Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 149 posts

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#121

Post by woadwarrior01 »

Slartie wrote: post #116
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's Facebook. I've met plenty of people from other companies on that list without a university degree. Although, engineering levels are not something that people usually talk about outside of their close social circles.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#122

Post by meuk »

> "The major algorithmic / coding / intellectual challenges that I faced were of 3 types:

  - dealing with technical debt of other systems
  - strictly following a policy or a standard
  - fighting with the in-house dev environment
> There were very few interesting problems that actually required to find an effective solution / optimize / enforce security."

That's how I feel as well at my current job, but it seems to hold for almost all IT jobs I've encountered.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#125

Post by adregan »

austincheney wrote: post #59
kilroy123 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All the people that I wanted to be like, growing up as a developer, were people who seemed more focused on their programming hobby than their programming job. Here is the take away that I noticed about those people and have attempted to apply to myself: * Extremely focused on product quality and defensive code * Maintenance focused more than feature focused * Excellent with documentation * Indirectly focused on self-…

That's a great list and echos what I have noticed about developers I want to emulate as well.

Any tips on how to be "Maintenance focused more than feature focused" if the culture is focused on pumping out features on tight deadlines? I have, of late, found myself engineering more on nights and weekends—trying to clean up and refactor the code that we have to pump out to meet the deadlines. However, I'd love to find a way to make that kind of work part of the day to day.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#126

Post by rburhum »

solatic wrote: post #55
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…

> Complaining about promotions seems a bit unfair since he was only there for 5 months He has a decade of industry experience, took a new-grad level because he figured he needed to get his foot in the door, and discovered that the promotions process doesn't take his prior experience into account; he might as well not have worked anywhere else at all. The real issue he has with Amazon isn't that it's bureaucratic - th…

He should not have accepted the job if he wasn't happy with the SDE position in the first place. It would have saved Amazon and him money if he would have been upfront about what he wanted.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#127

Post by jahlove »

jelling wrote: post #60
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.

Amazon busts everyone down at least one or two pegs in title. A friend with extensive agency experience joined their creative team and when I saw his title I was shocked but he explained that's what they do everyone. He say this leads to people frequently introducing themselves to others by saying "I used to be title X at company Y". SE1 is ridiculous for someone with 10 years experience as either they deserve a much…

he commented above that he had 10 years of IT and DevOps. I found the article's glossing over that detail to be pretty misleading.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#128

Post by sjg007 »

cblum wrote: post #67
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 thought the part where they offered him an SDE I position despite his 10 years of experience was pretty bad. It does seem like standard policy among tech companies though. I came to the US to work for Microsoft (I'm no longer there) as a level 59 (lowest SDE level), despite having almost 6 years of experience at that point. My wife (an SDET) had even more experience than me (she was a Senior SDET before we moved he…

It's probably because unless the candidate has some external references of superior qualification (i.e. known expert) and that the case can be made to the team, then it's better to level them in at a lower level so that you don't rock the boat for your current employees. It also sets a work hard tone.

One thing the author gets right is that it's not necessarily about being brilliant but being able to work in the context of the team. And this defines the promotion ladder. This is the build trust thing. It's not specifically innovative and it leaves a lot on the table (which is why people leave.. to have a bigger impact).. but after you reach the "bar" so to speak then you will have more higher level work then you can handle.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#129

Post by gigatexal »

shortoncash wrote: post #80
gigatexal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This reads like a fish out of water experience for someone expecting a company with hundreds of thousands of employees to act not like any other huge corporation. Of course there’s going to be politics, culture as religion, infighting, boredom etc.

Perhaps off topic, but are there any podcasts out there for learning to cope with or adjust to the sorts of things this guy talks about in his blog post?

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/08/07/you-are-not-...

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#130

Post by gigatexal »

gigatexal wrote: post #129
shortoncash wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps off topic, but are there any podcasts out there for learning to cope with or adjust to the sorts of things this guy talks about in his blog post?

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/08/07/you-are-not-...

This takes a bold stance but it’s something
Post reply on HN