Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
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Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#2One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals.
AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev teams the opportunity to (mostly?) drive the details of what those goals were. (I've heard this is maybe not the case in all AWS teams, but I had some great local leadership as well.)
If they could fix a couple of deeply set cultural issues (open source and side projects were definitely hard or impossible), not lean quite so heavily on their employees (I was oncall 24/7 for months in the worst times and received no extra comp), and disconnect themselves from whatever is going on with the retail side's treatment of labor.... Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually. They'd have to change quite a bit more -- the promo process, the stack ranking/"top grading" twice yearly, better benefits and comp...
But I do genuinely miss working in the AWS org. There's a lot of incredible things to learn there. While I don't see myself coming back, the lessons I learned there have been absolutely invaluable.
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#3One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually
I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#4One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
Hey, you are totally allowed! You and I probably value things differently! I'm a parent now, my values have shifted over time, and I got really burned out trying to improve things over there. I didn't like that once I became a manager I was pressured to identify and remove (rather than train/help) my people who weren't top tier. Those could have been things local to my org. If you are happy, be proud of what you are doing.
Like I said, I think it was a really valuable 6 years. I'm glad I was there, I learned a ton, met awesome engineers.
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#5One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
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Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#6One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're working in ads you are working to surveil & modify the behavior of your fellow humans against their consent. Make your own judgement about whether you should be proud of that.
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#7One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
I'm just curious, what was your experience trying to develop games in your spare time? Were you told to stop?
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#8One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
Average tenure of an Amazon employee on the tech side is something like a year or so.
Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're working in ads you are working to surveil & modify the behavior of your fellow humans against their consent. Make your own judgement about whether you should be proud of that.
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Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
#10One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…
> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
You're certainly allowed to be proud... but others don't have to respect your career choices (and many won't, which is fine).
Personally speaking, I've had Amazon try to pull me a few times and I just stopped responding to their emails. It's a large company and I can agree that there's leagues of separation between, say, AWS and warehouse operations... but I also just don't care, I can't co-sign the kind of stuff that you hear about (and has been verified by people coming forward).
The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options.
My 2 cents, I guess.