Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees

#41

Post by blindhippo » Sun, Apr 27, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

dandroid1 wrote: post #27

blindhippo wrote: post #19

Ahh, this explains why I, a web developer in the middle of the Canadian Prairies keeps getting hit up by Amazon's recruiters. Quite possibly they've poisoned their local talent pools so much they have to pull in naive people from out of market. Glad I saw this article - now I don't need to fret about whether I should respond to the email. Just the very fact this article was written signals enormous alarm bells for an…

You are very naive if simple blog spam articles like these influence you that much.

Actually, it's pretty naive of you to assume that this is the ONLY article that I might have read documenting Amazon's work culture. Moving across the country to work for a foreign company isn't the type of decision to be made lightly.

Amazon has a terrible reputation, as evidenced by this article as well as a simple google search for "amazon work culture". And that reputation is costing them talent.

That's all I was getting at...

Re: Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees

#42

Post by timOKle » Sun, Apr 27, 2014, 9:21 PM UTC

hackcasual wrote: post #30

apetresc wrote: post #12

For what it's worth, as someone who did two internships there, the whole "Amazonians hate their job" thing is way overrated. With the exception of pager duty, most of the legitimate complaints employees used to make have long been addressed. I've interned at other big tech companies too, and Amazon stands out in my mind as having some of the highest morale. Here's another interesting data point: both of my teams at A…

Ex-amazonian here, It really depends on the team. There's 2 types of crappy places to be at Amazon: the really important legacy system, or the we need to catch up with the competition product. In the first case, there's no opportunity for really improving things, it's usually a small team which can really hamper your advancement, and it breaks constantly. You'll work a 40 hour week, but will get paged all the time an…

Doesn't Amazon make you sign an 18-month non-compete? How could someone jump to Google?

Re: Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees

#43

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 5:34 AM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #31

zenbowman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a fair number of ex-Amazonians at work and they all complain about the work culture there, so I do believe it may well be that bad.

I have very little insight into the matter. Just noting some limitations and biases in the data presented. Former employees are probably biased sources of data, too. Anyway, I've heard it's a tough place to work, but some people thrive on it... nothing beyond what's in the Businessweek article.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees

#44

Post by faddotio » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 5:35 AM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #31

zenbowman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a fair number of ex-Amazonians at work and they all complain about the work culture there, so I do believe it may well be that bad.

I have very little insight into the matter. Just noting some limitations and biases in the data presented. Former employees are probably biased sources of data, too. Anyway, I've heard it's a tough place to work, but some people thrive on it... nothing beyond what's in the Businessweek article.

A very middlebrow dismissal of OP. :|

Re: Amazon's Stressed Out Culture Is Burning Out Employees

#45

Post by jshen » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 3:04 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #14

jshen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's a good read on how not to lead a company" But they are very successful. People say the same thing about Jobs, and again, they are very successful. People that say, "this is no way to lead a company" have to have counterexamples of equally successful companies that aren't run this way.

The Roman Empire was very successful, maybe that's the best way to lead too? Of course that's ridiculous. If you have a big house, a big salary, and you're miserable, are you successful? Amazon has a nice stock price, good technology, and (allegedly) broken employees, is it successful?

so you don't have a counterexample?