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

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#431

Post by mancerayder » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

kondu wrote: post #334

chewzerita wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After that, I make sure I won't be carrying a pager that can ever "go off" in the middle of the night. That's a non-negotiable for me at this point in my career. I'm currently in undergrad so starting my actual "career" still seems far enough off for me, but serious question how do people actually accept that? Will I have to accept that when I apply for junior/entry level positions? I don't think I'm asking too muc…

Unfortunately, you don't always know if on-call will be involved until you start at the job. Often many companies don't even hire you with a particular role in mind, instead you are matched to a team after you're signed on. (Especially for new grads). And sometimes on-call is introduced in an existing role, it can be difficult to refuse, especially for people in more junior roles. But definitely ask about on-call whe…

I ask about it repeatedly to all interviewers to the point that some companies disqualify me. Call it a survivorship bias in reverse. It doesn't always work, amazingly, but it always sends a strong signal.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Post by chipper02 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #363

jjtheblunt wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation seems good, but I'm there because I got fooled and plan to quit very soon, when graciously (not screw team-mates) feasible, because it's just a waste of time that could be spent helping positive efforts in healthy orgs.

I have felt that way before, but it’s better just to quit ASAP. It’s the company that’s making your teammates suffer and their also better off just quitting.

I live by the motto "I work for money and appreciation, in that order. If you want loyalty, buy a dog!" It has served me well and removed a LOT of stress. I walked out of one crap-hole with a yelling management style on on week's notice. They told me it was unprofessional, and I laughed in the VP's face and told him he was lucky he got a week.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#433

Post by franczesko » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

whoknew1122 wrote: post #418

Immune wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you explain the high turn over rate that can be easily seen using the old fart tool?

I'm not sure that it's fair to ask a random employee (myself) to explain the employee churn for an employer that has over 1 million employees. That being said, it is largely based on the org you're in. My org (AWS support) has a high churn rate because it's largely seen as a stepping-stone to other places in AWS. People get hired into my org, learn AWS really well, and then go one of a few different places: - AWS ope…

Please define 'many boomerangs' in the context of 1 million employees (FC workers shouldn't count).

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#434

Post by IggleSniggle » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

kablow wrote: post #209

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…

I'm in non-AWS and things aren't any better here. It is very much dependent on the manager and team, and I've been optimistic (~3 years now), but it gets harder as time goes on. > I'm just not 100% sure about the whole PIP scene. Our service was extremely critical and we were extremely understaffed. So I don't think it applied to anyone in our org but I know of other teams who would have no issues in taking in a fres…

Wow that’s a huge wtf. You don’t have enough manpower, and then you take somebody who’s contributing and fire them? Seems totally insane.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #215

I interviewed with Amazon and Facebook in the Spring/Summer of 2020. The difference was night and day. Amazon felt like I was part of a huge cattle herd. The recruiter contacted me and told me they needed to hire a bunch of people in my area. I was immediately given a course of study, link to common LeetCode questions and told I had a couple of weeks. That fine. I enjoy solving puzzles. Facebook felt VERY different.…

[deleted]

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Post by approxim8ion » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

jwilber wrote: post #254

curation wrote: post #38

Who are the people who still dream of careers? I don't know any.

Oh man, these “I don’t dream of labor” types are so fucking cringe, lol. Also condescending! A close friend of mine beat cancer as a child. Ever since then he’s dreamed of working in oncology, and is finishing school just this year. He’s very excited, and I’m happy to see his career goals coming to fruition. Other examples abound. I find, in my social circle anyway, the type who ask, “who dreams of careers?” are usua…

Finding stable, well paying careers is more of a means to an end. I think some in this group of people (myself included) are closer to the "I don't dream of labor" type than the "mission style careers" type. That said, I am open to changing my view and don't resent anyone who has found a mission worth working towards.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#437

Post by varispeed » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #295

varispeed wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this is a "factory worker" mindset applied to creative and IP based work. When a factory worker makes a chair, company does not profit from it indefinitely. When a developer creates code he or she gets paid once, but company profits forever. So even if they fire a developer, they still are profiting the from work they did. Question is, why developers sign IP transfer and royalty waiver in their co…

> When a developer creates code he or she gets paid once, but company profits forever. Forever usually being 1-5 years?

It's a figure of speech, but I've seen 10 year old commits still doing well in production and some written before even git was a thing.

Given how much value this work generates, it's time developers got together and put a pressure on companies to pay fairer and proportionally to profits they are generating.

I'd even opt for a legislation that would make contract clauses about giving up royalties illegal.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Post by taway_zonian257 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

awsthro00945 wrote: post #180

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…

>Our on-call was pretty bad (40-60 tickets a week) and there was very little investment being put in to improve it. We had a lot of little scripts here and there which would solve extremely specific situations but no focus was ever put on in building a general framework or trying to reduce the ticket count. AWS engineer here and I confirm everything you say, but this quote really struck home with me. The thing I've n…

> The thing I've noticed at Amazon is that not only are the pre-existing conditions awful, but nobody has any interest or willpower to fix it. Everyone will happily vent to you and tell you how awful things are, but any suggestions to fix it or make things more efficient (even if the fix is very simple and requires low effort) will be met with hostility. And I'm not just talking tech issues, but also process/workload issues.

SDE1 here. IMMV of course but on my corner of the org I've seen a bunch of team members raising concerns regarding tech debt for the L7 to shut it down as it got in the way of delivering the features he wanted to deliver.

Also the elephant in the room is how the company relies on trial by fire as a form of performance evaluation, which involves inexperienced SDEs being pushed to deliver alone chunks of major projects in spite of lack of experience or insight.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#439

Post by sundarurfriend » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

imwillofficial wrote: post #405

xref wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like “good luck!”, “me too”, and “hi James” will get downvoted because they don’t contribute to the conversation

When somebody is clearly in crisis, we stop sprerging for a moment and offer empathy and support. It’s called being a human.

> we stop sprerging for a moment

Yeah, a lot of empathy leaking out of your comment there. "It's called being human" ironic.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#440

Post by rodgerd » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

jjtheblunt wrote: post #300

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…

Current Amazon engineer: it's far and away the most incompetently run bureaucracy with self-defeating dysfunctions forced on the huge number of layers. The recent "leaks" to Business Insider, pointed out to me by coworkers, are exactly what we see. Everything the parent comment mentioned is exactly what we see. Laughably, our middle manager berates us as incapable noobs, entirely unaware that some of us at least actu…

> I do believe there's intentional treatment of engineers as fungible assets, because the engineering quality is so shoddy and the business plan prioritizes maintaining system uptime, with no true priority given to tech debt removal, which actually would in short order surface measurable benefits.

I mean this how Amazon treats all of its employees. It can't quite lock devs and ops people to a desk and have them piss in bottles, but they would if they could.