An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#151

Post by sidlls » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

endlessmike89 wrote: post #54

>Be upfront and as precise as possible with what a position entails. "Working alongside smart and passionate people" is lazy hiring. I understand that this person was coming straight out of school, but the onus is on the applicant to figure out more about the job during the interview process.

Interviewers, if they're coached properly by the organization, will lie. "Sell the candidate on the company" is a thing. Human beings aren't conditioned to have their skepticism alarms ramped up to 100% constantly in every interaction. At some point a certain level of trust to be honest with one another is required for society to have any cohesion. In my view businesses, especially software/tech companies, are quite poor at this on a good day and frequently work in ways that undermine it.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#152

Post by pragmatic » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

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…

Tbray is going to have a different experience at any org he joins.

He's not coming in as a no name peon. He's financially well off, internet famous and would (and could) probably leave at the first sign of mistreatment.

He's in Canada, do health insurance isn't tied to job.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#153

Post by bananamerica » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

joenot443 wrote: post #142

bananamerica wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe Chopin took long walks in the garden every once in an while.

And maybe, just maybe, universally acclaimed musical geniuses are not a good point of comparison for common folk.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#154

Post by nanoscopic » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

I can chime in that a lot of this rings true for me. I was also an SDE-II ( started as one ). I also was loaned out to other teams. I also suffered the idiocy of being locked into 2 years of work or get saddled with a huge amount of money to pay back.

Also, I consider that my child is dead because of what happened.

See https://amazonandmykid.com for the full story.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#155

Post by MattGaiser » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

troughway wrote: post #84

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…

>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.

> Very sad when you think about it. Wasted potential.

Eh, you leave the university environment of all its clubs, hackathons, etc, likely to another city where you know far fewer people. You need to wake up the next morning, so gaming until 5AM with your friends no longer works. Someone is also on on-call, so they can't join, so you postpose it further.

The end result is a lot more free time.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#156

Post by zamalek » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

cbanek wrote: post #55

ignoramous wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want it to happen. I'd like a word. You could be shown the door in no-time. Amazon has forced attrition and the manager decides who gets the cull. They may make a mountain out of a mole to further their objectives.

As someone who came from a similar environment (MSFT during the stack ranking days), the forced attrition and manager's arbitrarily blackballing employees are the ingredients of the toxic stew. If a manager hates your guts, there's really nothing you can do, even if you are great at your job.

Does your manager love your guts? Are you good at your job? Hopefully that paycheck can bleach the guilt of your colleagues losing their jobs because you are good at yours. That toxicity could also be because they are either selecting or creating people who are okay with this.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#157

Post by ultraluminous » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

rantwasp wrote: post #118

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…

yeah no. as someone who has worked at Amazon for 7 years I can tell you that it’s not true across the board and there are good “pockets” where there is respect for people’s boundaries. To add to this, in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here). My work day included 8 hours at most. I would get in at around 8AM and leave at 4PM. (optimizing the commute) I started as an SDE 2 by th…

"in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here)"

Why wouldn't you count it? Do those days not-count somehow?

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#158

Post by mrep » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

dfgdghdf wrote: post #107

Based on my experience with the various AWS SDK libraries, I don't think Amazon has very good developers, or perhaps they have good developers but a poor development culture. The architecture is convoluted, heavily OOP and just generally reminds me of Java in the early 2000s.

Well, java is by far the most used language at amazon so that would make sense.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#159

Post by sidlls » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #147

sidlls wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It absolutely does make sense if the service is that critical. If it's not that critical, it doesn't need 24/7 on-call. There are some "in between" circumstances, sure, and those might require additional resources or occasionally work outside of normal hours.

It doesn't make financial sense because companies can get away with exploitative behavior because software engineers are quite naive (or even actively detrimental to themselves and their peers) when it comes to labor relations.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#160

Post by jedberg » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #106

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.

This is not evidence that payroll taxes are borne solely by the worker. I'm not claiming that workers don't bear any of the burden. Just that they don't bear all of the burden. this would be especially true in an asymmetrical payroll tax system in competitive labor markets like the Seattle Software Developer market.

I'm not sure how a competitive labor market makes any difference. They all have to pay the same payroll taxes. If anything it's a great equalizer -- all companies must bear that employee cost. So they will all take it out of their employee's earnings equally.