I was a contractor at a company that announced that developers would have to work through the nights and on weekends at times, and they couldn't take any extra work days off. So, if you had to do an upgrade to production and it took all night, you were still expected to work all day too. Oh, and you didn't get paid any extra for the overtime either. One person asked about work-life balance, and the response from that manager was that when you chose a career as a developer, you signed up for this. This is what happens when this kind of abuse becomes rampant. The managers then declare it comes with the job. Such BS! BTW, that guy quit along with anyone else reasonably competent.
An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
211–220 of 281 posts
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
They edited their post. Also, numbers don't mean anything without context. Why is that out of control spending?
IMO increased spending that requires a state that has no income tax to add one.
Your comment has nothing to do with spending. So what makes the Seattle budget out of control? That was the original assertion that I took issue with.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#213When 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?
Seriously, my dad made $150k as a physician... in suburban, central Virginia (not NoVA). This would be what, $400k in the Bay Area? We lived on 6 acres with a barn in a 3 story house with a pool, surrounded by forest.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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?
i don’t count it as in: i worked more than 3 weekends, but not because i had a choice )
I'm trying to interpret your words as something other than "well, yeah, my weekends were interrupted, but it wasn't my choice so it's not worth mentioning." I can't come up with another way to read it, though.
So, don't you think that, in the context of having to give up nights and weekends, you should mention on-call? Your choice or not, the weekends and nights are affected, in fact isn't it kind of worse when it's not your choice?
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Pager duty" is an abusive practice anyway. If the company thinks its applications are important enough that it needs people around 24/7 to work on them then the company should hire enough people to have 3 shifts a day.
Is it abusive if you willingly sign up for it? Doctors are on-call for emergencies. We compensate for this so I'm not clear on why its abusive if employees willingly sign up. If you don't want to be on-call, find another job.
I think if you are compensated for it, and allowed to recuperate from middle-of-the-night working, it's ok. If the employee knew this was part of the job though, and not something that was thrust upon them after they were hired.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#216I was a contractor at a company that announced that developers would have to work through the nights and on weekends at times, and they couldn't take any extra work days off. So, if you had to do an upgrade to production and it took all night, you were still expected to work all day too. Oh, and you didn't get paid any extra for the overtime either. One person asked about work-life balance, and the response from that…
That blows. Seems like the company was wholly incompetent and rotten with comments like that. And as a contractor, you should always bill overtime so your unavailable time isn’t abused.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's not the comparison as far as I understand it. The analogy is of someone that dedicates all their time to becoming the best at their craft, like Chopin. It's not about being a genius.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO increased spending that requires a state that has no income tax to add one.
Your comment has nothing to do with spending. So what makes the Seattle budget out of control? That was the original assertion that I took issue with.
The rate of budget increase increased dramatically without an increase in revenue.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Facebook iOS engineering supposed to be impressive for laughing you off? I don't understand how they let slip crashing any app that used their iOS SDK: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/issues/1374 .
I think the parent means that in a Facebook interview they shared a laugh at how terrible the Amazon interview was.
Makes sense. They probably meant to say “...laughed at my story”.
Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)
#220Based 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.
The SDK? Those are all auto-generated