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Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

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Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#161

Post by jedberg »

mruts wrote: post #154

Amazon pay is shit. I was laughed out of the room for asking for a salary that some analysts make in finance. People get paid so much more in finance than any other industry that I wonder why tech people aren’t more interested in those jobs. Also the work is more exciting and challenging. And it’s better for the world, though I suspect I’ll get a lot of downvotes for that one.

I once got offered a job in finance that was double my Netflix salary. I didn't take it because:

1) I'd have to live in NYC

2) I'd have to use their super locked down Windows machine.

3) I would only be allowed to talk to people in my department, and would never even be allowed to associate with the people making the trading algorithms, even though the job was to build them an infrastructure for back-testing their algorithms.

4) Their company had the opposite of transparency -- everything was so locked down it would be nearly impossible to be successful at the job, which was by it's nature very cross-sectional.

At some point the money just doesn't matter that much anymore. Once you have enough to cover all your needs and few wants a year, more money has a quickly diminishing return.

Other than the vast amounts of money, I didn't see anything interesting about working finance.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#162

Post by mooreds »

sokoloff wrote: post #150
mooreds wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, it's a tragedy of the commons. As a company I want to drive my labor costs down (all input costs, actually). But I want to be able to sell into a market where enough people have income (up to now typically from selling their labor) to buy my goods.

The pool of consumers with disposable income is the commons that no one maintains.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#163

Post by radicalbyte »

radicalbyte wrote: post #157
segmondy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sure they do pay well, it's just that they seem to assume that ever random person in Europe would be jumping to work for them. I'd have to be around the $150k in a city where large (180-200m2 inside on 600-800m2 land, with a double garage) high quality house would cost $2000 a month in mortgage payments. That's basically where I stand now. I have no idea what houses cost in the places they were talking about (Tor…

All of this said: money isn't everything. Actually for us it's not a top priority. Our kids, having a healthy work/life balance, doing work which is positive to society.

That's way more important.

So we do leave a lot of money on the table: my wife priorities quality of care to the bottom line for her patients. I have chosen to bill way less the last two years so I can help with community work, help with my father-in-law who had a stroke (and cancer) and to invest in building my own products.

In the future I might either stop or do software development/consultancy for charities/community stuff. I don't need a big car or lots of environment destroying vacations to be fulfilled in life.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#164

Post by farah7 »

This is one of the benefits of not having a linkedin profile. Recruiters/former managers cannot see where you're heading next. Obviously this is different for high profile execs but my gut feeling is that most individual recruiters could be shielded from non compete enforcement if they don't publicize their employment on the internet.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#165

Post by jaf656s »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #134
sidr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example of how another non-hypothetical tech company treats fully realized (is that the opposite of potential?) blue-collar workers: * https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderat... * https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

I'm betting dvt won't work for Facebook, either, and I applaud 'em for it. (How do we specify that we're referring to a user here, anyway? On reddit, I'd just type /u/dvt and be done with it, seems weird to do it here.)

a lot of people like the single quote, e.g. 'pavel_lishin

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#166

Post by GCA10 »

radicalbyte wrote: post #157
segmondy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sure they do pay well, it's just that they seem to assume that ever random person in Europe would be jumping to work for them. I'd have to be around the $150k in a city where large (180-200m2 inside on 600-800m2 land, with a double garage) high quality house would cost $2000 a month in mortgage payments. That's basically where I stand now. I have no idea what houses cost in the places they were talking about (Tor…

That's artful! Your salary request is very reasonable assuming you've got the kinds of skills Amazon wants. Which is obviously the case.

But your housing parameters will freak them out. I'm seeing that the average house within Toronto city limits goes for $1.39 million. Your mortgage-payment cap lets you borrow only $410,000 or so at current Canadian rates.

So they need to pay you a lot more to get you into the house you want. And at that stage, they turn pale and get off the phone.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#167

Post by jaf656s »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #145
socialist_coder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neste…

>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.

If they consume similar resources I'd almost always opt for the simplest one to understand.

In cases where the simpler one is less efficient, I might still use it if the task didn't require absolute optimization.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#168

Post by franczesko »

kylek wrote: post #95
shados wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. 5 years is pretty darn high by tech company standard, as people already mentioned. Partly because of the culture of "you have to jump ship to make more money and promotions", but even the most employee friendly company will barely edge that, just because software engineers have a huge "grass is greener" syndrome.

I think "5 years" is a good indicator for amzn, as many (most?) L4/L5's sign up with a big chunk of stock that takes 4 years to vest.

You've hit the nail on the head

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#170

Post by gigatexal »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #111
gigatexal wrote: post #50

This is the ultimate humble brag. To work at the leading cloud operation would be an honor.

Working at orgs like Amazon, FB, or Google, show poor character and/or low self-esteem.

Do you live your whole life by making blanket statements for everything?
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