271–280 of 771 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. If you are moving across big orgs, you are just a blip in the system should something like this come up. And just like a group of startups, some are going to be run worse than others. Additionally, because of the internal transfer policy and teams frequently switching out members, a lot of work is desi…
> If you are a talented software engineer, not just a developer and generally know how to navigate around managers, you can hit senior engineer or manager levels quite easily, How do you “navigate” your way around an 11:30 PM email that contains a 5:30 AM deadline, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread?
This comment killed me : Will Ye Will Ye Engineering @ Cohere (cohere.io) 5mo Back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I…
That is also:
- Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility (We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers)
- Deliver Results (Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle)
- Bias for Action (We value calculated risk taking)
- Think Big (They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers)
- Are Right, A Lot (They have strong judgment and good instincts)
- Ownership (They never say "that's not my job")
- Dive Deep (No task is beneath them)
Clearly, Will Ye Will Ye is operating at an Amazon final-stage boss level, if only they knew [0]!
I interviewed for an Engineering Manager job at MSFT and they looked like they had about 35 hours of meetings a week. On top of that they are expected respond to urgent issues from their direct reports and respond from urgent issues from upper management. Then there is the corporate politics of other middle managers.
The kicker was that most of the interview they were wanting me to do leet code. Really, I'm going to take this job and spend 50 hours a week of dealing with management tasks AND you think that I'm going to be keeping up my coding skills?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was lucky enough to experience a 2 year long project in which everything that went wrong was blamed on the developers. Project managers breathing down your neck, feeling so pressured you barely dare take a bathroom break, the whole shebang. Quit working for them and now I'm a freelance dev. They asked me to get back on the project and I said fine, that'll be €700/day. After some grumbling they realized they had no…
700 a day??? Why did you undercharge by so much. I know the EU dev market isn't great but those are rookie numbers for "danger money." Three of the "retired, then handed enough money to unretire" COBAL guys at my old place were doing 2500 a day.
The least you could do for "danger money" is 1200 EUR a day (and limit yourself to 4 days a week, but that's another story).
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Is it really? Seems an unnecessarily stressful way to get experience. I kinda agree with the OP, I would have a lot of trust issues with management if they pulled this shit on me.
I'm convinced human beings are naturally designed to operate at 120% for 6-12 week long periods. \ Hunter gatherer survivalist genes just kick in. YMMV, but I consider it a healthy thing for, at least for some part of your career, to work "Amazon hard." Aka, all the reasons that people list when they say you should really try working for a startup. When you push yourself to your limits at your profession, a lot of st…
Maybe a cynical take, but if you’re pushing limits then you’re probably just learning the right corners to cut, shortcuts to take, and how to exploit/manipulate people to get what you want fast. If you didn’t learn any of that, then—well, someone else just learned all that at your expense and you’re setting yourself up to just be exploited again and again.
> there just isn't the time
Yeah, that’s the root cause. Why is there no time? Is someone’s life on the line for this deadline or is it just that the manager is eyeing a sweet bonus for delivering early. 99.9% of the time it’s the latter. So why learn how to get manipulated? Learning to work at a consistent pace is far more sustainable. Tortoise and the hare.
This comment killed me : Will Ye Will Ye Engineering @ Cohere (cohere.io) 5mo Back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I…
>taught me lessons I’ll never forget. Don't date women that are easily confused with Bezos in drag?
At least it's not every other week like it was for my team for a while. Now we're up to every 6 weeks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. If you are moving across big orgs, you are just a blip in the system should something like this come up. And just like a group of startups, some are going to be run worse than others. Additionally, because of the internal transfer policy and teams frequently switching out members, a lot of work is desi…
> If you are a talented software engineer, not just a developer and generally know how to navigate around managers, you can hit senior engineer or manager levels quite easily, How do you “navigate” your way around an 11:30 PM email that contains a 5:30 AM deadline, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread?