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

#221

Post by acuozzo » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

0zymandias wrote: post #123

jandrese wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been a company that doesn't say they hire "only the best"?

Yes. The police in the US explicitly reject people with high IQs. It has been challenged in court but upheld. https://www.kake.com/story/32508747/court-oks-barring-high-i...

Your reply assumes that [High IQ] => [Good Police Officer], but the argument in the US is that [High IQ] => [Bad Police Officer[1]].

I don't agree with this personally, but what they are doing is not equivalent to them exclaiming that "We don't hire the best". It would only be equivalent if they were explicitly filtering-out qualities they believe contribute to being the best, such as discipline, strength, and the like.

[1] Due to boredom, etc.

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

#222

Post by bin_bash » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

state_less wrote: post #173

testing_1_2_3_4 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what people said 5 years ago.

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

#223

Post by giantg2 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #187

giantg2 wrote: post #177

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.

20% sounds high, I thought it was 15%. Getting ranked TT usually means you are ripe for promotion but haven’t gotten it that year for whatever reason.

Yeah, at our company it means you can get promoted onto most teams (have your choice). I feel like they specifically keep some people below that so they can't leave as easily. They also have a "critical man" policy where each department can designate one or two people as critical so they can't leave there.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:48 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.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by RandallBrown » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #59

joshe wrote: post #43

The problem with stack ranking at places like microsoft was twofold. First small team managers were forced to rank their reports, and each manager had to get rid of the bottom 10% each year. If you had 20 employees you had to fire 2 employees each year. But statistics doesn't work like that, there were many microsoft teams with all productive employees. And there were probably teams where 30% of the group should have…

It did not work like that at Microsoft at all. Stack ranking happened at an organization-wide level, so the total pool was hundreds of employees. It was perfectly normal for one team to be full of high performers, and vice versa. And being ranked in the bottom bucket didn't mean you were going to be fired. In most cases it wouldn't even lead to a PIP. It was simply a lower bonus, that's it. I have no idea about Amazo…

I ended up being on the losing end of the stack ranking at Microsoft and it was pretty terrible.

My manager straight up told me that my performance was fine but because he had to rank someone the lowest, it was my turn since I was the least experienced on the team. If I had actually been doing a bad job it wouldn't have felt as bad because at least then I would have had some control over the situation.

I moved teams shortly after that and my new manager was pretty surprised to see my last review. He started keeping a list of other developers on the other teams that I was helping so he could help me get ranked higher. That felt super shitty and I left the company right after.

That happened to be right at the same time they did away with the stack ranking. I have no idea if it improved things but it had to be better than what it was. (At least in my part of the company.)

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

#226

Post by throw8881 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:51 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…

>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?

Current Amazon engineer here. People have been complaining working at Amazon for a long while.

At least in my organization, leadership pays close attention to whether folks are happy or unhappy in their roles. I posted this earlier, but we have a massive workforce of engineers at Amazon, across many countries. If 1% of them are unhappy, and even 5-10% of those unhappy folks are willing to say something about it online, you're going to see plenty of news sites picking up those articles and representing Amazon in a negative light.

There's plenty of bad publicity around Amazon, and I think that's due to the insane growth of this company. Regardless of your view, Amazon has been insanely successful. With that success comes suspicion, and you can quickly go from being very trusted to everyone questioning every practice – from quality of AWS documentation to Prime shipment speed to hiring/promotion practices, etc. Alot of people have skin in this game because they're competing directly with Amazon.

I'm not saying Amazon can't do better. We absolutely need to. But alot of the things being represented as systemic issues at Amazon are simply not so, but they certainly push a specific narrative. shrug

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

#227

Post by maverick-iceman » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

thanhhaimai wrote: post #147

startup_excuse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you wouldn’t work elsewhere and invest is the following: you get hired at Amazon with a total comp of 500k (180 base + 320k in RSUs). You have been in role for 2 years and are completely burnt out. However the stock has doubled, and your total comp (without any raises) is now 820k. That is too much money for people to walk away from. If you leave for GOOG you will get in at the current stock price with no…

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…

> For non-Staff level SWEs, my opinion is that joining a FAANG with lower P/E is better for your future earnings.

No, because mr. Market has been looking at everything except P/E, more essentially you can't spend P/E. You spend price.

If you want to throw in P/E in the analysis fine, but then you have to throw in every other element which makes the stock move:

1) Cult CEO who is able to sell the narrative

2) Fed policy

3) Macro environment

4) Odds of company being targeted by the DOJ

and all the other trillions of factors which influences the price of a security.

As Druckenmiller reminds us: "There is not a phenomenon in the world which doesn't affect the price of a security in some shape or form, no matter how small"

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

#228

Post by throw8881 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #164

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…

I interviewed and got the feeling that people were not especially happy there. When I asked what they liked about AWS, 3 said "the stock price going up"

I'm an engineer now at Amazon and have bounced around a few organizations in the years I've been here.

Maybe the particular team you interviewed with wasn't happy, but I don't think this is systemic.

Often times, people will jump ship to another team or another org because they have brand new, greenfield projects, or something that the person is more passionate about. You typically don't see people stay in roles where they're unhappy.

Amazon can't certainly do better in how it scales its business, but alot of the posts here that give the appearance that everyone at Amazon is unhappy are exaggerated. Alot of people don't like Amazon, period, and think the company should be broken up. While I think we can do alot of things better, I also believe there's a particular agenda pushed because Amazon is perceived as a threat across many industries, not just retail sales or cloud services.

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

#229

Post by bsder » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

retrocryptid wrote: post #16

This isn't news, but what they don't mention is managers will set up their own "private" PIPs to frighten workers into doing what they want. It's not news that the big-A wants its software engineers working 60 hours per week. I interviewed for a principle engineer role and everything seemed to be going well. But when the offer came it said "Software Engineer II." I asked about that and they said... "Oh, don't worry.…

> you'll get automatically promoted at the end of the next quarter

This is always a HUGE RED FLAG. Never agree to this. Ever. For any reason. Even if you can get it in writing, you can be laid off, fired, etc.

Get the title when you walk in or don't walk in.

The problem is that titles generally have salary bands. You'd much rather be at the low end of a better title because the high end of the band is higher.

The flip side is that you better know that you can actually do the job. If you come in as a Principal, you're going to be expected to work as a Principal and not a Senior. If you're work is only up to Senior, you're going to get fired.

I, sadly, had to fire a guy who got into this position somehow. He was a nice guy. He could do Senior work. But he was at HR Principal level. We were a startup struggling to survive and I didn't have the time to teach him. So, I had to fire him to free up my slot so I could get an actual Principal that I desperately needed.

He took my advice to land somewhere else as a Senior, and I gave him a nice recommendation. He got pretty close to the same salary and killed it for them at that level.

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

#230

Post by outside1234 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

EarlKing wrote: post #113

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…

> 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. Tell that to the guys in logistics who don't get any options and bear the brunt of Amazon's bad management.

yeah, they are already leaving in droves.