Hire-to-fire at Amazon India? • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#111

Post by Frost1x » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

jelling wrote: post #98

pram wrote: post #20

I've had two job offers from AWS for SA and TAM and I turned both down. The actual position was always lower than what I was originally interviewing for (Senior instead of Staff) Literally the only company I've seen that does that. It's like a bait and switch. If I'm not actually qualified just say no lol

My friend works there and said that virtually everyone gets dropped a rank on the way in. It’s so common that people commonly introduce themselves as “I’m an X but pre-Amazon I was an X+1”.

Sounds like an HR policy to reduce labor costs. As long as Amazon keeps a steady supply of labor behind you and at least some of them don't have other comparable options, they're going to agree to these terms and their hiring teams are going to continue this nefarious practice. Some may agree to it alone in an unconscious sunk cost fallacy.

There really need to be laws with teeth about false advertisement from both employees and employers so we can skip this sort of non-sense false advertising.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#112

Post by zrail » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #3

“ If you're someone who likes your 7 hours of sleep a day, stay away.” how do people function long-term with so little sleep? I need at least 9 hours to not be a useless husk the next day.

I'm a parent to two small children. Sleep is incredibly important but I think I probably have another year at least of seven hours interrupted at least once as my normal.

It sucks.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#113

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

a4isms wrote: post #95

ghaff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly all the business class hotels have the ability to reserve room blocks, cater events, pre-book rooms, etc. But those are essentially additional profit centers. I'm just saying that many/most of us essentially deal with hotels 1:1 even for business travel. But, yes, there are some brands of e.g. Marriott that are in part oriented to corporate events and the like and other that are mostly for individual travel…

Of course we do. I’m just explaining why such a place might have many, many more programmers and other employees than we would guess are needed judging by our experience out at the periphery of their business.

Absolutely, and I'm usually perfectly cool with some nice B&B having some janky third-party website or even, gasp, having to call them on the phone to make changes etc. I'm not fine with Marriott not having a streamlined mobile app, a loyalty program, 24-hour customer service, etc.There are certainly economies of scale with companies generally but there are also costs.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#114

Post by wpietri » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #50

papito wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. Suggesting such a thing, however, is "radical" and "communist", and essentially one step away from a dystopian fascism hellscape something something ANTIFA.

This isn't specific to Bezos, and it's not specific to any particular class or type of "worker." If Bezos could double his money today with zero work he'd certainly do it. The family business down the road would cut every employees' salary in half tomorrow if it could. It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some a…

Nah. That's not "the free market". And that's not how most employers are. Wanting extra useless billions even if it immiserates others isn't commerce, it's sociopathy.

Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#115

Post by papito » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #104

papito wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American capitalism is built on employee heroics, but at least you can get the AWS stamp on your resie, which, let's be honest, will make you the "it" girl of job hunting.

I think you overestimate the appeal of a handful of large companies, taken by itself, on a resume if only because they come with downsides as well.

The level of abuse and mismanagement I put up with before I got older is pretty shocking. Young people have a much higher tolerance for BS, in many cases because they don't have enough experience to know that their workplace is broken.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#116

Post by ixaxaar » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #91

This is a great example of culture clash. In the US, being cut means nothing, you've always got to be ready for another job search. Only a few workplaces (Govt, places with strong unions, full professors) have any protection against retrenchment or arbitrary firing. But in India, jobs are careers for life, and your employer is part of your personal brand. The cachet of AMZN is great, until you realize they are going…

> But in India, jobs are careers for life, and your employer is part of your personal brand.

In the last decade, I might have very rarely seen a resume with more than say 10 years of experience at a single place. The average would be somewhere in the range of 1-4 years.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#117

Post by wdb » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

a4isms wrote: post #30

HenryKissinger wrote: post #6

What does Amazon need thousands of engineers for, exactly? Amazon.com is a fine website. It is finished. It is complete , perfect as it is. The website could remain the exact same for the next ten decades, with minor adjustments to the product menus to reflect new products, and it would serve its purpose perfectly without risking being dethroned by competitors. Why do millions of lines of code need to be written each…

Consider this metaphor: You go on vacation. You stay at a hotel, not a “B&B.” Your vacation, your money, so you find a place close to the things you want to see, with plenty of free amenities like free continental breakfast and free WiFi. It’s somewhat reasonably priced, too. Now you go on a business trip financed by your employer, who books you into a “business class” hotel. It’s also close to things you want to see…

I have to meet the first employer that does the hotel bookings for me. I always need to sort it myself and expense back. The only thing the employer did is arranging a discounted room price.

Normally, meant that I spend at least one day a month doing my hotel/travel expenses. That's ~40-46 lost working days :)

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#118

Post by papito » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #50

papito wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. Suggesting such a thing, however, is "radical" and "communist", and essentially one step away from a dystopian fascism hellscape something something ANTIFA.

This isn't specific to Bezos, and it's not specific to any particular class or type of "worker." If Bezos could double his money today with zero work he'd certainly do it. The family business down the road would cut every employees' salary in half tomorrow if it could. It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some a…

This is not a fair fight, however. Do you know how often US lawmakers talk on the phone with a billionaire? About once a week. They get the preferential treatment, they get the laws passed, and if the "normals" want to do something crazy like organize to negotiate working conditions, then it's a code-red emergency in Washington the sky is falling somebody do something.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#119

Post by Grakel » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #10

I read a telling point about Jeff Bezos yesterday, he believes people, all people, are inherently lazy and will work to avoid work. The description seemed to be trying to say, without saying, he's an Ayn Rand disciple, meaning he drunk the Kool-Aid to believe he's a John Gault or an Roark and we're just the peons preventing him from greatness and his destiny.

You have a profound misunderstanding of Ayn Rand and, I suspect, Jeff Bezos.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#120

Post by wpietri » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

sreque wrote: post #109

zorked wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For very, very popular services, a second of being live will exercise more code paths and edge cases than even the most dedicated testing team could ever dream of. We hear a hell of a lot about testing but the most fundamental piece of software quality nowadays is the release strategy: running on tee'd live production traffic, canarying, metrics and alerting, quick roll backs, etc.

It's a very short-sighted view on testing, although I'm not surprised SREs would say it. The biggest problem with software deployment is that it is owned and managed by people who have no vested interest in developer productivity, including devops engineers. A major goal of any org should be developer productivity; otherwise you are just hemorrhaging money and talent. When I say developer productivity, I mean: How co…

Yeah, I really appreciate excellent rollout strategies, although I suspect a lot of them are more developed out of self defense by SRE teams. I see it as a series of safety nets: I'm still going to write tests for my code so that I don't have far to fall if I make a mistake. But I also want a safe rollout so if I miss the first net I don't splatter on the pavement.

And I totally agree with out about developer productivity. It's just not a consideration in most places. For example, in a factory or a restaurant, meetings are things that happen rarely and in constrained time slots, because everybody realizes that production is primary. But in most software companies, actually getting work done is second priority to meetings.