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Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

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Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#131

Post by lamontcg »

mter wrote: post #64
vonklaus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am d…

The nightmare stories are often from years ago or non devs. There are some pretty awful oncalls though. I'm on a team I like, work with people I get along with and have hours that are good ( 2 years after college, I make enough (~160k total comp, a bit over 100k salary) for money to not really be a motivating factor. When I first got to amazon, I fully expected to jump ship within 6 months and move somewhere else. I…

I'd be interested to know what you think after 5 years there and a few more reorgs. You may find that you got extremely lucky in where you first landed.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#132

Post by wsetchell »

outworlder wrote: post #79
ible wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (second hand) understanding is that if you get put on a PIP at Amazon it blocks you from doing an internal transfer. So if you have a manager who doesn't like you and you try to transfer out they can put you on a PIP and effectively you're done at Amazon, even if you had someone else who wanted you internally.

It works like that at many companies. Sometimes a PIP is not even needed, a low performance review is all it takes. I do not fully understand the logic behind it, other than facilitating the process of reducing headcount in the company as a whole.

HR can create a policy like this to prevent managers from locally optimizing. Firing someone is a lot of work for a manager. It is easier for the manager to transfer that person, than to deal with the problem themselves (even if they really should be fired).

HR might also create a policy like this to improve the average quality of employees. An employee who underperforms on team #1, is more likely to underperform on team X than a randomly chosen new hire.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#133

Post by gaius »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #37
u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

I was at AWS for six months as a contractor and a year as an SDE3. Equity vesting was low for the first year, but they gave me a (cash) signing bonus that made up for it. Pretty much one-to-one based on the starting value of the equity, and it paid out monthly instead of waiting until the end of the year. The cafes were awesome and the prices there were decent. I was paid more than enough to buy my own lunch. Catered…

SDE3? Isn't that a semi-mythical level with just a handful of people? I suspect your experience is atypical.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#134

Post by gaius »

vonklaus wrote: post #36
u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am d…

Consider that to scale an organisation it is necessary that nearly everyone is just a small, easily replaceable cog in a big machine. Look at any other big org: the military, government bureaucrats, etc...

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#135

Post by serge2k »

outworlder wrote: post #69
amaks wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure" How do you know? Based on what they sell through AWS? This is not super evident - they might have duct taped bunch of shitty stuff and rely on people on-call 24x7 to keep system running.

There's only so much duct-tape you can throw at a problem before it becomes unmanageable. The scale, complexity and reliability of AWS indicates that they are indeed running a tight (and tidy) ship.

It's a mix. The code is good enough to get things running, but it still needs full time oncall who actually are constantly putting out little fires.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#136

Post by wyclif »

Futurebot wrote: post #7

Tyler Cowen has written a lot about this: "Individuals don’t in fact enjoy being evaluated all the time, especially when the results are not always stellar: for most people, one piece of negative feedback outweighs five pieces of positive feedback. To the extent that measurement raises income inequality, perhaps it makes relations among the workers tenser and less friendly. Life under a meritocracy can be a little to…

You bring up an important point: employee evaluation at big corps isn't that different than it was before the internet. It's evolved, but only slightly. The permanence of data should cause management to completely re-imagine and deploy feedback.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#137

Post by serge2k »

morganvachon wrote: post #33
rdtsc wrote: post #22

I was interviewing for AWS, and it was a circus. Completely disorganized. However, I have to say, I enjoyed the parroting back of "the leadership principles" part. It was like being in the Soviet Union again and singing praises to the great party leaders. Very much worth wasting a day over it. However my nephew didn't have such a fun time. He was working for one of their warehouses in Kentucky and they were ruthless…

> They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. Punishing an employee for risking their life to try to come in to a job they already hate? That's textbook sadism, ruthless is too weak a word. In inclement weather our critical staff can depend on officers in 4x4 vehicles to bring them in, with no reprimand for being late due to the weather. Non-essentia…

This is the same company that stationed ambulances outside of a fulfillment center instead of paying for Air Conditioning. They also went to the supreme court (and won) over making people wait in line (unpaid) for 25 minutes before and after work in order to do security checks.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#138

Post by serge2k »

amazon_employee wrote: post #42
rdtsc wrote: post #22

I was interviewing for AWS, and it was a circus. Completely disorganized. However, I have to say, I enjoyed the parroting back of "the leadership principles" part. It was like being in the Soviet Union again and singing praises to the great party leaders. Very much worth wasting a day over it. However my nephew didn't have such a fun time. He was working for one of their warehouses in Kentucky and they were ruthless…

Sorry to hear that. I work for AWS, and I like to think we're pretty organized. I'm not sure what part of your experience was "unorganized". You probably caught the team on a busy day or something. LPs are just guidelines for what the company "wants" out of its employees. They're used heavily in hiring to weed out small thinkers and bad culture fits, and a bit in performance reviews. Outside of that, nobody really ca…

> Outside of that, nobody really cares about them

There is a not so small cohort who parrot them.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#139

Post by serge2k »

gohrt wrote: post #109
amazon_employee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that. I work for AWS, and I like to think we're pretty organized. I'm not sure what part of your experience was "unorganized". You probably caught the team on a busy day or something. LPs are just guidelines for what the company "wants" out of its employees. They're used heavily in hiring to weed out small thinkers and bad culture fits, and a bit in performance reviews. Outside of that, nobody really ca…

$115k is embarrassingly non-competitive for the talent and work Amazon expects.

It's not bad for Seattle, and they have been doing amazing on stock price the last couple years which helps. Especially when they backload the initial stock vesting.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#140

Post by serge2k »

a3n wrote: post #100
sssilver wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in an Amazon warehouse doesn't have the same vacation options as the person coding the internals of Simple Queue Service.

I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in the warehouse doesn't actually work for Amazon. Contracting jobs that are easy to fill is a great way to insulate a company from moral responsibility, and you get to imply "success at any cost" to the contracting company.

It's a mix, same as any other warehouse.
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