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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass door either only shows base salaries or is completely out of touch with tech companies. Sure, the lone "web developer" at a small nonprofit might make $80k, but at a FAANG? Please.

FAANG is 5 companies. Granted they have a lot of employees, but they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US.

> they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US

I'm not sure that's true, but I will admit that most of my friends work at FAANGs (outside the bay area). So let me add that I know at least one senior engineer at a non-FAANG tech company that left a $300k job for a "significant pay bump".

Frankly, no large tech company could survive if it didn't pay competitively with other large tech companies.

I fully agree that pay is less in small, non-tech companies in rural areas, but I would be surprised if such businesses hire the majority of developers. Big tech hires a LOT of engineers.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#322
I agree with many of the comments here about how ymmv based on your management chain. My experience at Amazon has been very positive, but I do want to call out some major issues with the Amazon Connections tool reference in this post.

This tool is pitched to employees as an anonymous way to provide feedback about their team via daily questions. The reality is anything but.

* Responses are not anonymous, they are viewable by anyone on the Connections team, and individual responses are shared with managers in many cases. The Connections team will deny this because it is technically against their policy, but I have seen Connections case managers share information with managers many times.

* Feedback results are not viewable by employees, only managers (this is in contrast to the yearly tech survey, which anyone can view). This leads to data being conveniently left out, or entire orgs simply not reviewing the data.

* The questions are incredibly poorly constructed and there have been multiple internal tickets about propaganda and insensitive questions. A few examples off the top of my head are "Did you know that Amazon was voted the best company to work for 5 years in a row by xyz organization? (Yes/No)" and something to the effect of "How do you feel working with foreigners?" (The wording was significantly more sensitive, but this was the undertone and caused a massive uproar internally.)

These issues have been brought up repeatedly internally and in almost two years, nothing has been done. The Connections team has essentially disabled all feedback channels surrounding the tool. If anything comes of this, I hope a serious look is taken at how the Amazon Connections program is implemented.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#323
post #241

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated ve…

Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B. So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything. I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at…

Ex Indian h1b here. Here are some of the things I experienced that finally ended up with me throwing away everything and come back to India.

1. Was working on a project without issues. Ex manager forced me to go back to India 3 times over a 9 month period. Every time my ex manager tells me to go back, I get ready packing and then he tells me stay for 3 more months. On the 3rd time, I said I am resigning. Now my manager doesn't want me to go to India. I got another job and went to resign. Manager indirectly threatens me that I won't get service letter (which is required for green card). I was afraid and ended up staying. It turns out my manager was lying to the customer also. Everytime, he will tell me to get ready to go back and then tell the customer that I have to go back due to visa issues. Customer had still some work for me, so they ask for 3 more months and this repeated 2 times. Each time, I would be under incredible stress. It was like telling someone waiting in jail for their death sentence that they will be hung 2 weeks from now, then a few days later tell them it was extended.

2. Came to India for my marriage. Forced me to cancel my honeymoon and work from India for 1 month for another customer while lying to the original customer that I extended my vacation. I spend one whole day in my room sad and angry. I still want to beat up the manager who made me do this even though this happened over 2 years ago.

3. Asked me to work for a temporary customer in another state. I didn't want to, but agreed since I was afraid and worked for around 5-7 weeks while staying in hotel. This was before marriage. After marriage, again asked me to work for this customer for 1 month. My wife is completely dependent on me because she cannot drive in US. I said I cannot go because my wife is alone. Lead told me to ask my wife to stay in hotel for 1 month with me. I didn't want to because she already spend 3 weeks in a hotel with me instead of honeymoon. Thankfully manager agreed and sent someone else.

4. Forced me to relocate to another state. I didn't want to. After a lot of pressure, I sort of agreed and asked to at least adjust my salary for the rent increase. The customer was paying $20+ per hour more if I was working from the new state, so I expected at least a little bit of raise. Manager lied to me saying he will take care of it. I didn't trust him because there were many stories from my ex colleagues of being treated like a donkey with a carrot tied to their front. Sent him an email asking him to reply. He didn't. At one point, he said "I will snip you". He had said a similar line once before - "I will cut you". At that time, I didn't even understand he was threatening me, I was wondering why is he talking about circumcising me. This time I understood it was a threat. Got everything ready for move and told him I am ready for the move, and as expected he said HR didn't approve the raise which is a lie.

5. Moving expenses was about $3500. Getting that refunded was another big battle. Thankfully, my manager helped me in this and got the money after about 1.5 months.

6. Got RFE for visa extension. Employer waited till the last moment to submit the response to USCIS. I couldn't drive because license duration is tied to visa. Asked my manager and immigration team multiple times to speed up. No. They submitted the response only 5 days before the last day. So couldn't drive for 3 months. Since I was in a new state, I had no friends to help me either. Employer did pay for my Uber for these 3 months, but still I hated every moment of it, especially because of a few bad experiences with Uber drivers. Thankfully, I had sent my wife back to India before all this happened, otherwise I don't know how I would have managed.

Even though my visa got extended for another 3 years, I threw away everything and came back to India.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#324
post #195
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me…

Stories like this are important. Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}. ... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath. Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an…

Point taken, but either way, it's so not my problem. Maybe in the former case I'll refrain from aiming a flamethrower back behind me as I run as fast as possible out of there!

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does his or your age have to do with anything? Just sounds like a penny wise pound foolish story to me.

What 25 year old has the resources to take on even a 100-person corporation, much less a megacorp?

At 27 I took on a multi-million dollar, VC-backed property management startup that was trying to defraud me on my rent and rental deposit. It’s amazing what some legal research and a few hours of spare time can do.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#326
post #100
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to my wife. A newly promoted VP transferred her out of a great position she loved to work on a special project he invented to make department look innovative, under promise of a promotion once complete. Instead as soon as the project was done he hired a new manager into another newly created position above my wife, only supervising her. He proceeded to have the manager take all her responsibilitie…

Yeah, it's fun :( Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days. Anyway, nothing beats that one German bank that told all employees of a branch on Friday that on Monday they are working at a location 80 miles away and are required to be there as usually.

> Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days

What else would you expect from a society that worships profit above all other gods?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#327

Which came first, the post or the lawsuit? Churyumov v. Amazon Corporate LLC (2:19-cv-00136) District Court, W.D. Washington https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14528071/churyumov-v-am...

The article is dated February 9, 2019. The court case is filed January 30, 2019.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#328

Besides H1Bs, and fresh graduates (who don't have any choice), I don't understand how Amazon can still higher Software engineers. I understand that Amazon teams are diverse, but as a candidate with any other possible option, how could anyone even consider amazon considering everything that's been written about the company already.

How about because Amazon develops some of the most interesting and innovative products out there? AWS, Alexa, Go Store, to name a few?

I've worked on several AWS services, and I'm very proud of being a part of them and of AWS in general. I bet there are very few other places where I would find problems this interesting or of this scale.

If you have some experience, you probably know better than just look for a job at company X - you probably choose specific role in a particular team or product. And Amazon sure does have a lot of great products with very interesting positions.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#329
post #241

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated ve…

Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B. So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything. I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at…

Really? Name and shame that manager - that shouldn’t be happening at Microsoft

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#330
post #195
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me…

Stories like this are important. Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}. ... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath. Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an…

A good boss does not mistreat employees simply because the company asks them to, just like a good engineer does not implement backdoors simply because the company asks them to. If there's no way to do your job ethically, quit. Don't harm others so you can keep collecting a paycheck.

So the difference doesn't really matter. You have a bad boss; take care of yourself first and don't let them push you around.

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