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I lasted three minutes at Amazon

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Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference here is that CI/CD should ideally be taking away annoying work from devs so that they can more smoothly go from problem/feature -> hard thinking work -> code -> out the door, without having to deal with the highly repetitive part of the job. The problem is that there's an expectation that this increase team velocity more than it increases quality of living. 15 years ago in IT if you could automate…

> The big difference here is that CI/CD should ideally be taking away annoying True. OTOH, I feel like some version of this is always sold as the worker-facing rationale for automation and increased productivity. For some jobs, it's "hey, we're going to automate your job away so you can go do something meaningful with your life". For devs, it's "we're going to automate this for you so you can focus on meaningful work…

I dont automate CI/CD because I'd rather be sword-fighting on roller chairs, I automate because I value the cost of my own work time and truly would rather spend it on a more interesting problem. (To say nothing of the fact its all too easy to make mistakes where processes arent automated, and I dont enjoy making mistakes)

I dont disagree with your observations, just saying "productivity" gain is pretty far down the list of benefits to me personally

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#152
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News now auto-substitutes for old.reddit: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

They auto-substitute in a different reddit UI but leave paywalled links as-is? Wild.

harder problem

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#153
post #5

I had to read carefully into the article before I understood this is probably a fulfillment center job, not an AWS SWE.

I've interviewed there twice and I gave up on them twice because honestly it was about the same thing with no one knowing what they were doing and being EXTREMELY slow about everything else. In the space between my first screening and an email to schedule an interview day, I applied at another place, did 3 interviews and a coding test, negotiated an offer, accepted an offer, and quit my current job. It was absolutely…

Yep, the only place I’ve ever interviewed at where i had multiple no-shows in a row for my interviews. I had to notify my recruiter multiple times of this 30 mins after my interview was supposed to start, and she wasn’t even aware that my interviewer didn’t show up. The process that was supposed to take a month at most stretched out to almost 3.

Not even mentioning the whole bait-and-switch, where I was led to believe that i was interviewing for a position at Twitch, not at at Amazon itself. Turns out, after I got suspicious of it all and asked quite a bunch of very specific questions from my interviewers, it was revealed that it was actually for a role on an AWS team that worked as a partner for Twitch. After me asking the recruiter if I just misunderstood it all from the start, I was just met with “well, it is still working with Twitch, just for AWS”. I was kinda mad after spending those miserable months interviewing, especially since i made it clear to the recruiter from the very start that I am solely interested if it is a job at Twitch and not Amazon. Lesson learned though.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I took a drug test the company itself was absolutely horrible. Only place where my manager expected me to work multiple nights per week. This was as a software engineer! At this point drug tests are just a filter. Let's me know the company culture will suck.

So long as you are filtering out all companies with government contracts as "a company culture that sucks," that's true. https://www.samhsa.gov/workplace/legal/federal-laws/contract... requires any organization receiving a federal contract of over $100,000 or a federal grant of any size to do so. Tied to that is a page of HHS-certified labs for drug testing and federally regulated industries. It's pretty silly but it…

Worked for a company that had to drug test its people (and take other security measures) to get items through federal customs in an expedited fashion.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a new article a few months ago about Amazon being worried about that very thing. So they're aware of it but corporate America has an ace up their sleeve they can always rely on: work visas. Politicians aren't going to say no when Amazon wants to import guest workers. Amazon done it for the white collar workers for decades, no doubt they'll be quite happy to do it with their blue collar workforce too.

I think there would be enormous political pushback by elements of both parties to expanding the guest worker program to unskilled labor.

There is significant political support for effectively open borders, which has the effect of importing unskilled labor without the permit implied by a guest worker program.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#156
This description is highly Kafkaesque and I believe part of it because HR is usually where people who are in the [μ-σ, μ) IQ population fit.

But can we just talk about how every one of these people will have some bit somewhere down where “and my anxiety is getting worse” or “my ADHD is acting up” or something like that.

It’s like this universal phenomenon. Like, I fully expect to see it when I start something like this. Personally I had my money on “And she didn’t understand that I was having a panic attack”. But ultimately it delivered in a different way.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#157
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there would be enormous political pushback by elements of both parties to expanding the guest worker program to unskilled labor.

There is significant political support for effectively open borders, which has the effect of importing unskilled labor without the permit implied by a guest worker program.

What in the I-485 are you even talking about? American immigration is hard as fuck for an Indian person making like half a million a year.

You think they’re going to try to lobby to get blue collar people in? “Effectively open borders”, my ass.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#158

After reading that, I can’t help but feel like this is just someone experiencing awful anxiety and unable to cope with work: “ I go home absolutely drained and i didn’t even do anything. I wake up with the worst existential dread I’ve ever experienced. I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general. Sometimes id rather die then suffer until I die from an i…

I feel like even if his onboarding had been perfect, he'd be chewed up and spit out by the normal difficulties of any moderately challenging job.

>I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general.

I mean... I can't imagine an emotionally balanced person writing that. I don't want to make this into a personal attack, so maybe it just needs to be recognized that a lot of jobs -- most jobs -- deal with numerous stresses, and some people are not fit for those jobs. It's sad, because it's a very important life skill.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#159
post #116

I highly mistrust anything on /r/antiwork. So many of the posts are the “and everyone clapped” variety but get hundreds or thousands of upvotes, I’m pretty sure it’s at least half a troll karma farm.

While they usually seem to have started off fairly sincere, /r/antiwork like many of the subreddits dedicated to telling stories about ridiculous behavior in others seems to have quickly changed into more of a place where people practice creative writing. /r/TalesFromTechSupport, /JUSTNOMIL, /r/AmITheAsshole, /r/MaliciousCompliance, and many others. The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take…

note that /r/antiwork is now a default sub, so SNR is much lower

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#160
post #45
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't this the same with tech jobs though? you are just as replaceable and the interview process is only there to filter out the bad candidates it's only more intense because the cost/risk ratio is magnitudes higher

We don't earn better pay and benefits because we are special, brilliant people. We are given these benefits because there is a perpetual labor shortage of people who have enough tech experience to do their employers' bidding and nobody will show up if they don't doll these out. In other words, we are a fluke, and we'll lose these benefits once they figure out how to commoditize software development. Which is a pretty…

>tech workers union

Yeah, let's cartelize a real free market.

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