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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#181

Post by dasil003 »

aphexairlines wrote: post #133
nirvana wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. It would have meant I lost my job. When Bezos is posting on a ticket, everyone knows it. All the pressure rolled downhill right onto me. This means that, even if I did tell them to fuck off, I wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep. On some level I would have felt I was shirking my duties, and after all, I'd lobbied hard to get it fixed, months before. I think, ultimately, it is kind of…

> I'm actually a bit hesitant to talk about this, even years later, because I expect to be attacked for it. A bit unfair, don't you think? There have been several HN threads about Amazon in the last few months where former employees chimed in, and nobody has been maligned for it.

Unfair to whom? It'd say it's more like PTSD.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#182

Post by redstripe »

Cushman wrote: post #165
VonLipwig wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He took it down for a reason. I can't help but feel reposting it is bad online etiquette

Who downvoted this? We should probably have a real conversation about it. Personally, I'd like to think that if I posted an essay or especially a rant that I later thought was a mistake, and decided to retract it, other hackers would respect my decision and not reproduce it. Sure, it's still cached somewhere, and assholes on 4chan will repost it just to fuck with me. If you really want to, you can probably find a cop…

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#183

Post by srdev »

TruthPrevails wrote: post #152

Hello All, I was an intern at Amazon this summer and they extended a full time offer. I read Steve's rant with great interest. Since many people in comments have confirmed the points raised by him about Amazon, I am not feeling good right now :( I still have 18 days to accept the offer. I am currently interviewing with Microsoft. I have applied to Facebook just now. Sadly, I screwed up my Google phone screening last…

Keep in mind that Amazon is a big place, and your mileage can vary greatly depending on which team you are in. Personally, there are some good and bad points with my team (and pager duty always sucks), but overall I'm not discontent. I'm not sure about the pay-scale claims though. I had thought that I was being paid pretty well, and cross checking against external sites seemed to confirm that.

You can also just take the job at Amazon and switch to the MS offer if you get it and don't like what you see at Amazon. Its considered incredibly rude, yes, but our group has had that pulled on us a couple of times.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#184

Post by funkah »

kabdib wrote: post #179
nirvana wrote: post #7

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…

HR is not there for you. HR is there for the company. Never forget that.

The HR people in my company help me all the time. It's a shame that so many workplaces are so adversarial.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#185

Post by typicalrunt »

nirvana wrote: post #79
j_col wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed for a support role at AWS last year, and that was bad enough. 1.5 hrs of a technical screening call, followed by 6 hrs straight (like, no breaks whatsoever) of face-to-face interviews with 6 separate people, only to be told that I needed to improve my networking skills, and that I should take some networking certifications and apply again next year. The beautiful thing? I never claimed to be a networkin…

"We set a high bar! B players hire C players! Only hire A players!" The way it works at amazon is, if anyone doesn't like you, you're out. It doesn't matter if its relevant or not. It doesn't matter if the person who doesn't like you knows nothing about programming. My boss- the one with the criminal justice degree- would often veto people because they "weren't good programmers". Of course, he had no clue who was a g…

I can't believe Amazon still conducts their interviews in 6 hour blocks. I interviewed there in December 2000 (yup, 2 weeks before the bust) and I was flown in to interview with a crap-ton of other people.

We interviewed for 4 hours, then broke for a 45 minute lunch (where we were basically interviewed/watched by employees), then interviewed for another 3 hours. Then several of us were taken out for dinner by employees where, duh, we were quasi-interviewed for our social skills. That kind of day is crazy and I never want to do it again.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#186

Post by danssig »

pitdesi wrote: post #120

It now 404's so I've posted it here: Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.…

I only got down the first few paragraphs but it sounds like most of the complaints are "retail vs tech company" stuff. Retail has razor-thin margins so of course they will all be cheap as hell. If you think Amazon is bad, try working for Walmart HQ.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#187

Post by sethg »

phillmv wrote: post #143
peterb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about "A players hire A players and B players hire C players" is that every company I have worked at that uses that mantra is full of B & C players from the top down.

What I don't get about that rule is what prevents A players from hiring B and C players, and what prevents B players from hiring A players. I'm more than capable of recognizing someone who is smarter than I am, and as a rule of thumb I prefer to work with people who are smarter than I am.

I believe the theory is that the A players, secure in their own skills, want to be able to delegate work to people who are as competent as they are, whereas the B players want to surround themselves with people who make them look good by comparison.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#189

Post by badclient »

nirvana wrote: post #7

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…

So why does anyone good work at Amazon? And if the only people left at amazon are most crappy people willing to take the abuse, how can they build such a thriving company?

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#190

Post by ellyagg »

nhashem wrote: post #2

What really struck home for me was Steve's line, "I hate... plussing" because I actually think his entries like this one are a great niche for Google Plus -- it's basically a built-in blogging platform/RSS reader. Facebook and Twitter are pretty bad platforms for posting 5 paragraphs (or 25 paragraphs, in Steve's case) worth of thoughts, but Google Plus works pretty well. It has all the sharing/social goodness of tho…

You too, huh? That's what I do now. Our company's been a paying user of Google's APIs for a couple years, and it's been a nightmare the whole time: Inadequate features, bogus data, weird malfunctions, etc.
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