito »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

I see a lot of comments on the Times regarding unions. We take a lot of things like weekends for granted, and many of these tech companies seem to treat them as a flexible inconvenience. I wonder if a hundred years from now we will look on the taxes to our mental health today as similarly as we imagine the truly backbreaking labor of the 19th century.

I don't think a union would solve this.

I'd sooner quit a shitty job than stay in it, and hope the union makes it better for me. Much faster turnaround when I take matters into my own hand.

If this were the sort of industry where I couldn't be working again with higher pay within the week, then maybe I'd consider sticking around for organized action..

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#48

Post by goldenkey »

MCRed wrote: post #37
libber wrote: post #22

I found this interesting, feels like the most realistic account so far - http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3 I just feel bad for amazon people I meet, the 2 year cliff and high pressure oncall simply isn't a thing at the other tech companies. At least for me and ive worked at a few of them (plural of anicdote isn't data but still) Life seems strictly worse at amazon.

His account seems much better than what I experienced. I still think he has swallowed too much koolaide-- and this is why Amazon focuses on the young kids they can make an impression on.

I've worked at Amazon and you are absolutely right. The implied "get it done" pressure, basically just socially awkward managers who have no self-value themselves, pushing the new people to work ridiculous hours. Not mentioning hours though, but basically getting unexperienced youth to waste away their lives at their jobs. It's sad.. it's definitely a mental and manipulative tactic. It's really cancerous because these exact kind of mentally defective people who spurry to get things done, usually last-licks from Microsoft, become managers. Then they apply that silly pressure to everyone under them, and elegance fades away. Literally horrible code, with little polymorphism, less elegant frameworks, etc. Just a side affect of "get it done." Anyhow, Amazon isn't rosy. It's a dumping ground, and yeah, the FLP process where people get culled is just a side affect of the value of work-life balance, human empathy there. I would never work at Amazon again.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#49

Post by zzalpha »

onaplane wrote: post #21

Okay, these articles are getting really ridiculous. I just finished a Summer internship at Amazon. While it's true that there's more pressure on employees than other places I've worked, it's really not that bad. It definitely doesn't feel cutthroat, and an 80-85 hour work week is definitely not normal! The vast majority (I'd say >70%, and I think that's conservative) of people work 35-45, depending on what needs to g…

So to be clear you feel your one anecdote as an intern invalidates the numerous accounts of career Amazon employees?

And it's the articles that are ridiculous?

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#50

Post by orthoganol »

greggman wrote: post #11
astrowilliam wrote: post #4

I've worked at a big internet company where the culture was very toxic and not a good place to work, let alone be a normal human being. Pushy, rude and underhanded people were plentiful and were willing to throw you so far under the bus at any given moment that you would never find your way back out. This became evident to me when I went on my lunch break after working there for about 4 months. Each employee was give…

I probably shouldn't post this but what the heck. I quit on the spot twice when a company was dickish. Once I had a friend, previous co-worker, that would visit. He'd come into my office and we'd play games (this was a game company). This had happened about once every month or 2 for a year or so. One time I had to go to the restroom. I came back and he was gone. The new boss had escorted him out of the office. I quit…

I've done the same, heated in the moment. Basically our two most senior devs quit, so a large burden shifted onto me, and I was suddenly the most tenured dev on our team, with knowledge of systems no one else had and could not even easily get since the others (and others before) had quit. But curiously they promoted the new guy instead of me. Ok fine... I told my boss, an arrogant VP at the company, that I should be paid x amount for my increased role and importance to the product. He got back to me 2 weeks later (took his time with this), and said sorry. Quit on the spot. They had to completely overhaul their roadmap and soon after that team folded, got absorbed into another, the VP got fired, and I got a sweet new gig. The execs were too thick headed and full of themselves to see that my quitting would cost them exponentially more money than a relatively modest salary increase based on my increased role. Not a single regret.
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