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An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

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Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#271

Post by romanovtexas »

valbaca wrote: post #264

Hi there. So, I wrote this. I'm the original author. I'm amznymous (still proud of that username) It's wild to see this pop-up at the top of HackerNews 5 years later, but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions anyone has. I'm still at Amazon and have been on a couple of different teams since then, but this was definitely written at my lowest time at Amazon. I've had low times since then and high ones as well.…

Was your original team in retail or AWS? Also how do you figure out what team is good/bad when trying to switch teams?

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#272

Post by valbaca »

romanovtexas wrote: post #271
valbaca wrote: post #264

Hi there. So, I wrote this. I'm the original author. I'm amznymous (still proud of that username) It's wild to see this pop-up at the top of HackerNews 5 years later, but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions anyone has. I'm still at Amazon and have been on a couple of different teams since then, but this was definitely written at my lowest time at Amazon. I've had low times since then and high ones as well.…

Was your original team in retail or AWS? Also how do you figure out what team is good/bad when trying to switch teams?

I never worked in AWS

Really just gossip is what you have to go off of initially.

After you've been at the company for a bit, when you're interested in a new team, you can usually get some meet-and-greet meeting with current members on the team.

That's the time to ask really tough questions, even potentially awkward questions: how many times do you get paged? What's the worst project you've worked on? What's the average tenure of team members? When people leave the team, do they leave Amazon? (If they leave Amazon, then the team is less to blame, otherwise, beware).

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#273

Post by sulam »

rantwasp wrote: post #248
sulam wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on your definition of widespread. It is relatively common, but it's also far from universal, and there are companies that use on call which have a vastly different experience that what many people at Amazon report. In fact it seems like even different teams inside of Amazon have drastically different experience of on call. Treating it like a fact of life, like the weather, leaves you in a frame of…

hmm. no. you do have agency. you have agency during writing the code. you have agency during the code review. you have agency during wiring of alerts (if you do stupid shit you will receive a lot of pages. don’t so stupid shit). you have agency during the events. you also have agency after the events when you do a coe/post mortem. you can defined prioritize things to improve the life quality of other developers. to g…

Okay, at the risk of putting way too much effort into this, I'm going to assume you have 5 people on your team, therefore you're on call 10 times a year roughly. 5 weeks out of the year then you'd be oncall during a sev2. Assuming sev2's are uniformly distributed you are probably interrupted outside normal working hours ~80% of the time, so call it 4 times a year you have your work-life balance negatively affected by on-call.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#274

Post by rantwasp »

sulam wrote: post #273
rantwasp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm. no. you do have agency. you have agency during writing the code. you have agency during the code review. you have agency during wiring of alerts (if you do stupid shit you will receive a lot of pages. don’t so stupid shit). you have agency during the events. you also have agency after the events when you do a coe/post mortem. you can defined prioritize things to improve the life quality of other developers. to g…

Okay, at the risk of putting way too much effort into this, I'm going to assume you have 5 people on your team, therefore you're on call 10 times a year roughly. 5 weeks out of the year then you'd be oncall during a sev2. Assuming sev2's are uniformly distributed you are probably interrupted outside normal working hours ~80% of the time, so call it 4 times a year you have your work-life balance negatively affected by…

you need to generate some 3d graphs and after that write a paper about using gradient descent to improve the WLB of SW developers :)

our team had 7 people and at some point we started sharing the oncall load with a sister team (ie you were oncall for the services on both teams), meaning that you would be oncall roughly once every 3 months. not ideal - but not the worst thing in the world.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#275

Post by romanovtexas »

valbaca wrote: post #272
romanovtexas wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your original team in retail or AWS? Also how do you figure out what team is good/bad when trying to switch teams?

I never worked in AWS Really just gossip is what you have to go off of initially. After you've been at the company for a bit, when you're interested in a new team, you can usually get some meet-and-greet meeting with current members on the team. That's the time to ask really tough questions, even potentially awkward questions: how many times do you get paged? What's the worst project you've worked on? What's the aver…

I would have guessed AWS from your post since it's the more notorious one about bad WLB. As a new grad SDE1, things are bit horrifying especially since I've onboarded remotely.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#277

Post by ncallaway »

MattGaiser wrote: post #3

A former colleague of mine suspects that Amazon is going to eventually run out of developers to hire because of how rapidly they burn through them. Yet to know anyone who lasted more than a year or two there. Obviously some do, but they go through an enormous number of people.

It really, really depends on the teams you're on.

I was at Amazon for four years and enjoyed my time there. I had one stint on a high profile high-pressure team that lasted about 6 months (no on-call, though). That was the busiest time I had at Amazon but it was kinda known going into that project.

I generally worked 45-50 hour weeks, with the occasional 50-60 hour weeks but that was pretty rare.

It's a big company. It really depends a lot on your manager, your team, and your org.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#278

Post by ncallaway »

bambataa wrote: post #61
teej wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These employees do not have employment contracts and do not have hours that are set by a contract.

Wait, you're saying Amazon SDEs don't have a contract?

They have a contract, but the contract will specify them as "exempt salaried" employees. That's pretty standard across the board in the tech world (as well as many other professional roles).

Exempt salaried employees aren't paid by the hour, and don't have a set number of hours they are expected to work. There is no overtime, but there's also no (contractual) penalty for working fewer than 40 hours in a week.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#279

Post by samirillian »

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…

> because the first iteration of the tax would have destroyed grocery stores

> This iteration is targeting the 800 largest employers in Seattle, many of whom aren’t currently profitable.

Citations needed. Citing a few articles quoting a few politicians does not count.

Creating an alt account to make this one comment not really trust-inspiring either.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#280

Post by posix_me_less »

WorkAllDay wrote: post #251
posix_me_less wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing. I can hear a shy cry for help. I think it's fine to spend a lot of time with computer, in general, I do it myself. There is so much to do, learn and help others. On the other hand, I think it is good to realize when it eventually becomes a replacement activity for lack of motivation/opportunities to do something harder. Then try to break that, take a challenge, do something new, either with com…

Any ideas for a guy who lives in a downtown condo? Im that guy who logs in at 3AM to distract from the boredom of life.

If you can't sleep at 3AM and would like to, plan to do anything else afternoon than staring at the screen - like, try to walk and find a path to a moderately distant place in your city you know/like but have no idea how to get there on feet, without using a phone unless you really get lost. This can be fun and long walk and navigation will tire you down. You can think about what you're gonna do next time too.

Like taking up some challenges in life. Besides maintaining physical fitness and getting tired in the process, one thing I like is to create contraptions (does not have to be a "product") that could be useful to you or people you know. An air purifier, a charging station for a phone, a piece of wooden furniture, or anything else. Get some tools and get working.

If you prefer social activity, plan to do the above with a friend.

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