Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#171

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

kevstev wrote: post #156

jasonladuke0311 wrote: post #69

With the stack-ranking/hire-to-fire stuff, on-call load, and hilariously backloaded vesting schedule, why do people want to work there? It seems like such a minefield.

I feel like most of these stories are just coming out recently, in the last year or so. Maybe things hit a tipping point during the pandemic? I interviewed there about 4.5 years ago, and I didn't know any of this, and while there were a few red flags, they seemed mostly around their recruiting process and not with the job itself- at least until my onsite where my interview became almost outright combative and hostile…

Also wondering if the creation of platforms like Glassdoor, Blind, even r/CSCareerQuestions have allowed these issues to come to light.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#172

Post by rejectedandsad » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

throwme1234 wrote: post #149

discodave wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience at Amazon, line managers (5-20 people) still often act as if they have unregretted attrition goals. It's up to the Sr managers and directors if they spread the 6% goal around all their teams, or let one or two teams "implode". But the line managers know that their team either needs to outperform other teams or that the performance management buzzsaw is likely coming for one or more of their reports.…

My impression is that most teams have high enough natural attrition that it doesn't really matter and some teams even seem completely immune to any sort of real change, even if they do extremely poorly on their deliverables. I know a few teams that other teams actively avoid working with, even preferring to reinvent some of their solutions, yet, more or less the same people have been working on these underperforming…

I’ve noticed this too in my time in my org, it’s reasonably common to just rebuild something simple if the other team isn’t responding to your tickets and escalations. The fact that they are three or four different time zones away from me on either side of the country doesn’t help.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#173

Post by state_less » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #152

thanhhaimai wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic applies when you joined a while ago. However, with the stock sky high (P/E 66, double GOOG 33), joining Amazon right now may not give you that potential upside anymore. Your managers and long time careers will get a larger portion of the upside. It's already evident by the stock growth of GOOG compared to AMZN in the past one year/quarter. The P/E of Amazon is high, compared with the growth potential vs ot…

Amazon's PE has always been this high

But their market cap hasn’t. Odds are they won’t 5x their size in the next five years as they did in their last five.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#174

Post by codezero » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #122

plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

It looks a problem peculiar to Seattle as there are not many choices of hyper-growth companies. I can't imagine the same dilemma in the bay area, where one can switch from one promising company to another every week from weeks.

This happens in the Bay Area for a similar but different reason, the promise that you’re on a rocket ship that is pre-initial exit can hold folks tight with sub dollar stock options that promise to 20-30x in value if you win the lottery.

Smarter folks have just gone for the one or two year cliffs, this is one of the reasons “job hopping” is looked down on for high skilled workers and attributed to attitude and not the companies’ failed promises. Obviously not keeping people is painful for growth too, but it’s still a very one sided power dynamic.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#175

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

htrp wrote: post #139

decafninja wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, as someone who has yet to crack one FAANG (or similar level company) offer, a FAANG engineer is someone that I look up to. But my friends and ex-colleagues who did crack FAANG did so with difficulty, and they got rejected from all but the one company that did extend an offer. They all say if they were to re-interview at their companies (or another FAANG), odds are they'd be rejected. So someone who can get of…

I'd argue FAANG offers are like college admissions, probably a good 40% of the applicant pool likely qualifies for the role and can succeed in it, but only 3-4% of the pool gets the offer

You can argue the numbers and there's probably a top tier of people who are no brainers. But, yeah, in general at least for elite university admissions, they could probably toss most or all of the admitted pile in the trash, figure out who to admit from the rest of the pile, and the world would keep on turning just fine.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#176

Post by rejectedandsad » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #78

jokethrowaway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can pass Amazon's interview you can pass any other fang's interview which will give you the same CV prestige with probably less hassle. The only people I know who went to Amazon picked it just because it was the only fang they passed at and they didn't want to bother doing another round of interviews or wait for the cooldown period. Sure, other fangs have similar internal politics nightmares - but Amazon seems…

How common is it for a candidate to be able to get offers from multiple FAANGs? I would imagine it isn't common, though I could certainly be wrong. The FAANG engineers that I know personally all seem to have cracked FAANG with a lot of difficulty, and claim that odds are they would fail if they had to re-interview for the same position.

Common among the cognitive elites, but the rest of us are lucky to get one. For me, Amazon was the one. And the fact that people think the bar is lower (and therefore I’m stupid) has made me cry myself to sleep before.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#177

Post by giantg2 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

20% of the curve is ranked top tier? I'd like to work there. It's 8% at my company. Of course company also says they evaluate against a standard, but it's really stack ranking behind the scenes. It think it's always going to be stack ranked in IT since the standards/metrics are so vague.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#178

Post by rejectedandsad » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

nkssy wrote: post #57

decafninja wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Amazon on your resume probably opens many doors. True, there are other companies on par or better than Amazon on many different metrics. Many of them are at least as hard to get into as Amazon though. If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on…

Personally, I'd work for Amazon and already be looking elsewhere the moment I signed up, given how random it seems in terms of being fired. They're going to fire you anyway.

I actually did that, kept interviewing about every 8-12 months until last September or so. The problem is none of my offers were as high as Google new grad offers (all less than $200k, though one had a $175k base) so I didn’t take any. This was from 4 startups and Citadel. Seems like being inferior has its own severe monetary costs….

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#179

Post by maybelsyrup » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #167

maybelsyrup wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. It's kind of a hot take, but as someone who passed through young adulthood during peak social paranoia about suicidal jihadi terrorists lurking behind every tree, it's really interesting to see, every now and then in anecdotes like this, a weird sort of jihadi capitalism appear. It's li…

The poor fellow at Amazon can always go to Zillow or Microsoft not really the same as deaths of despair here.

Yes, correct, but he isn't -- and I'm sure he knows he can leave to some other firm. He isn't leaving to the point of being hospitalized. Which is unbelievable to me!

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#180

Post by Scramblejams » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36

ladyattis wrote: post #10

I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

A couple of things come to mind. (I work for Amazon, but I don't speak for the company.)

1. As with any other big company, it depends on your manager. I've had good managers my whole time at Amazon, so I've been a happy camper. If I continue to have good managers (they do change often), I could see myself staying for a long time. I like working at Amazon. With a good manager, you may never even have to think about the whole 6% thing.

2. If you get bored here, it's your fault. Amazon's active in so, so many disciplines and I've had many otherwise satisfied teammates leave our team because there was another exciting team doing something they'd never touched but wanted to get into. These are the kinds of moves you'd have incredible difficulty making when jumping from one company to another ("you're a game developer? why on earth should we think you'd be good at ?!"), but inside Amazon, these moves are possible, and the possibilities are pretty exciting.