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Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

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Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#131

Post by sridca »

encoderer wrote: post #33

My manager told me it is trust that I yet to earn — people don’t trust my judgement and I need to build good relationships with decision makers. I agreed. But that what is called “politics”. I don't think this is a good example of "politics". I think this is primarily about earning a place in a team among the people who have been sweating it out for years. It doesn't happen overnight, and it's especially difficult in…

In any case, why do we humans persistently depend on the emotion of trust instead of using our native intelligence to appraise each situation as they come?

Trust is an archaic emotion that may have had its value in primitive societies living amidst predators and such demanding instant reactions. However we now live in a safer modern society where newcomers to the team don't come with an intention to kill and plunder others; why not just use the brain's intelligence to deal with their proposals? Why keep these archaic hierarchies alive and the need to "earn one's place" in them?

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#132

Post by sridca »

cblum wrote: post #76
encoderer wrote: post #33

My manager told me it is trust that I yet to earn — people don’t trust my judgement and I need to build good relationships with decision makers. I agreed. But that what is called “politics”. I don't think this is a good example of "politics". I think this is primarily about earning a place in a team among the people who have been sweating it out for years. It doesn't happen overnight, and it's especially difficult in…

I think this might be a cultural issue. It's anecdotal but I think I can offer some perspective. I've been living in the US for several years now, but I'm originally from Brazil. I started my career there. In Brazil, my experience was always that people initially trust newcomers, and only lose their trust if they fuck up. I always felt trusted when joining a new team, and thankfully I never fucked up. But I saw peopl…

I think India is similar to Brazil in that regard.

If someone truly cares about cultural acceptance (above and beyond the superficial diversity jabber), it would serve them well to start by replacing trust (and distrust) with intelligent appraisals.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#133

Post by eridius »

lsc wrote: post #87
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.

Eh, as a datapoint, I also have no degree. I worked at google for a few years as a contractor (with 15+ years industry experience before that) - A few months back, I interviewed and was hired on as a L4 (L3, as I understand it, is where you come in after college, L5 is senior.) My personal impression is that it was pretty clear to all involved what they'd need to pay me, and they slotted me in at a tech level that ma…

~~Correct, L4 is the same thing as SDE2.~~

EDIT: I completely screwed that up. L4–L6 map to SDE1–SDE3.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#134

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://twitter.com/developertea/status/1059517242407374848?...

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#135

Post by eridius »

agoldis wrote: post #45
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 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

So it sounds like the role worked primarily with Java? I guess I can see why IT for 6 years plus 3 years as a JS dev wouldn't really prepare you for that and why, as a result, you would get slotted into an SDE1 role (hopefully with the expectation of ramping up quickly and making it to SDE2 in relatively short order). I'm not sure I understand why such a role would be interesting to you, though.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#136

Post by chronid »

eridius wrote: post #133
lsc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, as a datapoint, I also have no degree. I worked at google for a few years as a contractor (with 15+ years industry experience before that) - A few months back, I interviewed and was hired on as a L4 (L3, as I understand it, is where you come in after college, L5 is senior.) My personal impression is that it was pretty clear to all involved what they'd need to pay me, and they slotted me in at a tech level that ma…

~~Correct, L4 is the same thing as SDE2.~~ EDIT: I completely screwed that up. L4–L6 map to SDE1–SDE3.

When I left, L4 was SDE1, L5 was SDE2.

Sometime after I left there was a big push to get more and more L5s on board, at the point than in some teams L4s were effectively sidelined (and found themselves with little no ability to advance to L5 depending to org politics, in some "high growth" ops teams they made for convenient beasts of burden...)

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#137

Post by encoderer »

sridca wrote: post #131
encoderer wrote: post #33

My manager told me it is trust that I yet to earn — people don’t trust my judgement and I need to build good relationships with decision makers. I agreed. But that what is called “politics”. I don't think this is a good example of "politics". I think this is primarily about earning a place in a team among the people who have been sweating it out for years. It doesn't happen overnight, and it's especially difficult in…

In any case, why do we humans persistently depend on the emotion of trust instead of using our native intelligence to appraise each situation as they come? Trust is an archaic emotion that may have had its value in primitive societies living amidst predators and such demanding instant reactions. However we now live in a safer modern society where newcomers to the team don't come with an intention to kill and plunder…

On any functioning team, you are trusted to do your job on day one. But one of your first jobs is to learn team customs and share the burdens of the team, and by doing that you earn not trust but true respect. Only with respect can you have influence.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#138

Post by solatic »

rburhum wrote: post #126
solatic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And I'm sure that he agrees with you now. Recall that the guy moved his wife with him halfway across the globe to Vancouver to get the job, and has to move all the way back again now that he has left it (because of work visa limitations). If you think he didn't spend sleepless nights thinking through the consequences, you're (probably) mistaken.

Hindsight is 20/20. The opportunity to make a FAANG salary, even if it requires putting in some time at the lower ranks, is not one to be turned down lightly.

The average computer engineering salary in Tel Aviv is somewhere around $85-95k, before (high) taxes, in a city which is the 9th most expensive city on the planet in cost of living, supposedly more expensive than New York. Level aside, $110k guaranteed, before lucrative RSUs, (I presume) lower taxes, lower cost of living... should speak for itself.

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#139

Post by technofiend »

adregan wrote: post #125
austincheney wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Any tips on how to be "Maintenance focused more than feature focused"

Honestly this is more "how do I keep from having to perform maintenance" but just spitballing...

Do you have defined Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for your APIs? Do you have unit tests so you can both prove changes do what's needed and that nothing else broke (regression testing). Do you have good error handling and readable error messages or is that all #todo? Are your processes idempotent? Is there a documented and automated recovery procedure if not? Add all the features you want, but if you build them to have a high uptime and resilient up front you're really combining a view into maintenance (or more importantly - not needing it) while still delivering features. And if those things aren't true then I guess making them true first before adding features is sort of what the original poster meant?

Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

#140

Post by eridius »

chronid wrote: post #136
eridius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~~Correct, L4 is the same thing as SDE2.~~ EDIT: I completely screwed that up. L4–L6 map to SDE1–SDE3.

When I left, L4 was SDE1, L5 was SDE2. Sometime after I left there was a big push to get more and more L5s on board, at the point than in some teams L4s were effectively sidelined (and found themselves with little no ability to advance to L5 depending to org politics, in some "high growth" ops teams they made for convenient beasts of burden...)

Oops you're right, I completely screwed that up. Just shows how often I think about L-levels.
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