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I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

benadam.me

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Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#131

Post by winternett »

kentonv wrote: post #4

Please consider increasing the contrast on your text. As is (light-gray-on-lighter-gray) I cannot read it as it literally hurts my eyes trying to focus on it. EDIT: It seems this is not intentional, some of the stylesheets are returning 404 for me but not other people... weird. EDIT: Amazingly, it turns out this site is hosted on the platform of which I'm the lead engineer (Cloudflare Workers / Pages) and the problem…

This happens with so many sites now... UI and 508 compliance seem to be going out the window lately... Almost thought I was goin blind. :(

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#132

Post by gopher_space »

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #46
Waterluvian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formatting is a very very distant minor gripe compared to what I think is the main reason this is a problem: versioning. That being said, if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, make a case for why and develop a _holistic_ understanding of the costs and benefits of changing the current process. Maybe you can change it, or maybe you learn why it doesn't change. If it works, but it offends your sensibilities, perhap…

Excel has versioning now! But it doesn’t work when people email around hard copies instead of links to the shared file, which they still constantly do. >:-O

One of the problems with Excel at scale is that different departments within the same organization might use completely different approaches. Different people in the same department night. When you add versioning what you may end up with is an out-of-date "master" that's occasionally updated from the spreadsheets everyone is still passing around via email.

The email thing happens because that's how people who use Excel handle versioning. They'll end up with nested folders of emailed spreadsheets they can refer to or import into their personal approach. This works well for them, especially since they might work offline frequently.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#133

Post by MattGaiser »

sharkweek wrote: post #95
lkschubert8 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance improvement plan

This, and it's mostly a death sentence. If you're on a PIP the odds you survive it are low, used mostly to manage people into quitting.

"You're fired, but I am just waiting on the paperwork."

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#134

Post by kentonv »

benadam11 wrote: post #122
kentonv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't see any change yet but LOL if the 404s turn out to be my own fault due to a Workers bug. :)

https://3be909f6.personal-site-v4.pages.dev/ has the updated styles but the change doesnt seem to have propagated to domain yet (made the background pure white instead of grey)

Yeah that page looks much better, not just the colors but also the headings and paragraphs are now formatted correctly.

Crazily enough, it looks like the missing files are actually a problem on our (Cloudflare's) end. We're looking into it. But a re-deploy should fix it for now, I think.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#135

Post by matsemann »

MattGaiser wrote: post #120
matsemann wrote: post #62

> When I read through they offer they were pushing aggressively for a start date (2 weeks from the offer). Huh, in Norway the normal resignation period is 3 months. Maybe long, but goes both ways, so you always know your job isn't swept away from under your feet one day.

3 months? So if you accept an offer today, it would be customary to stay until April? That's incredible. How are job tenures in Norway? Where I am, lots of people stay 14 + or - 4 months typically.

Yeah, you would start your new job at May 1st if you sent in your resignation during January. It's a bit long I feel, when I first resigned last year (in January, even), I mentally started to check out towards the end. A month or two is fine to wrap things up. But 3 months + what's left of the current month was a bit much. But as I said, it goes both ways, and it's almost impossible to get fired here, so it's worth it for the peace of mind knowing you'll always get paid next week, month etc.

Where I worked before the avg employee had worked there for about 3-4 years, and that number was heavily influenced by the new hires not having had the opportunity to work that long yet, even. I feel that's true for many of my friends as well, those having switched a few jobs since graduating have stayed avg ~3 years.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#136

Post by yonig »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #82
sharkweek wrote: post #25

Hey congrats on making it 10 months! "Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work" Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn't immediately delivering on som…

What does PIP stand for? I haven't run into that acronym before

Replies laid out what it means on paper but what is the employees actual best move? Sounds intentionally impossible to climb out of. Are they given a buyout option to leave or just sit in purgatory for 6 months?

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#138

Post by antihero »

Jemaclus wrote: post #102
netizen-936824 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does PIP stand for? I haven't run into that acronym before

Performance Improvement Plan. On paper, it's a program where management works with you to improve your weak points so you don't get fired. In practice, it's HR protecting the company by documenting reasons to fire you before they fire you. It's rare (not unheard of, but rare) to work your way out of a PIP. In general, if you get put on a PIP, I would immediately start doing some soul-searching as to why I might be on…

I got on a (non-Amazon) PIP once for not turning up on many Mondays to many times, and would have passed it (all I had to do was turn up every day I was scheduled to work for a month) but failed because I didn't turn up on NYE (mate convinced me to "stay for one" at Scala) one day before my PIP was supposedly over in the new year (totally my fault).

I feel it would have been possible to work my way out of it, I think different companies use them in different ways.

Ah well, most of the team got poached by Revolut anyway. I find WFH suits me a lot better because as long as I can go to stand up after a heavy weekend (which is a lot easier if you can do it from home) and then achieve above and beyond the rest of the week, there's a lot less anxiety.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#139

Post by commandlinefan »

sharkweek wrote: post #25

Hey congrats on making it 10 months! "Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work" Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn't immediately delivering on som…

> asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work

... as fast as possible, whether it actually works in all cases or not. As Dilbert says "our boss can't judge the quality of our work, but he knows when it's late".

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