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Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#541

Post by bpicolo »

rantwasp wrote: post #500
bpicolo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use reducing the rate of incoming tickets as the primary OKR for on-call engineers. Has never failed to reduce that burden over time. Just like you say - I'm convinced it's the only correct strategy to make the problem go away.

if you set a goal but don't empower people I think overall you end up killing morale. IMHO, reducing the rate of the incoming tickets can only be done with investments that are not fire-fighting. If you're doing that I think it's awesome.

Yeah, absolutely - that's the whole point. If the on call expectations aren't serving that goal specifically, we need to fix/change the on call expectations, so it's a moving target over time.

If there's too much firefighting, that means we owe additional support to the team or need to rebalance other work appropriately in the interim.

The opposite is also true. If we don't have too much firefighting or valuable de-risking to do, we can take on more product work.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#542

Post by lostmsu »

tablespoon wrote: post #408
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'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. Quit now, and encourage your teammates to do likewise. I understand where you're coming from, but the attitude you have can be a source of exploitation (e.g. using loyalty to peers to keep you while the org scre…

There is usually on hire cash, that you must return if you don't work for a full year to prevent smart moves like this.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#543

Post by steelframe »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #423
steelframe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at the point of my career where it's all about the manager, the hours, the comp, and the kind of work I'll be doing. I no longer care as much about the title or level. In fact if the level is lower, great -- I'll have an even easier time getting high perf scores. These days, when I negotiate for a new job in Big Tech, I first and foremost maximize base pay. That's [1] immediate (no waiting for vest or anything),…

What did you do in your career to get to a point where you could ask for those things?

Nothing spectacular, really. After 20 years of working at several FAANGs, you just tend to move up the ranks to senior/staff-level positions. You also build a reputation that can follow you around the industry as people you've worked with also move around.

Once you're pegged for a Google L6/Facebook E6/Microsoft 67/etc. role, there's a lot that those companies are willing to agree to in order to get you on-board vis-a-vis Google L3/Facebook E3/Microsoft 59/etc.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#544

Post by steelframe »

zetsurin wrote: post #417
steelframe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at the point of my career where it's all about the manager, the hours, the comp, and the kind of work I'll be doing. I no longer care as much about the title or level. In fact if the level is lower, great -- I'll have an even easier time getting high perf scores. These days, when I negotiate for a new job in Big Tech, I first and foremost maximize base pay. That's [1] immediate (no waiting for vest or anything),…

>Oh, you want 18 months of non-compete? Is this even enforceable? Maybe if your C level, and they pay you while you wait.

Depending on what state you're in, yes, it may very well be enforceable. If you'd like to test those waters, more power to you. I wish you luck.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#545

Post by atopuzov »

amazon_throw wrote: post #168
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #124

I worked at a company that hired several people out of Amazon. Amazon is a big company, so there is significant variation from team to team. However, several of the ex-Amazon employees were clearly scarred from their time working at Amazon. Whenever something went wrong (delays, outages, missed deadlines) one of them went so far as to spend hours or days preparing documents showing how it was actually someone else's…

That "CYA" response really doesn't feel like "us" to me, at least not the AWS side. I can't speak to the experiences on the store side, nor on the devices side. Over in AWS, we practice the "blameless postmortem" model you'll read about from time to time, and it is very rare to see any professional or personal consequences beyond some light joking come about from "breaking prod" To that point, I know personally the e…

Sometimes COEs are used to punish engineers. Eg. take a look at so called "moustache" COE (which I was part of).

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#546

Post by swman »

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…

So many of my FANG friends talk about the horrid code quality and sometimes terrible processes that are in place that I’m always surprised. Considering the amount of gatekeeping

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#547

Post by rantwasp »

intricatedetail wrote: post #537
rantwasp wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 'poorly paid' employees can definitely afford a lawsuit. here's the thing though: if you know what the situation is and continue to work there who is to blame? also, most stories I've heard is that the sub-optimal comp comes bundled with pretty good WLB. So maybe if you were to double the number of hours worked and double the comp M$ would blow other BigTech out of the water. Maybe this is the play (half the mone…

Do you base affordability on what? The type of lawyer average employee can afford will be easily crushed by a top law firm with virtually unlimited funds. The fact that one can change job shouldn't enable companies to continue like this.

my point was that the people know the deal they are getting. if they still work there they are okay with it.

to play devil’s advocate (from a top lawyer firm): how can one force a private entity to pay a certain wage that is way over what the minimum wage is?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#548

Post by kevstev »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #509
JediPig wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon begged to interview, so i did. My friend worked there, and thought I go call her and find out how things worked there. That is when I discovered this forced termination of 30%. I thought it was 15% , but who's counting. So I gave amazon a choice. 2 year contract forced pay contract, if they fired me for any reason, other than fraud, I would collect the full amount. I done this twice. It was a defunct mobile co…

> So I gave amazon a choice. 2 year contract forced pay contract, if they fired me for any reason, other than fraud, I would collect the full amount. I done this twice. As someone who has hired contractors and full time employees many times, this is just insane. I don't care if you are Linus Torvalds himself, as an employer I would never sign a contract that is that lopsided, and to be honest I can't believe that any…

This was pretty common before the financial crisis, though the typical contract length was a year back then. The idea is that it was a 2 way street- the consultant is committing to your company as much as you are committing to them. And if you are a mega corp, honestly one person's salary for a year isn't really that big of a deal. The cost of hiring and firing a FTE is not much less.

Though the length of it is pretty head scratching. The whole point of using consultants was that you needed a short term amount of specific work done, unless you are talking about engaging large consulting companies to deliver a project.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#549

Post by dennis_jeeves »

From one of the posts:

>Bezos is on the record for having said "humans are lazy and we need to give them incentives to quit".

Keeping aside all other considerations for a moment. Isn't his fundamental observation correct?

(If you respond, I'd appreciate if you mention a little background of yourself especially if you have experience running or observing closely atleast a small business, the reason I ask this that I'm generally surrounded by people who are the 'middle' class and software developers who generally overwork and are rarely lazy. I have far less of an idea of how the vast majority of the lower socio-economic strata of the society operate. )

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#550

Post by [deleted] »

atopuzov wrote: post #284
amazon_throw wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, I don't doubt that they happen, but given that you've also left the company and seem to have hit one of these areas of toxicity yourself, I'm not surprised you'd think so. Who was your last manager? I'm curious if it's anybody I know?

Not gonna dox other people, you can easy figure out my name and reach out with a "real name".

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