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

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

#241

Post by awsthro00945 »

decafninja wrote: post #82
titanomachy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the kind of rockstar ninja wizard that can glean multiple offers from all sorts of top tech companies" I don't think this is a helpful stereotype. I know lots of these people and they're quite normal. "Rockstar ninja wizard" makes these jobs sound a lot more unattainable than they really are.

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…

FAANG interviewing has nothing to do with your skill as an engineer. FAANG interviews only evaluate how good you are at jumping through the specific hoops they require for their special interview process. For Amazon, it's all about how well you can bullshit your way around the LPs.

It's the professional equivalent of "being good at taking multiple choice exams". But just because someone got 100s on every biology exam in high school doesn't mean they are an expert in biology, just that they are a good test taker.

If you want to look up to someone because they are actually a good engineer, then that's great. But don't look up to someone just because they are a good test taker. And don't look down on yourself just because you are a bad test taker. Taking tests has so little relevance to how good you actually are as an engineer. Amazon is chock-full of completely mediocre engineers, and also rejects plenty of actual engineering wizards.

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

#242

Post by brown9-2 »

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…

Over the past 9 months though the stock has been flat, so this willingness to suffer for rewards will hit a brick wall soon

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

#243

Post by awsthro00945 »

sokoloff wrote: post #72
plank_time wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So a manager might make a bad hire because so they don't have to fire any of the people they like. This is well documented behavior, even in Jack Welch’s book. He was the one famous for cutting 5% every year at GE.

At Amazon*, the "bar raiser" has to approve the hire though, so there's a pretty mechanistic control against the worst form of this. * - as I understand it; never worked there.

Most bar raisers are limp noodles that will just do whatever the hiring manager says. It's trivially easy to hire a mediocre person with full intent to fire them, and a bar raiser would likely be none-the-wiser nor would they stop it.

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

#244

Post by hollerith »

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…

Your friend could switch jobs, then use his salary to buy Amazon's stock :)

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

#245

Post by int_19h »

throw8881 wrote: post #228
bob33212 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wher…

FWIW, I know quite a few people from FAANG and associated companies, and those coming from Amazon are consistently the most unhappy about work there. So, while this may not be universal inside the company, Amazon definitely does have a problem compared to the industry at large.

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

#246

Post by subsubzero »

htrp wrote: post #128
civilian wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, elaborate on your model of the world. Shouldn't the logistic employees already be leaving in droves since they're not getting stock? Why aren't they?

> Amazon burns through workers so quickly that executives are worried they'll run out of people to employ, according to a new report Sources: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...

I know I will never work for them, they constantly reach out to me and its all nope on my side.

As a side note there's always new college grads(a sucker born every minute according to PT Barnum) willing to suffer for their chance to work at a FANG.

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

#247

Post by okaram »

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.

Up until a couple of years ago, they did get stock (Amazon doesn't give you options, but stock grants). Not sure if that ended when they made the salary $15.

If by 'logistics' you mean the people who pack/ship etc, warehouse work sucks, but Amazon has better salary and conditions than most others (pee bottle jokes aside).

If you mean the warehouse supervisors, analysts, etc, they get paid fairly well.

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

#248

Post by jonny_eh »

mulander wrote: post #192
AlexCoventry wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the reprimanding manager's motivation was? The possibility that you were doing work he wouldn't get credit for?

He assumed I was not working or doing work for a different manager (they implemented matrix management and he was at HQ 70 km away from the town I worked at). I made a judgement call as that migration was a $20 mln project. That corporation had time budgeting. I was supposed to account in a production tracking system every task I did in 15 minute granularity. I have a ton of crazy stories like that out of that place.…

> In essence, the guy was a micromanager with trust issues. They later replaced him, with someone that was actually worse.

At least it had a happy ending… oh wait.

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

#249

Post by subsubzero »

bob33212 wrote: post #239
throw8881 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wher…

I believe you, and just for context, I have spent 600k on AWS over the past 3 years, when I could have spent it on Azure. I don't think AWS should be shut down.

I absolutely don't believe AWS should be shut down. I do think AWS and Amazon(retailer) should be split up, and thats what a majority of sensible people believe.

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

#250

Post by VRay »

seahawks78 wrote: post #215
slumpt_ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morons at Google do it, too. I knew a manager who wore a suit to every fucking meeting, and would make a point to bring up IC’s CL counts and lines of code changed during calibration / promo review. He still works there and likely has sway over the careers of countless more competent individuals than himself. Quitting Google was the best decision I ever made. Good teams are outnumbered by shitty teams with shitty man…

Really!!! I am surprised to hear this. I always thought that Google is akin to "Chocolate factory" for programmers where programmer is the king and each and every decision is made by programmers. In my circle, Google is considered to be the final nirvana and a Software Engineer badge the ultimate status of "you made it in life". Even I found their coding interviews so damn hard. In my opinion, they are at least 5-10x…

Hey buddy, I'm going to pull back the curtains a little on those coding interviews. Solving coding interview questions is a skill that you can learn, just like playing musical instruments or solving mystery novels or mastering a type of video game.

If you hit up TopCoder or Leetcode or one of those other corny interview programming sites and grind away at it for a few months, you can get to a point where you have a really solid chance of getting past any coding interview.

Google is a little sneaky, since they take "Can solve a leetcode question" as a starting point, then crank the difficulty up on the questions even more so you have to be able to solve the base question in ~10 minutes and then expand on it. It's like "OK, you solved the locked room mystery. But now can you talk me through a locked room mystery solution.. WHILE PLAYING DARK SOULS?"

There's a ton of luck involved too. I've run into a lot of interviewers who ask questions they themselves don't actually understand very well. Then I'm in the unenviable position of wondering "Do I tell the interviewer he's wrong? Is it a trick, or is he just an idiot? Is he going to get mad if I tell him?" Another problem is that coding interviewers will ask a question, not try to code up the answer themselves, and just assume it's way easier than it really is.

If you want to get hired by the GAFMAN, just grind out those coding questions (and write working code answers in your IDE of choice or on the command line with vim/gcc). Brush up on your CS when you come across a concept you don't understand. Then get some referrals to get past the HR filter, and roll the dice.

BTW, when you get an offer, don't sell yourself short. Check levels (dot) fyi and/or talk to your peers to make sure you're getting the market rate for your skills.

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