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

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#211

Post by Jldevictoria » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #144

> 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 sol…

Do these hold up under Washington state law? I know most states do not support non-competes when it comes to lawsuits, it wouldn't surprise me if Washington is one of them.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#212

Post by inlined » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #110

zeropnc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It treats its white collar workers like adults, not privileged overly sensitive babies. Only in the Silicon Valley is that considered “dirt”.

The pride some people have in their ability to tolerate bad conditions is a little silly. I don't understand how you can look down on people who want a better work environment

I was brainwashed in Windows that the grit made me a better developer. They’d always say “a Windows X is an X+1”. They also convinced employees that if they ever left the org they’d never get back in because they’d lose the cache and not be assumed to have the competency of your level.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#213

Post by beeschlenker » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#214

Post by 98codes » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #5

I've also turned down countless Amazon interview offers. In fact, I don't get how I'm still on their recruitment lists after asking several times to be removed. Amazon has arguably the worst culture out of any large tech company, and generally treats its workers like dirt. Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they ha…

My doctor is in South Lake Union in Seattle, near a number of Amazon buildings. She hates Amazon with a passion, after seeing so many people in their 20s with health issues they shouldn't have until their 40s or 50s.

There's no chance I'd entertain so much as a conversation with a recruiter.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#215

Post by ivalm » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

rovolo wrote: post #189

whycombagator wrote: post #89

IIRC salaried workers at Amazon get 10 PTO days. This stops me from even applying. I wouldn't ever again consider less than 20, and really need a minumum of 25.

By PTO are you deliberately narrowing to vacation? Full time workers also get 6 days/year Personal Time. The current US vacation schedule also changes over time, from worse than 10 days to 15 days. 1st year: 5 days, 2nd: 10 days, 3rd: 11 days, 4th: 12 days, 5th: 13 days, 6th: 14 days, 7th+: 15 days. Thus, the time-off goes from 11 days to 21 days per year.

Which is still pretty bad...

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#216

Post by mountainofdeath » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

gtsteve wrote: post #106

I once met a guy who was a programmer for a hedge fund. The strategies and knowledge he had would be very useful to competitors. They didn't have a non-compete agreement in the contract, as this is almost never enforceable here, instead he agreed to a six month notice period - after working two months' notice they then paid four months' salary for him to take a holiday while his knowledge became less and less useful…

Can confirm that this is generally how critical financial positions work. They do have a no-compete but the expectation is that the no-compete is paid for at the previous wage. It's quite common to get a 6 month severance during the cooldown period.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#217

Post by mountainofdeath » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

whycombagator wrote: post #89

IIRC salaried workers at Amazon get 10 PTO days. This stops me from even applying. I wouldn't ever again consider less than 20, and really need a minumum of 25.

That's not salaried workers in general, only engineers and other roles that are hot markets. You average category manager starts with a whopping 5 days of PTO. Until Seattle passed ordinances regarding sick leave, nobody had a separate sick leave. If you got sick, it came out of your PTO.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#218

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #79

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…

These things can always be childish when working with a bad interviewer. I once had an engineer keep interrupting me while I was explaining how sockets work because I wasn't covering small minutia details. Interviewing is an insane process. This is why building networks is more valuable so you're basically being interviewed by people you've already worked with.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#219

Post by mountainofdeath » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #178

I'm wary of Amazon since they have a terrible reputation for tech work in addition to warehouse and delivery work. People who I've talked to who work there have not entirely refuted this for me. Non-compete agreements are garbage and are unfortunately very common - I wouldn't be surprised to find them at Google, Apple, etc.. Employment contracts are usually "take it or leave it" in that regard, though personally I tr…

The non-compete a startup I worked at had a far more reasonable one. It said I cannot go to work for any competitor in XYZ space or anyone that did substantially similar work pertaining to XYZ space such as but not limited to Company A, Company B and Company C. Everything else was fair game.

Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer

#220

Post by crispinb » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #30

dvt wrote: post #5

I've also turned down countless Amazon interview offers. In fact, I don't get how I'm still on their recruitment lists after asking several times to be removed. Amazon has arguably the worst culture out of any large tech company, and generally treats its workers like dirt. Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they ha…

Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they have the second highest employee turnover out of all Fortune 500 companies[1]. Do you think any of the tech companies would treat their blue collar workers any better? It just so happens that all of the products produced by Google, Microsoft and Apple that need a lot of blue collar workers are done by contractors in a different country. I bet none of the…

> Do you think any of the tech companies would treat their blue collar workers any better?

And?