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Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

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Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#111

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

simaracode wrote: post #7
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…

Agree 100% it’s part of your job. You need to manage your promotion rhythm in any company or you will be left just to the context or interest of your manager.

I don't think it's so cut and dried. I concur that "100% it’s part of your job" in the sense that ultimately you are responsible for looking after your own interests, but disagree that this completely absolves your manager / company responsibilities to evaluate promotions by their own initiatives. If anything, not doing so sows discontent.

I was (un)fortunate that my first few managers were proactive in rewarding my good performance, until I had a manager who wasn't. Under the new manager, my peers had all been promoted in due time, and my feedback from them and said manager had been positive, as he'd expressed during our frequent 1:1, so I wasn't worried about my progression. That was until I casually brought the subject up at a 1:1. He of course affirmed that it would be forthcoming, but from his demeanor my gut told me that he hadn't given it a thought until that moment. I believe this was not out of malice or office politics, and in retrospect my coworkers had dropped hints to me that I should have broached the subject sooner rather than later -- this was how this organization operated -- but the idea was so foreign to me that I didn't quite process their message. Had it been malicious I would have been screwed. Ever since I've erred on the side of impudence. I hate it, but...[0]

No analogy is perfect, but suppose if you do your job, you expect to be compensated; if you do a good job, you expect to be promoted, get a raise / bonus, etc. Would it be acceptable for a company to not pay its employees unless they bring it up each pay period, because it's "100% [...] part of [their] job"? Indeed there are industries -- often low end retail -- where this happens a lot, and this assuredly contributes to employee dissatisfaction. Similarly, some people would prefer if their work speak for itself, and managers / companies wouldn't neglect to promote them just because they don't bring it up. When the OP found out that's not now it worked at Amazon (and many other large enterprises), he was understandably miffed, as I was from my own experience.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#112

Post by vkou »

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.

The only thing it may be a red flag of, is of the Amazon interviewing process. Or, of how poorly he interviewed, which may be tangential to how well he does his job.

It doesn't matter if your name is Alan Turing, or Donald Knuth. If you don't do great at solving five pet questions, posed to you by five software engineers of average ability, you're going to get an offer for a junior position.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#113

Post by Kurtz79 »

agoldis wrote: post #92
ap3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the article How many years of SDE experience do you say you have? Not sure I would would count devops or IT though

I mentioned "10 years of experience in the industry", is it fair?

Then it's equally fair on part of your employer, which is interviewing for a software dev position, to consider as relevant experience only those where you actually did software development...

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#114

Post by kamaal »

sverhagen wrote: post #96
ap3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you accept a lower level position? How long did it take you to get promoted back to your level ?

>Why did you accept a lower level position? Isn't that clear by now? People want to get into the most famous companies. They think that by osmosis they'll be better engineers themselves, it looks good on the resume, they may be exposed to some brilliance, and, surely, once they're there, these companies will recognize their mistake and promote them into their rightful position. Not to mention that it's notoriously ha…

On a different note. SDE1s at some place Facebook get paid better than SDE3 at your other non-web companies.

Also its a tad little foolish to throw away money for designation, in your 20s when you can save up and use that money for retirement later. Especially given the fact that SDE1 and SDE3 have to both write the same code.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#115

Post by imhoguy »

Caillebotte wrote: post #31

20% coding is very sad. I hate to think how many great minds are being wasted this way. After starting work at a startup, I feel more fulfilled in my daily life. I can easily say I spend around 80-90% of my time coding and feel I contribute much more than I ever did at any of these jobs.

In an already grown company there may be not much of new code to be produced outside R&D departments. Most of others work is ongoing operational maintenance, gluing customizations, not-yet automated grunt stuff.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#116

Post by Slartie »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #72
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 was in the same boat as you two years ago, (coding since I was 5, no uni degree, 14 years of commercial experience) and I interviewed successfully at a FAANG company (where I still work), for a senior role.

Let me guess: Netflix?

From the outside (I've never worked at any of FAANG, I don't even work in the US) it seems to me that they are the most likely of those companies to actually hire seniors as seniors, simply because they appear to have made hiring preferably seniors (in terms of experience, not in terms of age) a strategy, while the others all seem to have made hiring huge numbers of inexperienced juniors their strategy.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#117

Post by windowsworkstoo »

jijji wrote: post #61

In his post he talks about how he doesn't want to talk about money. I'd rather tell them I need $200/hr up front in the first email then to have to go through all their time wasting interviews and find out they aren't going to pay what I need.

Yep, this is what I do for solicited and unsolicited approaches. Weeds out the pretenders and also signals that you are a serious person. Price signalling works!

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#118

Post by vntok »

enraged_camel wrote: post #40
lilyball wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This seems like an exceptionally harsh thing to say, especially without knowing any of the relevant details.

Well we do have more details. The OP wrote in this very topic about his software developing experience: he only worked "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"

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#119

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

philliphaydon wrote: post #29
lilyball wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

Ex Amazon here. If you think you would be offered a junior role just because you don't have a degree, think again. Degrees are treated as a plus; the answers to technical questions is what really matter, including the ones or past projects.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#120

Post by throwaway648 »

agoldis wrote: post #58
throwaway648 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't understand why the candidate with 10 years of industry experience decided to move forward with interviewing after being told it was for an SDE1 position. | given the fact that I wasn’t too efficient with Java (it was not the primary tool in my past experience) Maybe because his 10 years didn’t give him the relevant knowledge? Also, his attitudes sends a clear ”I’m a junior” message, so SDE1 might have…

Please explain. I don't mind to be called "junior" or whatever title you stick on me, but what is "junior attitude"?

For one, you accepted a junior position. Then you seemed to expect to be treated as a senior.

Then you seemed to be surprised by the issues, again showing you lacked the experience of a senior. I feel you got good guidance but it feels it was not well received.

The away team experience also felt a bit juniory. Your requests we not priotorized high enough but you didn’t find the tools or means to go around it. Understanding their needs and life in general would be an indication of seniority.

Finally, I think it takes at least a year to see how you are able to cope and progress. It takes time and effort to make any changes in a huge corporation.

In the end, I think that you would not have enjoyed yourself working in that environment so you made the right call. It takes certain character traits to be able to enjoy navigating and gaming such corporate culture.

Source: ex enterpreneur with two decades of experience, atm employed in a >100k employee corporation and loving it.

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