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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

#151

Post by geodel »

robby_w_g wrote: post #125
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…

> I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then…

> It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field.

Very good point. I didn't really think about it much before. It is even difficult for candidates who are in IT field but not in FAANG type companies.

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

#152

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

I worked at a large, brand name, older company and there are parallels. I think past some size of an organization, it turns into a bureaucracy to get anything done.

- Internal tooling was poor and most teams DIY. Any centrally managed thing was horrible and either home-grown and poorly documented or some VP picked it and poorly documented

- The companies needs superseded your career goals to the point that very specific trainings were basically forced even if it had nothing to do with what you do (six sigma)

- To get anything done required 3-5 other teams to do anything and took forever. Turn around time to get a server spun up was ~6-8 weeks.

One thing that was different was attrition. This was before remote working and when the nobody in town was hiring you really were stuck.

I like working in smaller organizations where you can have an impact. I only think one of the FAANG would be worthy of me putting up with working in a large bureaucracy again - the other A - and only because I haven't heard horror stories - if you have them, share them.

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

#153

Post by voakbasda »

emptybottle wrote: post #80

It's really a shame what many of the "FAANG" companies (and the companies who admire/adopt their practices) are doing to tech work. My own experiences, the horror stories I've read, the broken/horrible interview trivia loops, the nonstop crunches, the nonstop on-call escalations, the difficult ethical positions that come with working at some companies, etc. have me feeling worse than ever about this profession. It di…

I'd use it, but only if it excluded fads too. I don't want to be near Web 3, cryptocurrencies, or generally any new tech stack released within the last five years.

If you don't like this idea, get of my lawn. ;)

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

#154

Post by peakaboo »

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…

Soul searching is easy. The only people who put up with that shit are people who don't feel good enough, so they are begging their master like a dog to please, please like them!!

The cure? Don't allow corporations to set your value, specially not mad and crazy corporations like amazon and space penis.

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

#156

Post by colinmhayes »

robby_w_g wrote: post #125
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…

> I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then…

> Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles

Finding people who are willing to spend months in order to get the job is one of the biggest reasons companies use leetcode.

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

#157

Post by _moof »

teg4n_ wrote: post #8

The idea of leaving before the year mark at a company that does signing bonuses stresses me the fuck out. Don't you have to pay back the bonus? When I got an Amazon offer that was the case

I had to pay back relocation once. Incredibly painful, but holy shit was it worth it to get away from that place.

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

#158

Post by commandlinefan »

masterof0 wrote: post #17

Ex-Amazonian here, I agree with almost everything OP say. I have a few things to add in case HR is reading this: - RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% - second , then 5% each quarter, i think...) - Internal tooling is pretty bad (frameworks, pipelines, ....) and the documentation is non-existent, and when it exists , is not very helpful. - Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, wh…

> in case HR is reading this

If they cared, they would have done something about this long ago.

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

#159

Post by oblio »

colinmhayes wrote: post #156
robby_w_g wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then…

> Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles Finding people who are willing to spend months in order to get the job is one of the biggest reasons companies use leetcode.

Well, he did say:

> ego-driven hazing ritual

:-)

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

#160

Post by deltaonefour »

Waterluvian wrote: post #74
windowshopping wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it works, but it offends your sensibilities, perhaps this is an opportunity for self-growth. I've had to learn this lesson. We have an internal microservice whose name is obsolete and no longer makes any sense whatsoever. Everyone is confused by the name until the original reasoning is explained, and they come to understand the original purpose of the service, now long since changed. It drives me up the wall. I…

I've been doing this stuff for almost 10 years and I _still_ struggle with this lesson. I think it's a good sign. We have a deep desire for correctness. But I think while it's perfectly healthy to desire correctness, we all need to be able to do what you've demonstrated: accept that sometimes correctness is not a logical endeavour.

I actually don't have this problem. A lot of things programmers get hung up on is just OCD stuff that don't actually improve anything.

I once named a function

   findGreatestCommonDenominatorGCDOfFraction(numerator: int, denominator: int) -> int
and one programmer wanted me to rename it into GCD(x, y) because it was more elegant. While GCD feels more elegant it's actually less clear and less practical. The length and verbosity of the function name above typically has a zero cost because of auto complete and other features you should be using in your editor.
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