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

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#131

Post by blocked_again » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:39 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…

You theory does't makes much sense.

Amzon USA - 71% software engineers recommends Amzon to a friend in Glasdoor. 87% Approves of CEO.

Amazon India - 87% software engineers recommends Amazon to a friend in Glasdoor. 94% approves of CEO.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#132

Post by kottapar » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

middleclick wrote: post #32

salil999 wrote: post #18

Former AWS engineer here. I worked on a pretty critical product in AWS (big AWS service with lots of traffic) and I can safely say that it's totally up to your manager and pre-existing conditions which make up the job. My manager was great as a person but would always lack in my career-oriented goals (bigger projects, promotions, etc) But what really sucked for me was the pre-existing conditions. Our on-call was pret…

> Code quality was atrocious. We had one enormous Java method (>1000 lines) which would take care of nearly every single request coming into our service... With only about 7-8 unit tests AWS is pretty reliable for the most part so I am pretty surprise that the code quality is that bad.

This is indeed surprising. Any time we have slowness issues the usual recommendation would be to throw resources at the problem; increase cpu, add more memory et al. We used to lament that we should spend time debugging the problem and fix the actual issue. We then used to say that probably at places like AWS and the other biggies they'd be following some excellent best practices and we should also strive to reach that level of excellence.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#133

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

datalus wrote: post #5

Is it ironic that Amazon uses leetcode for their programming screeners?

That may be the reason the author posted to leetcode.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#134

Post by devoutsalsa » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #81

Amazon is a loose federation of different teams. Some are fine and some are bad. My counter-anecdote: I worked at Amazon for two years and it was mostly fine. Normal boring job.

If the majority of stock options vest in years 3 and 4, may I ask why you left after 2 years?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#135

Post by akarma » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

papito wrote: post #43

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.

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.

> 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.

The way it currently works is what you describe here. Amazon pays the least they can for the most amount of work, and workers work the least they can for the most amount of pay. They meet at the equilibrium where Amazon receives adequate labor, and the workers receive adequate pay.

There's nothing radical or communistic about that idea.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#136

Post by throwaway666775 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

I currently work at Amazon as an engineer(NA), joined around 1 year 5 months ago. My experience has been quite different than the one linked here and commonly talked about on the Blind community so I'm posting here to add a data point.

Maybe I'm just lucky but having first hand experience around my team and the 5 teams surrounding it, things are very manageable. Our oncall is a bit hectic but you're not oncall that frequently for it to bother me personally. I work on projects that have a lot of impact and challenge me technically. The key here is to manage expectations very clearly before the beginning of a new project, this sets you up for success for the next -2-3 months in implementation.

Overall, I feel like I don't overwork myself, my manager cares about me and my mental health and supports me in growing as a professional. The only time I've seen people work a ton of hours is if they slacked off , which then becomes a problem they brought onto themselves. If there is a crunch time that was a result of something out of our hands, my manager is empathetic to that and encourages us to take time off after the project is done.

I'm a happy person to be working at Amazon, under my current manager and I see no reason to change that in the near future for me. Amazon is not for everyone. While my manager cares about me, he also has certain standards in the quality and timely delivery of value from me. Working 9-5 is entirely possible at least in my org, and most people that I know do work 9-5, but those 9-5 hours are going to be busy and you have to prioritize well.

If you are a completely new in the field, want to coast or chill I think there are better places than Amazon to work.

Edit 1: grammar/spelling

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#137

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

blocked_again wrote: post #131

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…

You theory does't makes much sense. Amzon USA - 71% software engineers recommends Amzon to a friend in Glasdoor. 87% Approves of CEO. Amazon India - 87% software engineers recommends Amazon to a friend in Glasdoor. 94% approves of CEO.

Glassdoor is not reliable

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#138

Post by blocked_again » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #137

blocked_again wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You theory does't makes much sense. Amzon USA - 71% software engineers recommends Amzon to a friend in Glasdoor. 87% Approves of CEO. Amazon India - 87% software engineers recommends Amazon to a friend in Glasdoor. 94% approves of CEO.

Glassdoor is not reliable

> But in India, jobs are careers for life

But remarks like this with no data whatsoever on the average turn over time of Indian vs US engineers are more reliable than Glassdoor rating of thousands of people?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#139

Post by vorpalhex » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #100

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 usually average 4.5 hours a night. I am still living, but it is not a happy life. I slept 8 hours one night, felt like a new person the next morning. But I fall back into the habit again.

Obviously everyones situation is different, but if you can manage more sleep you'll likely find the rest of your day is overall more productive despite being shorter.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#140

Post by throwaway2037 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

martindbp wrote: post #11

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started today with 4.5 hours of sleep and I’ll do just great with that. Once a week my body grabs 10-14 hours in a single night to “catch up”.

The vast majority of people would be under performing without even noticing at 4.5 hrs. Yet somehow, everyone thinks they're part of the 1% that has some magic genetic fix for this. Sort of like how 80% of people think they're above average at driving.

The last sentence is brilliant! Sometimes, I feel I am the only person that I know who admits to being a terrible driver. I am so easily distracted by beautiful nature, construction sites, other car crashes, whatever... Thank goodness I never had an accident, but many close calls. As a result, I try to drive as little as possible.