61–70 of 418 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting... any current Amazon employee that can confirm/deny this? Perhaps things have changed since 2007.
We migrated the US retail rendering fleet to AWS last year. simonw posted a link about it elsewhere on this thread.
I'm surprised this is an external post. Stubby services, eh?
Yeah it's giving me 404 now...
Of course, maybe he'll be moving on. His very first line was comparing his tenure at Amazon (6.5 years) to "and now I've been at Google for that long". I don't think that's a coincidence, even if he doesn't consciously realize it yet.
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Yes, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? If those horror stories are true (and we have no reason to doubt they are), it kinda shows that the way you treat your employees doesn't really matter to your success. It certainly matters a lot to them; it matters from a moral point of view; but from a practical point of view the only individuals whose happiness matters are the customers. Of course, if your employees are so…
Amazon internal propagand emphasizes that Amazon is a startup. "It's day one!" is a phrase I heard way too many times. They have "door desks" -- which actually cost them more than regular off the shelf furniture would-- but they pretend like they're being frugal to perpetuate the perception that they're a startup. (When I found out about the door desks costs, I was sworn to secrecy, it is very important for morale.)…
- What's my name? (Covering your badge, naturally)
- What am I working on?
- Where am I from?
If the bigwigs can't answer that, I'm sorry, you've moved past actual startup-dom and you're just in la-la land where you just think you are one.
Unfortunately, I only thought of this acid test after leaving a place with 30K employees which had started proclaiming it semi-regularly during their Friday get-togethers.
It seems to 404 now, a copy is available at https://raw.github.com/gist/933cc4f7df97d553ed89/24386c6a79b...
Here's another mirror: http://buu700.com/steverant
I worked at Amazon from before Steve left to sometime later. I remember being excited when Larry Tessler was hired, and dismayed at the way he was treated. Everything Steve says about Amazon is true, only, it was much worse. Amazon was, by far, the worst employment experience I've ever had. I'm not saying that lightly, I worked for a dozen startups, a couple of which crashed hard in the most gut wrenchingly painful w…
I interviewed at Amazon and got an offer recently, but I have to admit, it did kind of sound like this kind of job. I really liked the offer stage, where I asked for 4 weeks vacation (what I have now) instead of their standard 2 weeks. "That's not negotiable! It wouldn't be fair if you got better benefits just because you're better at negotiating than others on your team!" True. Offer rejected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon internal propagand emphasizes that Amazon is a startup. "It's day one!" is a phrase I heard way too many times. They have "door desks" -- which actually cost them more than regular off the shelf furniture would-- but they pretend like they're being frugal to perpetuate the perception that they're a startup. (When I found out about the door desks costs, I was sworn to secrecy, it is very important for morale.)…
I have an acid test for any place which claims to be a startup. When someone proclaims this, ask them to answer any two of the following questions: - What's my name? (Covering your badge, naturally) - What am I working on? - Where am I from? If the bigwigs can't answer that, I'm sorry, you've moved past actual startup-dom and you're just in la-la land where you just think you are one. Unfortunately, I only thought of…
Also, if they're public, they're not a startup!
I have one odd guess about why Google can get a decent "platform". They hire "hackers". Their recruitment process involves 99% computer science and almost none software engineering. So the people there, being amazing at the most complex computing tasks, just aren't seeing the "big picture".
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I'm really shocked to read that (and the OP's rant about Amazon). Of course, I've never had a corporate job. It amazes me that Amazon managed to be so successful, despite treating their employees so badly.
I've thought a lot about this. In part because, you can't generally say anything bad about Amazon without being attacked. "You must be disgruntled" etc. I only made my post because I had the cover of Steve Yegge saying very similar things (Though I went into more detail.) Most people believe Amazon's press releases. In 2006, they said that AWS powered Amazon.com. It was a flat out lie. But how could I prove it? Fortu…
But you are disgruntled. You've got excellent reasons for being so. I always wonder why people will use things like that as stoppers for the discussion, the fact that someone is disgruntled alone should not be cause for dismissal, the underlying reasons are what matter. And you've gone over and beyond the call of duty in my opinion here and I am frankly surprised that Amazon manages to operate if they treat their employees like this.