Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#141

Post by jjtheblunt » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

I interviewed for a software role in Amazon Business, had spent several years with a quite high engineering rank in Apple, and was warned by the hiring manager that the roles to be filled considered the people as, and i quote, "fungible" assets.

Pretty much the most damning confession the hiring committee could have admitted to, and I imagined a good-hearted warning. I semi balked at that, and feedback from the recruiter was that I'd been brilliant, but might not like the culture. The recruiter sounded truly annoyed. I found that experience "interesting".

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#142

Post by timtaco » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

I've turned down 2 different amazon offers, in both cases they lowballed and then dragged negotiations trying to get what they wanted. I thought they acted in bad faith and thought it wouldn't be a good fit, later confirmed by many many friends who work there

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#143

Post by segmondy » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #115

I've been approached a few times by Amazon recruiters, I reply back with my salary and profit share demands and that usually shuts them up. I guess that they must have some luck picking up junior developers from Europe, or maybe people who like the idea of living in the US or Canada for a few years so are willing to take the cut.

Amazon pays very well actually, so I'm not so sure. What amount were you asking?

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#144

Post by AaronFriel » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

> Non-Competition. During employment and for 18 months after the Separation Date, Employee will not, directly or indirectly, whether on Employee’s own behalf or on behalf of any other entity (for example, as an employee, agent, partner, or consultant), engage in or support the development, manufacture, marketing, or sale of any product or service that competes or is intended to compete with any product or service sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon (or intended to be sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon in the future) that Employee worked on or supported, or about which Employee obtained or received Confidential Information.

Parse that clause: if a product is sold on Amazon.com and they've obtained Confidential Information (read: read a slide deck, attended a meeting, received emails with fine print at the bottom), they can't work for the company that sells that product or its competitors. Which is, well, I struggle to imagine what that leaves out.

I couldn't work for AWS, quit my career as a software engineer, and become a librarian without being hit by this clause.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#145

Post by oarabbus_ » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

socialist_coder wrote: post #132

oarabbus_ wrote: post #72

I interviewed with AWS for an analyst/business intelligence engineer role. When asked to write a query to get the total GDP by month per country, I wrote a query along the lines of: select date_trunc('month',datecolumn) as month, country, sum(GDP) over (partition by date_trunc('month', datecolumn), country) FROM the_table order by 1 The interviewer asked me if I was missing something. I said no. "Don't you need an ad…

To be fair, in my opinion, you chose the wrong tool for the task. Why would you use a sum window function instead of a much simpler aggregate sum function (that does require a group by)? Without the group by, you will be returning every row from the table, which isn't what the task calls for. You'd then have to do an additional row_number() or distinct or something to just get the unique rows per month per country.

I simplified the ask to be honest. It was not a simple `select date, country, sum(gdp) from table group by 1,2`. There were additional components to the question.

And as you mentioned, you can also distinct on the window function. This is not an inefficient operation in Redshift.

Also I fundamentally disagree with your premise. One result set is equivalent to another, and as long as you aren't using unnecessary nested loop joins or such, there are a dozen ways to solve a query.

In another interview at a similarly-competitive company to AWS , I was asked to do some work on orders and orderdetail tables to find all customers where the aggregate total of their orders from 2005 were greater than that of their orders from 2007. I did it using a couple of `sum(case when extract(year from datecol) = 200x then order_amount end)` statements.

The interviewer told me the question was intended to test whether the applicant was able to do a self-join but they were impressed with my alternative solution. That is the proper way to test SQL, not to say someone "did the query the wrong way"

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#146

Post by jammygit » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #135

At what point does an organization get to be so large such that it is guaranteed to become a menace to society and individual human dignity? I cannot come up with any publicly-held multi-billion dollar technology company today that isn't seemingly run by psychopaths. Is there some new SEC regulation regarding corporate leadership I am unaware of? Is it an audit item that requires HR to fuck over all their employees w…

How do you find the best high paying jobs at smaller shops? Where do you look to find out about those companies?

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#147

Post by mooreds » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #47

sokoloff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sane company will only employ workers to the extent it’s advantageous for them. For that reason, I think it’s wise to go cautiously when making it less advantageous for companies to hire. Much of that ends up being taken out of labor rather than companies.

Ultimately, there is a balance to be struck. Labor and Capital need each other even though they have competing interests. But the proliferation of absurdly exploitative non-compete clauses illustrates just how far we are from that balance.

Capital seems to need to keep relearning the message that Ford got loud and clear:

Labor (aka consumers) is what buys output.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#148

Post by gorbachev » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

mAEStro-paNDa wrote: post #23

So this has mostly to do with a non-complete clause. The author is pretty explicit in their view: > This clause is, to be direct, abusive. As far as I'm aware this is something that has been apparent for quite some time, and isn't limited to just Amazon. I can't personally conceive of why anyone subject to one of these would have any reason to believe that this isn't just another tool that benefits the company alone,…

You can do non-competes the right way, too.

I used to work for a company who used them, for a pretty good reason, but:

1. they paid a BIG premium for the non-compete. Employees who were required to sign them got very, very large raises

2. they would pay a good portion of your salary for the duration of the non-compete period, if you left the company

That's how it's done. A company as profitable as Amazon shouldn't really have a problem with that.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#149

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #4

How does refusing to sign a non-compete clause typically play out? I imagine it goes back and forth, and I'm trying to imagine a tactful way to do it that doesn't burn the relationship.

Well, the linked article claims that they tried to negotiate out of the non-compete and it was absolutely refused, so they didn't work there.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#150

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #147

rectang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, there is a balance to be struck. Labor and Capital need each other even though they have competing interests. But the proliferation of absurdly exploitative non-compete clauses illustrates just how far we are from that balance.

Capital seems to need to keep relearning the message that Ford got loud and clear: Labor (aka consumers) is what buys output.

In aggregate yes, of course. It doesn’t have to be their labor though.

I spend about 0.05% of my pre-tax salary at my company. If they gave me a $10K raise, they would expect to see an extra $5 in revenue per year; hardly compelling.