When I was young I quit MS rather than get fired. Looking back, I wonder if I should have just walked away without an exit interview. Perhaps get several more weeks pay. I too suffered under a PIP that proved to be pointless.
Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
141–150 of 340 posts
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#142Earlier 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…
Remember that the most vocal are the most dissatisfied. Also remember that at a company that large there are going to be more dissatisfied than smaller companies. Lastly, don't forget that no one wants to read a story about an upset engineer from a small no name company. People like seeing big brand names fail and we as a society are a sucker for a negative drama. They retain people because not every team is like wha…
There are significantly more of these stories out there on Amazon than the other major tech companies it seems - I haven't heard of anywhere near as many stories coming from Google, Facebook, or Apple.
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#143Press code: Don't widely report details of suicides, it creates a measurable uptick in simulative acts.
Internet: Let's get this thing to the Hackernews frontpage!
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
From what I remember almost everyone will get promoted from SDE1 to SDE2 in around ~2 years. Getting promoted to SDE3 is not as easy but it's not really that rare either. It'd be really bizarre for almost everyone to be stuck at SDE2 considering how easy it is to get there.
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#145Amazon 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…
> They don't even know how to write bash scripts
Is this weird? I only know of one or two coworkers who knows how to write bash scripts..
Despite almost knowing no bash, I was hired as an SDE1 at Amazon so your story adds up though!
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is tuition reimbursement a thing at companies? That would be pretty awesome. TIL
Almost all, I'd never heard of a tech company not do it.
Facebook doesn't do it either at least from the last I heard, because supposedly they don't care whether you have a degree or not.
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have heard whispers of this, and the mention of common on call hours seems to lend it some credibility
Yes, seriously legacy software (still a lot of Perl in their production web code, including ancient Perl template engines) and the on-calls are truly bad. AWS is more modern, but still not entirely awesome from what I've heard. On the plus side, hiring people out of there after a year is usually pretty easy.
What are the typical on-calls?
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#148Amazon tries to trap people through control by visas, and they will go so far as to relocate people overseas to Seattle. They have a fucked up system where rank and file get the darwin treatment but management gets the rewards. They will pay bonuses around $250k, $500k, $1 million to senior managers, directors, and VPs respectively to abuse the shit out of employees. The "PIP someone who is trying to get away from th…
What really angered me about that article was Amazon trying to say that this was a "colleague" -- he was on a PIP. Which is pretty much Amazon speak for a dead man walking (no pun intended).
At a Big Corp where I worked, I think it was three 'satisfactory' ratings in a row which resulted in a PIP.
Satisfactory: fulfilling expectations or needs. But not in Corporate Nu-Speak.
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#149Following some of the discussion on this thread, I am constantly reminded of a priceless advice I got from a senior friend years ago. When thinking about an employer, above a certain size threshold, never judge a company. Always judge a department. You don't work for a company. You work for a department. Above a certain (fairly small) size, the only thing you'll share with the employees in the other departments will…
A bad team at a good company -- quite possible. A good team at a bad company -- unlikely.
> A good team at a bad company -- unlikely.
Can happen via acquisitions
Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bad team at a good company -- quite possible. A good team at a bad company -- unlikely.
> A good team at a bad company -- unlikely. Can happen via acquisitions
Presumably if it does happen that way, it won't last very long, as the newly acquired employees will figure out "this place sucks" and leave...