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Working at Amazon

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Re: Working at Amazon

#11

Post by jorblumesea »

babaganoosh89 wrote: post #7
top256 wrote: post #2

it's interesting how Amazon is now positioning themselves as a tier 1 employer. They used to be a tier2. AFAIK they also have a brutal pager culture where you're awoken in the middle of the night.

Isn't that the point of a pager system?

Many companies have overseas teams that take the night shift, eg: every on call dev has 12 on during the day, 12 off at night. Amazon does not based on cultural reasons (allegedly) because it promotes ownership and accountability for those teams.

Idea being if you're woken up at 4am because of a flaky test or some issue you'll be more inclined to fix it. And if it's a recurring issue, you'll really want to get it sorted or else your life will be hell. It also pushes emphasis on serious testing methodology and the idea that Amazon is a 24/7 business.

It actually makes a fair amount of sense, but it's also brutal and contributes to burnout and attrition. I also think this is starting to change for some teams.

Re: Working at Amazon

#12

Post by sumitgt »

xchaotic wrote: post #10
sumitgt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way Amazon does one-pagers is sort of unique.

You mean on six pages? ;)

The 20 minute quiet reading in the beginning is kinda different.

At the other companies I've worked for, you were expected to come to the meeting having read the docs sent over email.

Re: Working at Amazon

#13

Post by amznthrow »

Amazon has one thing going for it that I think is a huge deal for a standard BigCo job: if you don't like your initial team, you can switch ANY TIME. And if you're an engineer, you can probably join any team you want.

The reason this is such a big deal is that when applying to any company, you'll get placed on a team and it's really hard to get enough information on the culture, mission, management, etc. Once you're inside? Tons of information, and a lot of coworkers you can ask. This really reduces the downside risk of a new job.

I know this because I work at Amazon, and switched teams very early. I'm much happier on my second team, and probably would have quit on the first team.

Re: Working at Amazon

#14

Post by noahl »

top256 wrote: post #2

it's interesting how Amazon is now positioning themselves as a tier 1 employer. They used to be a tier2. AFAIK they also have a brutal pager culture where you're awoken in the middle of the night.

Do you think the tier 1 thing started after the NYTimes article on them, or before?

Re: Working at Amazon

#15

Post by sumitgt »

xchaotic wrote: post #9

The biggest flaw in working for all those mega corps, is that despite their size, they still haven't fully embraced remote work. Yes there are island, but Amazon are still looking for that "2nd city" to locate in. Some people may dig going to an office, I don't. If you're lucky to be early in a given neighborhood, you can probably retire on renting out your house. If you're late, like applying to Amazon now would be,…

> Especially in places like Seattle if I was to relocate with the family, I'd be an indentured servant, with obligations to pay high rent/mortgage, I'd probably have nowhere to change jobs to, if Amazon didn't work out.

That's quite the opposite. Wouldn't living in a big city mean more choices? Seattle for instance has high paying job options from Microsoft, Google, FB if you decide to leave Amazon.

However, yes having more acceptance of remote work would be great.

Re: Working at Amazon

#16

Post by vkou »

xchaotic wrote: post #9

The biggest flaw in working for all those mega corps, is that despite their size, they still haven't fully embraced remote work. Yes there are island, but Amazon are still looking for that "2nd city" to locate in. Some people may dig going to an office, I don't. If you're lucky to be early in a given neighborhood, you can probably retire on renting out your house. If you're late, like applying to Amazon now would be,…

> I'd probably have nowhere to change jobs to, if Amazon didn't work out.

Seattle rents/homes are, compared to SWE salaries, not that high (Yet), and Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Tableau are all hiring.

Re: Working at Amazon

#17

Post by Danihan »

gtsteve wrote: post #3

The site is now offline, probably due to load. Google cache link for the lazy: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:70Vxjs...

Thanks for the mirror, but my God this is a tepid article.

TL;DR - Working at Amazon AWS is just fine and pretty much what you'd expect.

Re: Working at Amazon

#18

Post by openasocket »

jorblumesea wrote: post #11
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point of a pager system?

Many companies have overseas teams that take the night shift, eg: every on call dev has 12 on during the day, 12 off at night. Amazon does not based on cultural reasons (allegedly) because it promotes ownership and accountability for those teams. Idea being if you're woken up at 4am because of a flaky test or some issue you'll be more inclined to fix it. And if it's a recurring issue, you'll really want to get it sor…

Amazon encourages developers to be on call, but there are also rolling on-call systems so no one gets paged in the middle of the night. A team I work closely with does this. It isn't very stressful for me, I'm just on call for small, well-defined intervals, something like 1 week out of every 6, and only high severity issues will cause a page. In the last year or so I've been on call I was only paged after normal business hours once. Of course, Amazon is an absolutely massive company, so different teams may have wildly different experiences.

Re: Working at Amazon

#19

Post by sushisource »

sumitgt wrote: post #12
xchaotic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean on six pages? ;)

The 20 minute quiet reading in the beginning is kinda different. At the other companies I've worked for, you were expected to come to the meeting having read the docs sent over email.

The Amazon way appeals to me because in my experience pretty much no one ever does the pre-reading.

Re: Working at Amazon

#20

Post by Danihan »

amznthrow wrote: post #13

Amazon has one thing going for it that I think is a huge deal for a standard BigCo job: if you don't like your initial team, you can switch ANY TIME. And if you're an engineer, you can probably join any team you want. The reason this is such a big deal is that when applying to any company, you'll get placed on a team and it's really hard to get enough information on the culture, mission, management, etc. Once you're…

What was wrong with the first team? How large are teams, generally? Are we talking like, six people, or sixty?
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