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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#151

Post by praptak »

potatolicious wrote: post #71
bambax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? If those horror stories are true (and we have no reason to doubt they are), it kinda shows that the way you treat your employees doesn't really matter to your success. It certainly matters a lot to them; it matters from a moral point of view; but from a practical point of view the only individuals whose happiness matters are the customers. Of course, if your employees are so…

On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually). Attrition at Amazon is at horrific rates. I know the actual number, though I'm pretty sure that'd violate my NDA to reveal. It's high. It's really high. Guess a really truly terrible number. It's probably higher than that. The stream o…

"On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually)."

If it hasn't hit them yet, it might after the rant.

Given the Dilbert Employer From Hell publicity generated by the rant and the subsequent discussion, I'd say that they might have trouble filling in for the people that leave. Heck, even some of their current employees might read the rant and realize how crappy their current situation is.

Off on a tangent:

"I couldn't even run multiple dev environments on it, like I had to for my JOB, and building my code took 12 full minutes, instead of, say, 3."

Local dev environments? My current workstation has a mere 2GB memory and an Athlon X2 which was all the rage in 2005 :) The builds fly, because they are delegated to a compile farm. The added benefit is that I don't have to muck with the build tools settings.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#152

Post by TruthPrevails »

Hello All,

I was an intern at Amazon this summer and they extended a full time offer. I read Steve's rant with great interest. Since many people in comments have confirmed the points raised by him about Amazon, I am not feeling good right now :( I still have 18 days to accept the offer. I am currently interviewing with Microsoft. I have applied to Facebook just now. Sadly, I screwed up my Google phone screening last week. It was just not my day :( I am confident of getting MS offer. Do you people suggest I reject the Amazon offer? Or should I work at Amazon and form my own opinion? I can always change jobs.

EDIT: I am not able to reply to comments at all! It gives me dead link message. I have been trying for almost 30 mins now. Frustrating.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#153

Post by temphn »

nirvana wrote: post #56
revorad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really shocked to read that (and the OP's rant about Amazon). Of course, I've never had a corporate job. It amazes me that Amazon managed to be so successful, despite treating their employees so badly.

I've thought a lot about this. In part because, you can't generally say anything bad about Amazon without being attacked. "You must be disgruntled" etc. I only made my post because I had the cover of Steve Yegge saying very similar things (Though I went into more detail.) Most people believe Amazon's press releases. In 2006, they said that AWS powered Amazon.com. It was a flat out lie. But how could I prove it? Fortu…

It's probably really hard to run a company with tens of thousands of employees and achieve market success while also having everyone inside like and respect you. From a systems standpoint, it's hard to argue with Amazon's recent successes (AWS, Kindle Fire). If they aren't an A company in tech then no one is.

This is not to dispute your observations in any way, shape, or form. Just that it's a huge T-Rex from the outside in terms of objective metrics like products shipped, even if it does have dysfunctional internal organs.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#157

Post by cowmix »

ams6110 wrote: post #139
johnyzee wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six weeks here in Denmark and a maximum work week of 37 hours. You have to wonder how we ever get anything done here...

Six weeks is not uncommon in the USA if you are in higher ed.

Really? In my experience I have almost NEVER seen six weeks for any employee unless they were taking a sabbatical.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#158

Post by someone13 »

david927 wrote: post #136
0x12 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the google PR people actually didn't do anything to tell him to withdraw the post, so that is his own decision.

This is one of the very few times I've seen Steve back-off of a provocative statement; whatever made that happen does not bode well for Google and I think my point stands.

I don't get the impression that he was "forced" to back off, but rather that he accidentally posted something that was meant for internal consumption in public. I think it's perfectly within his rights to delete the post - most people don't talk the same way with their co-workers as they do in public, and it's perfectly understandable.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#159

Post by nikcub »

nirvana wrote: post #61
aphexairlines wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We migrated the US retail rendering fleet to AWS last year. simonw posted a link about it elsewhere on this thread.

So, about 4 years after it was publicly claimed to be running on AWS.

yes but we all figured this out earlier because EC2 and S3 downtime would never correspond with Amazon.com downtime - which made it obvious that the 'use the infrastructure we use' line was complete bullshit.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#160

Post by outside1234 »

brlewis wrote: post #146
pitdesi wrote: post #120

It now 404's so I've posted it here: Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.…

He deliberately took it down: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/bwJ7kAEL... See my comment on that post for why I think his taking it down was a mistake.

I suspect he meant this only for internal Google consumption. These sorts of rants happened all the time but this one is very good and very right on.

He probably proved the accessibility point by the simple fact that he accidentally posted it with his personal and not corporate account.

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