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I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

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Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#71

Post by Sparkyte »

hackandtrip wrote: post #59
Sparkyte wrote: post #10

Amazon is actually really hard to get fired from. I knew this one guy who used to binge drink during while working all day. He only got fired after he brought production down for the third time in six months. I left because I had higher pay offers. I'm an idiot to say the least, but a person who can acknowledge their faults is likely to be someone who gets hired persistently because they know to address it.

The fact that an individual can bring production down is 1000% a problem in the process; outages should not attributed to single commits but to a series of problems in the process. Just saying this since the number of times someone being production down should not be cause of shame or firing

It is complicated. They released code out of cycle which isn't a process issue. It's a person issue. You don't do that stuff without planning a MCM. You also don't become unreachable after a deploy.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#72

Post by Sparkyte »

hackernews777 wrote: post #62
tinyhouse wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually very false. Amazon is not hard to get fired from, but it takes time since there's a mandatory pip process (for performance based firing) like in many tech companies (about 4 months in the US, longer in some European countries; it's often shorter if the candidate agrees to take large severance and leave).

I thought he was referring to the fact you don't have to be particularly clever or competent person to keep your job. Amazon isn't known for firing people on the spot for honest mistakes (CoE gets filed and life goes on). It's usually more along the lines of people are not doing the work they were assigned to do.

Absolutely what I was saying.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#74

Post by Krisjohn »

browningstreet wrote: post #30

Neutral tone and temperament are essential skills at this level. Opinions, not so much. I’ve worked in similar environments where an SVP ignored all communications about a project until it was useful for them to be interested and gaslight everything that had happened and had been communicated before. In fact, the stink wasn’t on anyone involved, but the project itself. There’s a way to come out of these things unscat…

Paraphrasing: It doesn't matter how much shit gets piled on you, how little support you get, how stupid the deadlines are, or how bad the communication is, if you get visibly upset you lose.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#75

Post by scruple »

Krisjohn wrote: post #74
browningstreet wrote: post #30

Neutral tone and temperament are essential skills at this level. Opinions, not so much. I’ve worked in similar environments where an SVP ignored all communications about a project until it was useful for them to be interested and gaslight everything that had happened and had been communicated before. In fact, the stink wasn’t on anyone involved, but the project itself. There’s a way to come out of these things unscat…

Paraphrasing: It doesn't matter how much shit gets piled on you, how little support you get, how stupid the deadlines are, or how bad the communication is, if you get visibly upset you lose.

I have nothing but personal anecdotes and observations to base my thoughts on here but it seems to me that this has become true of life in general. And as the OP has now learned, it's of no consolation how right you are or how justified you may be to get angry in the first place, either. You still lost.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#76

Post by lightbendover »

yummy_box wrote: post #3

I also work at Amazon, and I can tell you, your experience was pretty unique. Some teams are worst than others, of course, but no one expect you to pick up a project by yourself, fresh out of onboarding and own it end to end. After you clear your interview loops, you get the chance to match with several teams (not always) and that is your chance to figure out what the team does, whats the situation over there, etc...…

On the flip side, my first week was “here are three disparate teams that are all on fire, go put them all out by yourself.” And honestly, that was my best manager, one that I returned to years later. It’s a huge company, almost any set of onboarding circumstances have transpired.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#77

Post by rkk3 »

throwntoday wrote: post #48
poulsbohemian wrote: post #14

Sounds like the biggest mistake he made was lashing out at a likely in-over-their-head manager. We are only getting one side, but sounds like he was trying to do the right things to either overcome the challenges and/or create boundaries, but he may have been hired to be a sacrificial lamb. In my consulting times, I was brought into something a lot like this for the purpose of being fired so that the CTO could save t…

The funny thing is that Amazon really stresses their leadership principles and I recall one of them being "have a backbone", basically to disagree with anyone if you know you're right. I can see how he snapped over his moron manager bringing gender into things.

>> I gave my manager a piece of my mind. She brought gender into the equation and said that I couldn’t speak to a girl like that

> I can see how he snapped over his moron manager bringing gender into things.

he "snapped", then they "brought up gender". Since it sounds like he was fired for cause he probably called them a B!#$^ or C@!$, but who knows.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#78

Post by flashgordon »

Almost been through a very very similar situation twice. What I learnt from the first time (a year into my first job out of college) was to have written commitments - and put things in writing. I had a project manager who played very dumb and on a day I was out of the office went upto my manager complaining about work not having been done. My manager set up an "urgent meeting" even though she knew I was on a day off. Almost as a way to stage it up. This was when my senior colleagues had educated me in the values of putting status/commitments/questions in email so there is a trail of your effort!

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#79

Post by primitivehacker »

ciabattabread wrote: post #28

Wait, so did he get fired, or did he resign? "What an imbalance of power and being an engineer who feels a strong desire to empower other engineers, I reached my limits and wanted out. A few weeks later, a developer on a neighboring team who reported to the same management resigned."

I was technically fired but told my wife before the zoom call that I was going to announce my resignation. So when things got heated I hung up knowing they would fire me.

Re: I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

#80

Post by hackandtrip »

kempbellt wrote: post #66
hackandtrip wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that an individual can bring production down is 1000% a problem in the process; outages should not attributed to single commits but to a series of problems in the process. Just saying this since the number of times someone being production down should not be cause of shame or firing

Someone has to have the keys to the kingdom. Ideally, multiple people do - bus factor. If no one can bring production down this is also a problem. If only one person can, better hope they don't get hit by a bus, or take a vacation, or rage quit.

100% agree on this and that's my point.

Was that code merged without any review? If so, that is a recipe for disaster. Why no unit tests, integration tests, QA? What was the speed at which the outage was resolved? If a sane deployment strategy is in place, I'd hope that no big damage was actually done; if the error budget was burning fast, there should be some manual/automatic rollback.

tl;dr they may have been a key factor in the outage, but it seems like it is a symptom of a deeper hole in the process.

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