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Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

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Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#121

Post by civilian »

EarlKing wrote: post #113
plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

> When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. Tell that to the guys in logistics who don't get any options and bear the brunt of Amazon's bad management.

So, elaborate on your model of the world. Shouldn't the logistic employees already be leaving in droves since they're not getting stock? Why aren't they?

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#122

Post by hintymad »

plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

It looks a problem peculiar to Seattle as there are not many choices of hyper-growth companies. I can't imagine the same dilemma in the bay area, where one can switch from one promising company to another every week from weeks.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#123

Post by 0zymandias »

jandrese wrote: post #51
retrocryptid wrote: post #24

Also... Amazon likes to say they hire "the best." And I think they do hire reasonably good people. But I saw a lot of situations where people were just plain in the wrong job. Like people who were DevOps experts getting shuffled into DB programming jobs. Or one guy from Romania who was an excellent coder -- would crank out reams of well documented, clearly laid out, well architected C++ code. But most of what they ha…

Has there ever been a company that doesn't say they hire "only the best"?

Yes. The police in the US explicitly reject people with high IQs. It has been challenged in court but upheld.

https://www.kake.com/story/32508747/court-oks-barring-high-i...

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#124

Post by thanhhaimai »

renewiltord wrote: post #101
plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

That seems pretty well-optimized, right? The employees value the money more than they value well-being, and the company values the money more than it values their well-being. That is pretty good alignment. Also, why wouldn't you just work elsewhere and buy AMZN stock if that's all you want. Work at GOOG, sell your stock, buy AMZN stock.

I'm not a lawyer.

Please be careful with the advice from the second paragraph. Talk to your financial advisor and lawyer first. Buying a large portion of a competitor's stock may violate SEC laws based on the training I recalled.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#125

Post by startup_excuse »

renewiltord wrote: post #101
plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

That seems pretty well-optimized, right? The employees value the money more than they value well-being, and the company values the money more than it values their well-being. That is pretty good alignment. Also, why wouldn't you just work elsewhere and buy AMZN stock if that's all you want. Work at GOOG, sell your stock, buy AMZN stock.

The reason you wouldn’t work elsewhere and invest is the following: you get hired at Amazon with a total comp of 500k (180 base + 320k in RSUs). You have been in role for 2 years and are completely burnt out. However the stock has doubled, and your total comp (without any raises) is now 820k. That is too much money for people to walk away from. If you leave for GOOG you will get in at the current stock price with no guarantee it will double effectively taking a pay cut.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#126

Post by crackercrews »

weimerica wrote: post #66
jandrese wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been a company that doesn't say they hire "only the best"?

Work for a public utility... lack of talented employees was stated explicit in the interview.

I once heard it said: government jobs are welfare for the middle class. IMO it's not 100% accurate but it's better than 50%.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#127

Post by tmp60beb0ed »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36
ladyattis wrote: post #10

I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

I have worked at startups as well as at Amazon. I would choose Amazon over most startups.

In my experience the biggest factor in job satisfaction is the manager. A good manager can create a great work environment even with stack ranking. A terrible manager can kill morale regardless of company policy.

I like Amazon culture. Managers are mostly experienced and well-trained.

Startups vary a lot. Could be amazing but also terrible. Some of my startup managers were comically bad. I suspect this was because they were inexperienced. It’s like the difference between parenting your first child versus parenting the third child.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#128

Post by htrp »

civilian wrote: post #121
EarlKing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. Tell that to the guys in logistics who don't get any options and bear the brunt of Amazon's bad management.

So, elaborate on your model of the world. Shouldn't the logistic employees already be leaving in droves since they're not getting stock? Why aren't they?

> Amazon burns through workers so quickly that executives are worried they'll run out of people to employ, according to a new report

Sources: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#129

Post by wiz21c »

civilian wrote: post #121
EarlKing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. Tell that to the guys in logistics who don't get any options and bear the brunt of Amazon's bad management.

So, elaborate on your model of the world. Shouldn't the logistic employees already be leaving in droves since they're not getting stock? Why aren't they?

because they may not have other job opportunities ? Because being screwed is better than having no job at all ?

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#130

Post by ferdowsi »

lakevieew wrote: post #111

I had joined Amazon as my first job out of school. I was super excited and would not mind working the long hours as the project was interesting. I enjoyed working with my team and manager. Just near the end of the year, my manager quit. The new manager ran my performance review and assessed that my performance didn’t meet expectations. I was not put on PIP. Instead, there would be a development plan that I had to com…

I still can't believe that Amazon measures performance by "numbers of commits" and "SLOC". Pure insanity.
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