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Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

nytimes.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#71

Post by wpietri »

danielweber wrote: post #59
zzalpha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Lots of people are providing tales of their personal Amazon experiences. Many of them are bad. This one happens to be good. The way groupthink happens is when the minority is afraid to express their thoughts.

That's a straw man. He's not criticizing the intern for saying that he had a nice summer. His objection is to the intern assuming that three months in a cushy program at the beginning of his career qualifies him to judge other people's stories and the work of professional journalists.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#72

Post by wpietri »

justinv wrote: post #68
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…

I'm a former intern from AWS (6 month non-tech internship). Now I work in a completely different part of the company full time. My experience is exactly like what 'onaplane' wrote. Internship was great & very rewarding from a career/working on cool stuff perspective. What I saw was that people who worked long did it because they wanted to (I work(ed) long sometimes because I wanted to!). 40-50 was the norm for AWS &…

> You're doing the exact same thing in reverse.

Could you explain what you mean by that? It sounds like you're suggesting that he's part of an anti-Amazon cult, which I'm having trouble making sense of.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#73

Post by wpietri »

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 totally agree. I can see why he would blame a lot of this on himself, but I think it's a mistake. A good manager would have been keeping an eye on him, helping him set boundaries, reducing schedule pressure, etc. If this guy were the only one to have a problem at Amazon that would be one thing, but the sheer number of stories points to deep problems with culture and management.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#75

Post by Pyxl101 »

scarmig wrote: post #20
greggman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

First boss doesn't seem that bad, actually. Made a mistake, obviously, but he was new and maybe just getting his footing, and having an unaccompanied outsider inside the office is frowned upon by virtually all companies. The second manager sounds like a particularly unique combination of dickish and clueless.

> First boss doesn't seem that bad, actually. Made a mistake, obviously, but he was new and maybe just getting his footing, and having an unaccompanied outsider inside the office is frowned upon by virtually all companies.

He could have stayed with the outsider ("escorted" them) until the employee came back from the restroom. That's what I would do if I found a random person in my work building who had a visitor's badge and claimed to be there escorted by an employee.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#76

Post by Pyxl101 »

MCRed wrote: post #27
greggman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In 2014 I worked for a company where the whole team quit. From Summer to fall they built a team who built a product. By february all of them had quit or been fired, except for one programmer (and me who had just been hired.) Did the company learn from this? no. We built a new team, built a new product, and by february of the next year we had all quit. They are now on their third team. Nothings changed . Management co…

What company was that?

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#77

Post by carrotleads »

orthoganol wrote: post #50
greggman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the fact that they chose to decline your request shows that many execs are so used to people putting up with BS... I bet this exec team doesn't make the same mistake again but many will, cause very rarely do SDE ask for a raise.

Even then it's after they have put up with lots of BS and are used to status quo that they rarely ever quit.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#78

Post by mcintyre1994 »

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…

Just a small counterpoint - I interned at a large investment bank and while absolutely they treat you special and everything's very slick and polished, they made no effort to hide or shelter us from long working hours. People doing the research stuff (the ones who take limos from canary wharf at 11pm) were expected to work them hours (they even exempted them from some events) and everyone was open about their hours.

What I'm trying to say is I find it hard to believe the Amazon make-interns-feel-good show (which almost certainly does exist) can hide the massive difference in working hours discussed.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#79

Post by aaronbrethorst »

justinv wrote: post #68
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…

I'm a former intern from AWS (6 month non-tech internship). Now I work in a completely different part of the company full time. My experience is exactly like what 'onaplane' wrote. Internship was great & very rewarding from a career/working on cool stuff perspective. What I saw was that people who worked long did it because they wanted to (I work(ed) long sometimes because I wanted to!). 40-50 was the norm for AWS &…

Which neighborhood do you live in? Why did you choose it?

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#80

Post by johneth »

chambo622 wrote: post #52
MCRed wrote: post #23

My experience at Amazon was straight up abusive. It is a hostile work environment and it should not be tolerated. If you have any self respect, do not go to work there. The only way abusive companies can learn is when their abuse is discovered and they have trouble hiring good employees. The apologists and the rationalizers and the Amazon PR machine are out in full force. this is not surprising, because the core meth…

> Reality is, he's a master manipulator, a poor business man, and terrible at technology and leadership. Your argument really breaks down here. Reality contradicts these assertions.

> terrible at technology and leadership

While I'm not suggesting that he's not successful in many ways, he's also been (and still is) quite bad at these two things.

On the technology front, the terribleness that immediately comes to mind are the Fire Phone, Prime Instant Video's UI, Amazon's UI in general, their godawful search, and so on.

On the leadership front... well... there are all these accusations of an awful workplace culture stemming from the top man.

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