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Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

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Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#121

Post by icelancer »

nilkn wrote: post #118
gfody wrote: post #37

Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your f…

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me. I'm n…

Underpaid is an interesting term, I guess. When you think about it, software (in its many forms) isn't like retail or hard goods; it can be sold - usually - an infinite amount of times. The upside is massive since all hard overhead is eliminated. Where then should that overhead go? To management?

It's all about ratios, of course. If the owners/management of a company are grossly overpaid in comparison to the workers who produce - especially if physical overhead is nearly eliminated - then yes, developers are indeed underpaid. And I would posit this is true in many areas of software development. Perhaps not your situation, but overall? I buy it.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

crack-the-code wrote: post #78
mabbo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm biased as I'm an Amazon SDE. That aside... Amazon experiments. It's not about bold PR moves to make waves and attract attention. It's about trying everything, even ideas that might sound bad, and seeing if they actually work. This? This is the same idea. Try it out on something less important (HR software, sure, why not) and see what happens. In the worst case, a bit of internal software is late. That's a low-cos…

It may be part of the same philosophy of "trying everything," but it would be naive to say that there are no motivations of improving the negative reputation Amazon has built upon itself through its intensive work ethic.

Idea may be independent from spin. All companies have people responsible for turning everything they possibly can into good PR.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#123

Post by Chronic9q »

jchendy wrote: post #88
vibrato wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.

> They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. There's a tendency for people to think that HR software and other internal tools are less important than public products, but if the company is allocating employees properly, that doesn't really make sense. The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did. Amazon could have easily allocat…

> The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did.

No, they didn't. They likely were interviewed by the hiring manager. Which, a hiring manager of an internal tools team, does not face the public scrutiny of engineering detail required by a front facing mass consumer product. Therefore internal tools teams do not require as rigid software engineering rules as mass consumer products.

> Amazon could have easily allocated them to some flashy consumer product, but management decided that it's important to have a team working on HR software.

No, they couldn't. Internal HR tools usually means CRUD applications. Why would you put a SQL developer on a deep learning optimization team?

Don't try to defend Amazon here. They have messed up with the way they treat employees. 30 hour weeks doesn't change that.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#124

Post by nol13 »

throwaway_amzn wrote: post #104
abbasaamer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Amazon is a sweatshop" I wouldn't agree with this broad generalization. I work in Alexa and the work environment on my team is pretty awesome. Lots of freedom to try new things, good work life balance, and generally a high level of respect for engineers. I turned down Google to come here and I have no regrets (though not to imply that Google isn't equally awesome).

Even in Alexa there are some teams that are being pushed too hard. I work for Alexa as well and there is plenty of burn out and "sweatshop" teams in our org. It really varies a lot from team to team and what that team's role is.

let me guess, abbasaamer is your boss?

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

smb06 wrote: post #95
theDoug wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not better, it's just a different class of employee.

Exactly. Most of the people who say "Oh its not that bad at Amazon" are white collared workers who are living in their bubble and don't know the hardships of different class of employees.

The perils of non-white-collared workers are of little relevance when discussing whether or not a company is a good workplace for white-collar workers. When you go for an interview about a programming position, you probably don't ask your potential employer about working conditions of security contractors or people working at company's factory floor in another town.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#126

Post by BookingPotions »

As an amazon SDE myself, one who doesn't think working at Amazon is that bad, but do admit that it is challenging, and often do work much longer then 40h a week, I would need to have a guarantee that my pay cut comes with a no more then 30h a week clause.

I'd like to see proper hour counting, like a check in and check out. Where any hour above 30h comes at an extra cost to Amazon, like double pay. So that they would be incentivised to actually tell me to stop working and send me home.

I know some people might say, that's up to you, just don't let yourself work extra, but at a company like Amazon, you can actually lose your job or at least not be promoted from delivering less then the other employees. You're ranked against your peers, so deciding to work only 30h would hurt you in the long run if the others started putting in 35h, 40h, 45h, etc.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#127

Post by lettergram »

nilkn wrote: post #118
gfody wrote: post #37

Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your f…

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me. I'm n…

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales.

Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a software engineer optimized the loading time. That engineer probably makes $100k or so, and he might get a 10% raise since he did such a good job. The remaining $1.49 million gets distributed amongst execs and investors.

Hardly seems fair, when most executives have no idea what's going on, and provide zero value add for that case.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#128

Post by nilkn »

icelancer wrote: post #121
nilkn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me. I'm n…

Underpaid is an interesting term, I guess. When you think about it, software (in its many forms) isn't like retail or hard goods; it can be sold - usually - an infinite amount of times. The upside is massive since all hard overhead is eliminated. Where then should that overhead go? To management? It's all about ratios, of course. If the owners/management of a company are grossly overpaid in comparison to the workers…

I will admit that my situation may be more unique than I realize. After all, there are vastly more software companies out there than I could ever work at, so my own experiences can never be more than mere anecdata, no matter how much I'd like to extrapolate from them. And I've only ever worked at small companies, so a relatively tiny number of developers have also worked at the same places as me. This is in stark contrast to huge corporations like Google and Amazon, where I could at least extrapolate my experience to thousands of other employees at the same company.

I have not had the sense at my own jobs that the upper management was overcompensated. I can't prove this of course as I didn't and don't have access to the company's financial statements and bank accounts, but the norm has seemed to be to reinvest profits in the company in order to remain competitive. It's worth pointing out that I've only (so far) worked at companies that have been self-sustained, not requiring any VC funding. My impression is that many bootstrapped software companies are not actually making that much money; revenue figures in the $10M-$20M range are not uncommon. This money is easily spent on a staff of 50+, office space, etc.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#129

Post by jchendy »

Chronic9q wrote: post #119
jchendy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we could give them the benefit of doubt I've found that this is a much less stressful and more productive way to approach most things in life. > Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that? That seems totally reasonable. It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" wh…

> It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" where it's considered fine to spend your whole career with no pressure or expectations to earn further promotions. And who else besides Jeff Dean, enjoys such a distinguished role?

Terminal level is usually "senior software engineer" or the equivalent. Something that every competent engineer can reasonably be expected to achieve.
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