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An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

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Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#81

Post by Traster »

AnHonestComment wrote: post #21
samirillian wrote: post #4

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

It’s worth pointing out why it needs to be “revived”: because the first iteration of the tax would have destroyed grocery stores and was protested by construction unions due to its disastrous policy. This iteration is targeting the 800 largest employers in Seattle, many of whom aren’t currently profitable. “Tax Amazon” is classic dishonesty — neither bill has been focused on Amazon, both would be a disaster for Seatt…

Just ballparking it:

Seattle population has grown by around 23% [1] and inflation means $1 in 2010 has the spending power of $1.18 today [2], you'd expect a 45% increase (1.18*1.23) just accounting for population change. According to seattle's open government website, their budget was $6.24Bn in 2020, and $4.13Bn in 2010, a 51% increase. So just ball park spending has grown probably less than 0.5% per annum over inflation in the last decade.

[1]: Acutally 2010-2018 - https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=seattle+p...

[2]: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2010?amount=1

[3]: https://openbudget.seattle.gov/#!/year/2020/operating/0/serv...

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#82

Post by CleavableComet »

jakebellacera wrote: post #69
Barrin92 wrote: post #18

The on call stuff sounds outright dystopian to me, it's not even legal in my country. More places should think about adopting something akin to France's El Khomri law's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect ) and ensure that every citizen has enough time to recuperate from work and isn't pestered by their employer 24/7.

What was stated seems pretty typical on small teams who manage critical systems. How are critical systems managed otherwise without having to 3x your team (assuming you want 24hr coverage with a 8hr workday)?

It isn't. The point is that critical systems should and would require more members on a team.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#83

Post by txcwpalpha »

balladeer wrote: post #35

> During the hiring process, on-call is not mentioned in any way Then next: > are you willing to work nights and/or weekends To be fair I'd say this is mention enough. If someone is willing to (or has to) look the other way at the time of hiring when something like this was explicitly said, then even a "hey, we have on-call here, you fine with that?" would be okay.

I think it goes both ways (in fact, most of this post seems to go both ways in that Amazon sounds brutal but OP could have taken actions to mitigate it). If your team is going to be requiring on-call, you should say that during the interview process. "Are you willing to work nights and/or weekends" is indicative, but is still too vague. Some might interpret that as just "sometimes you might have to work late if you are on a tight deadline", not as an on-call situation.

However on the interviewee's side, if you see something in a job description that asks if you're willing to work nights and weekends, that should be an immediate indicator to you that you should ask why you possibly would have to work nights/weekends and in what capacity. It's the interviewee's responsibility to ask questions like this even if the employer isn't immediately forthcoming.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#84

Post by troughway »

MattGaiser wrote: post #57
samirillian wrote: post #4

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

> What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? The Amazon example is extreme, but a lot of tech workers fit the stereotype of people who don't have a lot else to do. I spend 100+ hours at my computer a week, so if you want long hours, I can live with that. I am up at 1AM anyway, so if you need something done at that time, sure. I jus…

>The Amazon example is extreme, but a lot of tech workers fit the stereotype of people who don't have a lot else to do.

Very sad when you think about it. Wasted potential.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#86

Post by nighthawk454 »

dudul wrote: post #47
Barrin92 wrote: post #18

The on call stuff sounds outright dystopian to me, it's not even legal in my country. More places should think about adopting something akin to France's El Khomri law's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect ) and ensure that every citizen has enough time to recuperate from work and isn't pestered by their employer 24/7.

I don't understand what's so dystopian about it. Some systems are critical and need to be kept online at all time, or at least have very minimal downtime. The description in the post is not even that bad. A page a week is nothing. And it is clearly state that your workload is reduced during your on call period.

The dystopianism comes in because the vast majority of teams are decidedly _not_ 27/4 critical. Sure, some teams really run the 1-Click Buy button or the S3 API. Most run some DB behind some API behind another 3 APIs behind 5 other teams that run a widget.

In practice, your workload may not be reduced during on call because it's "expected" and you still have to meet your normal deliverables while the team isn't staffed with "extra" people. It also takes a toll on employees to be mentally-available at all times in case some triviality emerges and raises an alarm. You'll find many engineers not willing to leave a small area or even go out for dinner without bringing their laptop and a hotspot, just in case.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#87

Post by o10449366 »

myalphabet wrote: post #64
majormajor wrote: post #28

> Remember when I mentioned Amazon's moving and signing bonus? Little caveat on that, if you leave or are fired within 2 years, you have to pay it back. Paying back a signing bonus if they fire you seems super rough. Is this common elsewhere? 2 years also seems high - the time I got a signing bonus, it was "pay back if you leave voluntarily in 1 year" which was much nicer than the described. Unfortunately, much of th…

I fear OP may have misunderstood how the signing bonus works and it seems to have caused him undue stress. I've interviewed at Amazon and had a lot of conversations about compensation. I don't know about the terms of the relocation bonus, but for the signing bonus, you don't pay it back if you are fired and even if you leave voluntarily, you only pay back a pro-rated amount. For example if your signing bonus is $20k,…

I'm surprised at how many people in this thread are misunderstanding this. Every tech company I've seen has had a stipulation saying you have to pay back signing bonus or relocation if you leave within 1 year.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#88

Post by latencyloser »

DethNinja wrote: post #63

Kinda unrelated to topic at hand but I always wanted to ask this to other programmers: Author mentions that he traded sleep for code, and I hear this from so many people but I really cannot understand how well they manage to pull this off. I simply cannot code productively if I get less than 7 hours of sleep or code for more than 8 hours straight, and caffeine doesn’t help me. So how do you people manage to pull this…

Easy, most of the code we write is pretty mindless. Boilerplate tying together of various internal libraries to make it play nice that you've done too many times to count. Following someone else's wiki page instructions on how to implement some "best practice" that needs to be done for a production system. Writing CRUD operations and such. Writing unit tests for all these things. Sure mistakes happen when you're exhausted but the stuff is hard from mentally demanding given the bar that they're supposedly hiring for.

I don't say that disparagingly, this is 90% of my day to day life as a mid-level engineer at a FAANG. The other 10% I might get to do something "neat" that I can justify somehow. It depends on the team of course, but I find the Author's experience believable.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#89

Post by dudul »

Barrin92 wrote: post #80
jakebellacera wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was stated seems pretty typical on small teams who manage critical systems. How are critical systems managed otherwise without having to 3x your team (assuming you want 24hr coverage with a 8hr workday)?

>How are critical systems managed otherwise without having to 3x your team (assuming you want 24hr coverage with a 8hr workday)? They typically aren't, you need to hire more people then. In anything defined as critical I would suggest that being well rested is also a requirement rather than having a team of people who are so overworked they develop mental illness.

Doesn't make sense financially. You're gonna triple the size of your team, just to make sure that this one time of the week someone will restart the DB?

I would much rather bite the bullet, be on call a week a month or so and use the budget for something else.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#90

Post by dlp211 »

sokoloff wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payroll taxes are always borne by the worker. They may not make the payments, but when I hire people, I set aside an all-in budget, and their salary is whatever is left after benefits and taxes. If the payroll tax goes up, it means their raise is smaller. That's how every business works. All per employee costs are borne by the employee one way or another.

Exactly. There's no such thing as totally "free shipping" or "free returns" either. One way or another, the customer is paying for it.

This is only true in the sense that there is a cost to move goods, but it is not true in the sense that retailers charge more to move the good to you. If it were, I wouldn't be able to reliably purchase goods shipped to my door for equal or less than what I pay in physical stores. When shipping is included in the price, that means that the shipper bears the cost of shipping by taking a smaller margin. If I were to bear the cost, it would appear as an explicit cost or higher prices, neither of which are happening.
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