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An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

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Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#141

Post by chiyc »

trynewideas wrote: post #37

> I mention on-call duty because it is “peculiar” in that the only other profession requiring this kind of responsiveness is doctors My only advice to this person is: - talk to someone who does customer-facing tech support in your own company - never take a job in customer-facing tech support

I'm not sure where they got the notion that emergency services are the only other field where people go on-call. Plenty of industries operate 24/7.

I worked in high volume manufacturing where process engineers could be on-call 24/7-365 unless you explicitly asked a backup to cover you during a vacation or weekend. Depending on the part of the process you owned, that might mean a middle-of-the-night call a couple times a month or several times a week. No human lives on the line, just lots of money.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#142

Post by joenot443 »

bananamerica wrote: post #101
MattGaiser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Maybe they need hobbies that are actually relaxing and not side projects.

I do believe there are people out there for whom "living their best life" truly does entail spending almost all their time in front of a computer.

Nobody shamed Chopin for spending his life in front of the piano. Some people choose to dedicate their lives to one single thing, and often those are the people who end up contributing the most.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#143

Post by mjayhn »

azuriten wrote: post #104

GitHub and Gists seems to alot of people's go to place for writing these days. I'll take it over Medium but still seems a bit odd.

This is actually from Pastebin which I used to really enjoy finding random anonymous stuff on with the trending filter. It was mostly random logs, stack traces or email dumps but occasionally you'd stumble on an interesting anonymous memo like this.

https://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#144

Post by julianlam »

TrackerFF wrote: post #114

Lots of IT jobs that deal with critical infrastructure have on-call duties. Try working for some IT firm that supports healthcare, utility, defense, or what not, and I can assure you that there's rotation duty where you need to be on-call within xx minutes, 24/7. During college I was interning for IT firm that provided networking for local hospitals, and they had the same rotation. My friend who got me the gig, worke…

Yeah, I also thought the on-call/pager thing was a little overblown. It immediately raised a red flag about how wet behind the ears OP is.

Not to say that there aren't toxic on-call rotations and such, only that it's a lot more common than you'd think, and is not limited to just doctors eyeroll

Any time a business unit needs to be accountable to another party after-hours, some sort of call schedule is created.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#145

Post by sikim »

w0mbat wrote: post #132

Amazon's 401k plan is terrible when compared to competing companies. I cancelled my Amazon interview the second I saw the terms of it. I had to find the details for myself because the info packet the recruiter sent me, conveniently left out any details except that there was a 401k plan and some matching. Only 50% match, and the maximum match they will pay is 2% of salary. (Competitors match 1:1, high or no limit). Th…

This might be helpful to you http://perks.guide/

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#146

Post by deminature »

aaomidi wrote: post #121
holler wrote: post #100

When my Uncle found out how much the average entry-level Amazon software developer at Amazon makes, he was completely shocked, because it's higher than his salary as a physician in practice for many years. So all things considered, when it's mentioned how doctors are the only other profession where the employees are on-call 24/7, most FANG devs are making more than the average doctor.

Where does your uncle live? Does he have to pay $3000 for a 2 bedroom rent?

$3000 for 1bd in NYC is pretty common, it can extend to >= $4000 for 5-10 minute walking distance to work. Tech salary can seem much less impressive servicing that kind of recurring cost.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#147

Post by dudul »

sidlls wrote: post #139
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)?

Then that's the cost of managing the service. The only reason companies don't pay that now is because of the significant leverage they have over software development labor. We may be better compensated than many other roles, but we're still just entirely expendable resources .

The only reason companies don't do that is because it doesn't make sense. What are you gonna do with a team that is 3 times the ideal size just to have enough people to cover a 7/24 on call?

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#148

Post by Barrin92 »

dudul wrote: post #110
Barrin92 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a law to protect the mental and physical well being of citizens and workers, obviously not Amazon's bottom line, that's literally the point. If you treat people like disposable commodities then yes this does not make any sense.

You know what impact the mental and physical well being of workers? Have their company go under because they had to triple the size of the team just to implement an on call policy. And I'm not talking about Amazon here. Of course Amazon can afford to hire everybody and their mom to cover 24 hours in a day. I'm under the impression that your original comment was really a critic of the practice in general, not just thi…

>I'm under the impression that your original comment was really a critic of the practice in general, not just this specific example.

It absolutely was criticism of the practise in general. Yes, small companies that can't ensure that there workers aren't overworked don't really make sense with protections like these. But the same is true for environmental protection.

Critical infrastructure arguably ought to be handled by companies large enough and with enough staff to comply with regulation like this.

For anything else I don't see the issue. Some random smartphone app company doesn't need to fix anything at 3 am in the morning, it can be fixed the next day. That's exactly the culture I'm critizing. 24/7 readiness to work for some random product at the expense of mental health is awful.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#149

Post by dudul »

CleavableComet wrote: post #82
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)?

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

More members on the team would increase the gap between 2 on call periods for team member (e.g. every 4 weeks instead of 2), it wouldn't get rid of on call entirely.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#150

Post by julianlam »

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…

He (or she) didn't say they coded well on limited sleep, so there's the trade-off.
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