Amazon (aws) was by far the worst place I’ve worked. Literally every engineer was offered and this was in Germany, where the culture and labor laws are super employee friendly. Everything was soulless including the god ugly Chime and other internal tools. Although principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool. Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook…
“principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool.” Got any more? Is there a list of these anywhere?
AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
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Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#102Amazon (aws) was by far the worst place I’ve worked. Literally every engineer was offered and this was in Germany, where the culture and labor laws are super employee friendly. Everything was soulless including the god ugly Chime and other internal tools. Although principles like bias for action, disagree and commit are pretty effective and cool. Just for work culture, I’d have preferred to work at Google or Facebook…
Idk about Meta, but Google is also pretty soul draining these days. Pre-Pichai it was a pretty cool place, but that was ages ago.
From my experience (only one of the FAANGs, so far)... It seems to me that FAANGs are the new banks. Like, today's equivalent of 40 years ago's bank job (cushy, well-paying soul-draining job).
So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably.
FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quit, and you have full control over your life again. Stop being so childish. Comparing holidays, sick leave, pay and nightly sleep to physical presence is simply laughable. The pandemic was an exceptional situation. Holding onto that special status is plain entitlement.
Standards change. Before paid sick leave was common, people would've laughed you out of the room for even suggesting it - "you're saying I should be paying you for doing nothing just because you got sick? I didn't make you sick, how is that my problem?". But now we all (hopefully) agree it's one of the basic worker's rights. If all I do is press buttons on a keyboard all day, there is no reason I should have to be in…
Demand and supply will determine if the standards changed. Its such a classical USA position: the market wll regulate itself. So, if you are unreplaceable, go for the gamble. However, I am afraid most people here are not, and the young generation will destroy whatever you think you are entitled to
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#104I realise this topic has been covered repeatedly but considering it from another angle: As an engineer employed by third party companies using AWS, this doesn't look good. I don't care if the support people are in an office. I do care if they're available and know what they're doing. There are other cloud providers available. For new entrants, what's Amazon's unique selling point?
This is something I think people are missing but which is really important.
AWS is flailing now and pissing off all the competent workers. Those who have the skill will leave for newer gen cloud companies without the baggage like Fly or Tailscale or even Oxide. Or they'll start their own thing.
So do you really want your whole company's compute environment running on infrastructure managed by burnt out and low skilled people?
This might be the start of the migrations from the first generation infrastructure focused cloud services to the new more application focused services.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#105I wonder which tech company will be the first to take this too far and implode because of some easily-avoidable cataclysm. I think in some ways you could say Twitter / X already did although they are still limping along for now...
It’s a fairly calculated move, as they know market for engineers isn’t in the best shape, so a significant chunk will keep working with no complaints. They also ramped up hiring heavily, if the number of messages I get from Amazon’s recruiters is an indicator.
> It’s a fairly calculated move, as they know market for engineers isn’t in the best shape, so a significant chunk will keep working with no complaints.
Of course, that's the sort of thing that tends to be true right up until it abruptly isn't.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk about Meta, but Google is also pretty soul draining these days. Pre-Pichai it was a pretty cool place, but that was ages ago.
From my experience (only one of the FAANGs, so far)... It seems to me that FAANGs are the new banks. Like, today's equivalent of 40 years ago's bank job (cushy, well-paying soul-draining job). So far I'm done with FAANGs. I can get a nice salary, albeit lower, elsewere and still live comfortably. FAANGs are just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
It’s not even that “cushy” anymore. There’s still (at Google) free lunch, but the truly critical (and expensive) stuff such as medical insurance has been enshittified considerably to the point where exchange-bought insurance I had as a business owner was better. They do pay well though, that’s true. Ironically they could probably pay less if they weren’t so dead inside.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#107To borrow from the freelancer's creed:
Fuck you, fire me.
No, I don't work there, but I'd rather be fired than quit myself. At a minimum, I can get unemployment, and the job market is so saturated that the extra time to find a replacement job will be welcome.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#108The fact that US labour laws are this weak is a travesty. You can just circumvent severance by making working conditions unpleasant and you don’t even need to hide it.
I post this every time this topic comes up. But WFH and remote work ability are an exception to the rule in almost every industry/job type other than tech (and sales). Effectively everybody else goes someplace other than home to do their job.
I love it, I prefer it, but I recognize that I am lucky to have a career that can offer it. If my company demanded RTO, I would have to weigh the option and perhaps choose to separate from the organization if I couldn’t make the pros/cons work for me.
In the US employment is effectively always “at will” for the employee. The employer has some regulation that protects the employee, but if they are essentially willing to pay you, and are providing a safe environment to you, what is so wrong with that? They aren’t torturing you.
Tech workers who complain and demand some sort of regulation/intervention against RTO need to realize that those complaints fall on deaf ears to literally everybody other than that tech worker audience. If you want to effect change, quit and deprive the company of your labor.
Re: AWS CEO tells workers to quit if they don't want to come back to the office
#109The fact that US labour laws are this weak is a travesty. You can just circumvent severance by making working conditions unpleasant and you don’t even need to hide it.
I post this every time this topic comes up. But WFH and remote work ability are an exception to the rule in almost every industry/job type other than tech (and sales). Effectively everybody else goes someplace other than home to do their job. I love it, I prefer it, but I recognize that I am lucky to have a career that can offer it. If my company demanded RTO, I would have to weigh the option and perhaps choose to se…
Or, you know, unionize.