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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose indentured servitude is a more apt metaphor.

It's not. You're free to leave as an H1B at any time, it's just that you have to leave the country also (or find a new job really fast). It sucks for employees, and it has negative effects on the job market, so there are many good reasons to kill it with fire - but no, it's not indentured servitude, and people who choose this, choose it of their own free will, and can withdraw that decision (and be back to where they…

Of course it's not literally slavery or indentured servitude, but it does share some common elements that are useful for our analysis. In particular, they both involve voluntary commiting yourself to restrictive labor in exchange for coming to the US.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leadership principles in and of themselves strike me as something that is likely to lead to a toxic culture. For reference: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

What about them leads to a toxic work place?

There's very much in the 14 principles about optimizing for results and very little about leading or cultivating people. Obviously, this can be interpreted in very many ways, but the impression I get from the people that work there or have worked there is that it becomes a win-at-all costs environment and that the upper tiers of management are political hell.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All numbers from statista.com

Alphabet - 98,000 (2018) Facebook - 35,000 (2018) Apple - 123,000 (2018) Netflix - 5,500 (2017) Amazon - 647,500 (2018)

Total - ~909,000

That is total number of employees worldwide. so lets conservatively take off a third. Also Reasonably only a third of those employees (probably a lot less at amazon) are actually developers. That gives us ~200,000. The Bureau of Labor statics says there are 1,200,000 software developers in the US in 2016.

FAANG does make up a lot more software development jobs than I thought, I would have to say a significant portion. Very interesting.

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