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

Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 147 posts

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#31

Post by jessriedel »

Pfhreak wrote: post #27
jessriedel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything after your first two sentences is off-topic. If the comments on all articles about Amazon devolve into general complaints about Amazon, there will never be quality discussion.

I disagree. S-teams set the culture. They drive their organizations in a way that is very, very active (especially relative to places I've worked elsewhere.) When there are cultural issues at Amazon, I believe that they can be at least partly traced to the s-team leaders.

What about that has to do with the contents of the article? You didn't make contact with anything besides the term "S-team" in the headline.

And even then, you say they drive all this culture, but you don't say anything substantive. How? What events?

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#32

Post by Pfhreak »

heymijo wrote: post #29
lowiqengineer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

> my goal is to make ~$250k a year as fast as possible. To do so at my current company would take at least 3 years and 2 promotions Hi, I don't want to dunk on you, but I would truly encourage you to gain some perspective on just how myopic a view this is. (I couldn't reply to your comment below where you said this)

Are you familiar with their circumstances? Maybe they have a limited window before retirement age. Maybe they have medical bills. Maybe they need to support a parent or grandparent. Maybe they need to send remittances to support a family "back home".

There's any number of reasons why that number might not be myopic.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#33

Post by jessriedel »

plicense wrote: post #23
jessriedel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything after your first two sentences is off-topic. If the comments on all articles about Amazon devolve into general complaints about Amazon, there will never be quality discussion.

Umm I guess you could ignore the comment then. Part of what I like about HN is the tangential discussion and the personal experience that commenters share.

If "you should ignore it"/"just downvote it" was sufficient, we wouldn't need site guidelines or moderators. Off-topic Amazon hate will always win the upvote wars unless people are principled.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#34

Post by anonu »

Dig1t wrote: post #30
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One 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…

Man I'm glad these threads pop up. Every so often Amazon starts to look tempting as a place to work, and I need threads like this to remind me that it sucks and isn't worth it.

I read the parent comment as mostly positive. The average tenure of the s team sits at 16 years. That's a long time to be working in one place. So the negative press about working there is maybe a bit sensationalist

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#35

Post by Pfhreak »

jessriedel wrote: post #31
Pfhreak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. S-teams set the culture. They drive their organizations in a way that is very, very active (especially relative to places I've worked elsewhere.) When there are cultural issues at Amazon, I believe that they can be at least partly traced to the s-team leaders.

What about that has to do with the contents of the article ? You didn't make contact with anything besides the term "S-team" in the headline. And even then, you say they drive all this culture, but you don't say anything substantive. How? What events?

The article itself discusses inferring Amazon's priorities from changes to their s-team, including doubling the number of AWS s-team members.

I'm not sure I'm allowed to disclose which events/meetings their s-team regularly attends. I will say that I did have several opportunities to interact with them directly in meetings, and indirectly via goals setting and annual planning exercises.

Peter Desantis is a long time AWS guy, and was present at many of those same meetings/exercises. Peter, and other s-team members, talk about what it means to be AWS. That they've chosen to make him an s-team leader says to me that they like the culture the s-team is cultivating, and want to continue to grow it.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#36

Post by Pfhreak »

jessriedel wrote: post #33
plicense wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm I guess you could ignore the comment then. Part of what I like about HN is the tangential discussion and the personal experience that commenters share.

If "you should ignore it"/"just downvote it" was sufficient, we wouldn't need site guidelines or moderators. Off-topic Amazon hate will always win the upvote wars unless people are principled.

Did I come off as hating Amazon? I'm thankful for my time there. I learned buckets. I specifically called out several things about Amazon I really liked.

I'm at a different place in my life and the things I commented on are fair criticisms. (Critiquing something is not the same as hating something. I have plenty of media I critique that I also enjoy.)

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#37

Post by Pfhreak »

anonu wrote: post #34
Dig1t wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I'm glad these threads pop up. Every so often Amazon starts to look tempting as a place to work, and I need threads like this to remind me that it sucks and isn't worth it.

I read the parent comment as mostly positive. The average tenure of the s team sits at 16 years. That's a long time to be working in one place. So the negative press about working there is maybe a bit sensationalist

I think I still feel mostly positive about working at AWS. I'm glad I did it for six years, but I'm in a different place in my life. I value different things now. I'm not the young, work driven person I used to be. (Or at least not as much.)

Edit: That said, I don't think the negative media is sensationalist. I would absolutely believe that some people cried at their (door) desks. I would believe that people were verbally or emotionally abusive. Amazon operates in little pods, and if there's a bad leader organizing a set of pods, they can really turn the culture there toxic. I was lucky to have a fantastic set of leaders (shout outs to Builder Tools) who really supported their people. I've heard some first person accounts of orgs that were... not out of line with media accounts.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#38

Post by joncrane »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #14
Klonoar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

You do now that you have Amazon on your resume.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#39

Post by whatsmyusername »

Pfhreak wrote: post #24
lowiqengineer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sometimes do, they just don't publicize it. It's specifically noted in the intellectual property agreement, though nobody seems to be sure why.

Search inside for the 'Game Development Policy', it's separate from the intellectual property commitment. Reasoning is likely from Amazon Games Studios? I think there may be a concern that someone at Amazon might make the next flappy bird or Minecraft and Amazon couldn't capitalize on it.

The one time I met an Amazon games studio employee my response was, “Amazon has a games studio?”

He said it was a common response.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#40

Post by jessriedel »

Pfhreak wrote: post #36
jessriedel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "you should ignore it"/"just downvote it" was sufficient, we wouldn't need site guidelines or moderators. Off-topic Amazon hate will always win the upvote wars unless people are principled.

Did I come off as hating Amazon? I'm thankful for my time there. I learned buckets. I specifically called out several things about Amazon I really liked. I'm at a different place in my life and the things I commented on are fair criticisms. (Critiquing something is not the same as hating something. I have plenty of media I critique that I also enjoy.)

Your net judgement came off as mildly negative, but the structure of merely listing complaints about the place, many of which have been discussed here ad nauseam, with no substantive connection to the article, is hater catnip.
Post reply on HN