Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started • Hacker News Board

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#41

Post by starbeast » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #17

This was the least convincing blog post on this sort of topic that I've read. I didn't see anything that actually painted Amazon in a very bad light. I think anyone should expect bureaucracy to be a major problem at a large company. Complaining about promotions seems a bit unfair since he was only there for 5 months. Moreover, I saw quite a few senior engineers and discovered that I do not want to be alike… This is o…

>I didn't see anything that actually painted Amazon in a very bad light.

The bit that did paint them in an appalling light for me, wasn't the bureaucratic complaints, that just sounds like average corporate bullshit, you either put up with it, or you work somewhere less corporatey. The thing that I thought was really bad was this -

>Semi-legal business trips to Seattle to close gaps and to speed up processes. The management expects you to be ready and spend your 6 hours of personal time driving to / from Seattle. Although legally you are only allowed to go US for trainings or meetings, however, you can find yourself driving (or taking a bus) to Seattle at 6pm Wed, working in a conference room during the next 2 days in order to meet a deadline. I have seen people doing that… The other day I was interrogated for 20 minutes by a border officer and was almost deported at US/Canada Border because I mistakenly stated that I go to work for Amazon at Seattle. I could be denied an entry to US for the next 5 years!

Fuck any company that puts their employees in that position.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#42

Post by jonny_eh » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #16

Pfhreak wrote: post #9

I was super happy with Amazon for 6 years or so. Compensated well, worked hard but fairly (and rarely more than 40-45 hours a week), great peers, good managers, and plenty of interesting work to do. I eventually left because Amazon restricted building games in my spare time with my friends. I just wanted to jam on the weekends on something that would never ship as a creative outlet. Turns out they have a policy that…

Where was this? I ask because what you're describing sounds illegal in California.

Which part? Companies can claim ownership of any work an employee does, related to their employer's line of work. Amazon publishes video games, they're free to claim ownership of any game their employees work on.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#43

Post by ianai » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #39

philliphaydon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet if I interviewed at Amazon (or Google/MS/FB/Uber) I would probably be put in a similar role, despite having been programming since I was 8 with 14 years of commercial experience. I never went to Uni and have no degree.

I know engineers in your situation. I've interviewed a few. It is unusual for someone with 10+ years of experience to be considered for an entry-level job, no matter what kind of education they have.

Wouldn’t that be likely for someone with 10 years of experience in a very niche technology - say cobol - but applying for a C/c++ job?

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#44

Post by agentofoblivion » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

I work at Amazon. Was hired in at L4 and promoted to L5 within one year, which is a little early, but not by much. I think 18 months is typical.

I want to say that I like their promotion process. It’s designed to be transparent and owned by the employee. I’d much rather have an ongoing conversation with my manager, using the doc as an excuse, that keeps the conversation on how close I am and exactly what I need to do to progress. This is far better than just working heads down and quietly wondering when you’ll be picked.

It’s also designed to persist in the event your manager leaves, which is a high likelihood event in the tech world on the scale of years. It would be really bad if your promotion totally depended on the support of one person who then leaves and you’re left at square one. At Amazon, boxes are ticked and they stay ticked if your manager leaves.

Yes, it takes time to maintain this doc. But it mostly is an excuse for you to have an open conversation with your manger and focus the conversation in a way that helps you grow and progress. It may not be perfect, but it’s designed with all the right intentions and in my experience has been very helpful and effective.

I also struggled with trust early on, but that’s not an amazon thing, that’s a human thing. People will tend to not take the new guy whose preaching big changes seriously, especially if he’s at a lower level. In that case, I found the best strategy was to find the high trust members, get their buy in first, and then present it as “I was talking with X and we think...”. That way, you get to borrow their trust level and he heard, and stengthen the relationship with them. Plus, they probably are better and smarter than you, so the conversation will likely lead to you learning something and being better off than just pushing your ideas on people that aren’t really listening.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#45

Post by agoldis » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #19

jurassic wrote: post #4

I think this is getting upvoted because everybody likes to dogpile on Amazon. But nothing this guy says seems to reflect especially poorly on Amazon. If the author is going through another job search now I might recommend taking the piece down; it's not doing you a ton of favors. The summary: guy interviews and accepts an SDE1 role at Amazon, guy resists building alliances with those holding power in the org, guy is…

Someone with 10 years of experience getting offered an SDE1 role is a huge red flag for me and makes me wonder what this person's skill set actually is.

I worked at IT department of Intel for 6 years. Then for about a year as a DevOps. Then for 3 years as JS developer at a startup. Plus few open source contributions and side projects. I wasn't strong in Java or other fundamental languages. == That is my skillset

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#46

Post by kilroy123 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #17

This was the least convincing blog post on this sort of topic that I've read. I didn't see anything that actually painted Amazon in a very bad light. I think anyone should expect bureaucracy to be a major problem at a large company. Complaining about promotions seems a bit unfair since he was only there for 5 months. Moreover, I saw quite a few senior engineers and discovered that I do not want to be alike… This is o…

Wow your comment really made me think. I too have been in the industry for over a decade.

Thinking back, I can not think of a single manager or lead that I wanted to be like, as well.

In fact, because of my last horrible manager, the worst I've ever had, I want to exit the industry all together.

I just want to go my own way and have my own small business.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#47

Post by throwawayamzn98 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

agoldis wrote: post #18

twblalock wrote: post #2

This is the quote that stands out to me: > You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion. Well, yeah. That's how it is in a lot of companies, especially big ones. Doing what is expected of you in your current position is proof that you are well suited for your current position. Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. If the company has a…

Thanks for pointing that out! I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that: > focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete act…

>Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC.

>Not by writing self-promotional documents.

>> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.

>Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.

You're stating the problem to be documenting. Yes, Amazon, I, and many others think that having concrete examples and data outlined explicitly is a good way to make these important decisions. Otherwise you have nepotism and gut-feeling type promotions for employees. If you thought about this more, would you really want promotions handed out randomly? How else do you show you're "completing activities, optimize, reduce costs, work on POC". Do you want to leave this all up to one person, your manager? What if they have a slight against you? Do you want your manager to do the work of documenting your progression? You still run into the single point of failure problem, on top of your manager's workload increasing for each developer, on top of them usually being already busier. Amazon et. al. constantly seek data on doing these types of things better, but you haven't proposed much of an alternative.

(Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own, not my employer's)

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#48

Post by ageitgey » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

agoldis wrote: post #18

twblalock wrote: post #2

This is the quote that stands out to me: > You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion. Well, yeah. That's how it is in a lot of companies, especially big ones. Doing what is expected of you in your current position is proof that you are well suited for your current position. Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. If the company has a…

Thanks for pointing that out! I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that: > focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete act…

> I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job!

Amazon is a giant machine with hundreds of thousands of employees. How many SDE 1s do they hire Evey year globally? Hundreds? More? How do you possibly treat them all fairly when no single person has met them all?

The result is that companies like that become heavily systematized. Even if your boss wanted to promote you, they would have to defend the promotion to their boss which requieres evidence. And that boss has to justify all their promotions to their director or VP by demonstrating how they are making an impact across multiple teams - thus more evidence.

All that takes documentation. There are just too many people involved for promotions to be based on personal relationships.

What if one boss is super promotion-happy and another never promotes? How do you fix it? Because this happens all the time. Thus you need documentation to justify why each person gets promoted so there's at least so level of fairness - even if that documentation is totally detached from how you feel you do on a day to day basis.

Yes, big tech companies are soulless machines and you are right to leave if you don't want to live that life. The only way to succeed there is to learn how to play the game to some extent. It is just how it is. No one else has found a less terrible system that seems to work much better when that many people are involved and are competing with each other for money and promotions.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#49

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:34 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #19

jurassic wrote: post #4

I think this is getting upvoted because everybody likes to dogpile on Amazon. But nothing this guy says seems to reflect especially poorly on Amazon. If the author is going through another job search now I might recommend taking the piece down; it's not doing you a ton of favors. The summary: guy interviews and accepts an SDE1 role at Amazon, guy resists building alliances with those holding power in the org, guy is…

Someone with 10 years of experience getting offered an SDE1 role is a huge red flag for me and makes me wonder what this person's skill set actually is.

[deleted]

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#50

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:36 AM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #42

newnewpdro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where was this? I ask because what you're describing sounds illegal in California.

Which part? Companies can claim ownership of any work an employee does, related to their employer's line of work. Amazon publishes video games, they're free to claim ownership of any game their employees work on.

Having looked again at the specific CA law [1], you appear to be correct. CA is better than most states in this regard, but when there's overlap with the employer's business you're still screwed. I misremembered it as requiring the employee's specific role at the employer to overlap with the independent creation.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...