Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 147 posts

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#11

Post by notyourwork »

nickbauman wrote: post #8
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

Average tenure of an Amazon employee on the tech side is something like a year or so.

Based on what citation? Here say isn’t useful to the conversation.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#12

Post by whoevercares »

nickbauman wrote: post #8
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

Average tenure of an Amazon employee on the tech side is something like a year or so.

The length of tenure by level would make more sense. Senior and Principal SDEs (L6&7) in Amazon are like semi and full god, while lower level ICs are design to “hire fast, fail fast”

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#13

Post by whateveracct »

nickbauman wrote: post #8
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

Average tenure of an Amazon employee on the tech side is something like a year or so.

I'd say it's more around 2 thanks to their typical 2-year vesting cliff and one-year clawback on bonuses (which weighs the minimum towards 1-year and average further out). But yeah it's short.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#14

Post by lowiqengineer »

Klonoar wrote: post #10
lowiqengineer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.

You're certainly allowed to be proud... but others don't have to respect your career choices (and many won't, which is fine). Personally speaking, I've had Amazon try to pull me a few times and I just stopped responding to their emails. It's a large company and I can agree that there's leagues of separation between, say, AWS and warehouse operations... but I also just don't care, I can't co-sign the kind of stuff tha…

I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#15

Post by stevejb »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #3
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

> Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.

Nobody but yourself has to give you permission for this. It's an honest living. Lots of people who would give you shit about this are in the VC-funded "Uber eats for dog treats" world and may have an over-inflated sense of the social value their jobs are supposedly creating.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#16

Post by lowiqengineer »

bakenator wrote: post #7
Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

I'm just curious, what was your experience trying to develop games in your spare time? Were you told to stop?

People sometimes do, they just don't publicize it. It's specifically noted in the intellectual property agreement, though nobody seems to be sure why.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#17

Post by SamBam »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #14
Klonoar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're certainly allowed to be proud... but others don't have to respect your career choices (and many won't, which is fine). Personally speaking, I've had Amazon try to pull me a few times and I just stopped responding to their emails. It's a large company and I can agree that there's leagues of separation between, say, AWS and warehouse operations... but I also just don't care, I can't co-sign the kind of stuff tha…

I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

> The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options.

> I've been rejected at Google and Facebook

These two statements are not contradicting each other...

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#19

Post by jessriedel »

Pfhreak wrote: post #2

One of the things I really liked about working for AWS was the accessibility of the S-team. Even as a fairly junior engineer I was in meetings where you could get their opinions, see where they were going, and understand their goals. AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev…

Everything after your first two sentences is off-topic. If the comments on all articles about Amazon devolve into general complaints about Amazon, there will never be quality discussion.

Re: Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities

#20

Post by lowiqengineer »

SamBam wrote: post #17
lowiqengineer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

> The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options. > I've been rejected at Google and Facebook These two statements are not contradicting each other...

Perhaps, but my goal is to make ~$250k a year as fast as possible. To do so at my current company would take at least 3 years and 2 promotions, whereas even James Damore was making $400k+ 4 years into his tenure. I can't get offers at trading firms, so I'm kinda SOL overall.
Post reply on HN