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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

#41

Post by Pfhreak »

whatsmyusername wrote: post #39
Pfhreak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heh. I worked in Amazon Games for a bit. It was a very common question. Along with, "What games have they made?" (Breakaway a 'sports brawler', The Grand Tour game a tie in for the show, New World an mmo about being a colonizer, Crucible a third person shooter.)

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

#42

Post by jessriedel »

Pfhreak wrote: post #35
jessriedel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But priorities is not the same as culture! This is such a broad and vague connection. The "priorities" in the article are all about different markets (fashion, Alexa, AWS, etc.).

I'm not going to litigate this further with you.

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

#43

Post by Supermancho »

ahelwer wrote: post #6
lowiqengineer wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

> against their consent

I have worked in ads for over 15 years. I certainly don't believe it's any more "against your consent" than stores coloring their walls to modify behavior or placing goods in a more visible location to sell more, or that fluffy animals are perceived as cute. The work is good and I have never been happier than when I work in adtech.

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

#44

Post by cloakandswagger »

whatsmyusername wrote: post #39
Pfhreak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the only rationale I can come up with for the game development policy: AGS hasn't produced anything in 8 years and what they have in the pipeline looks disappointing so...cross your fingers and hope one of your employees makes the next Minecraft.

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

#45

Post by lowiqengineer »

joncrane wrote: post #38
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.

You do now that you have Amazon on your resume.

My resume was mostly fine even before joining fulltime.

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

#46

Post by lowiqengineer »

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)

I don't think it's myopic if everyone I follow on twitter and see on instagram is getting Hawaiian offsites and European work trips at Google and Hudson River Trading while I can't even go to Seattle for our internal ML conference because it got filled up too quickly for the last 3 years or whatever.

I enjoy what I work on..I just wish I was treated more like all of my friends and former coworkers.

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

#47

Post by lowiqengineer »

stevejb wrote: post #15
lowiqengineer wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

Nobody but yourself has to give you permission for this. It's an honest living. Lots of people who would give you shit about this are in the VC-funded "Uber eats for dog treats" world and may have an over-inflated sense of the social value their jobs are supposedly creating.

That's fair. I think what I work on is infinitely more important even though it's a piece of a larger puzzle given how rapidly we're adding to the bottom line (just look at the last earnings call - ). But those are the people that are still negotiating compensation packages of hundreds of thousands more than me, and seem to get everything through life, from Harker to Stanford to Google/Stripe to YC W20, etc.

I'd rather be like them than be considered a "blue collar engineer" as I currently am considered by my peers.

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

#48

Post by shitlord »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #20
SamBam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options. > I've been rejected at Google and Facebook These two statements are not contradicting each other...

Perhaps, but 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, whereas even James Damore was making $400k+ 4 years into his tenure. I can't get offers at trading firms, so I'm kinda SOL overall.

The easiest path to $250k is to go to Oracle. The next easiest path is to go to a unicorn. If you can reach the SDE2-equivalent, you'll be earning over 250k.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #47
stevejb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody but yourself has to give you permission for this. It's an honest living. Lots of people who would give you shit about this are in the VC-funded "Uber eats for dog treats" world and may have an over-inflated sense of the social value their jobs are supposedly creating.

That's fair. I think what I work on is infinitely more important even though it's a piece of a larger puzzle given how rapidly we're adding to the bottom line (just look at the last earnings call - ). But those are the people that are still negotiating compensation packages of hundreds of thousands more than me, and seem to get everything through life, from Harker to Stanford to Google/Stripe to YC W20, etc. I'd rath…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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