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Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

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Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#221

Post by no_wizard »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #166
no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

Quoted post unavailable.

so, I say fallback in the sense that I felt confident I could interview there and apply without much friction. I got alot of LinkedIn invites from recruiters - typically once a week - for over a year.

I think Amazon engineers are - by and large - pretty great actually, worked with more than a few ex-Amazon engineers to know.

This was, and I admit, an offhand comment of which I should have explained this context better.

I also don't believe the interview is "easy", but it felt available and I'm someone who - even for companies that don't crazy rigorous hiring practices - goes really deep before any interview, reading many weeks in advance worth of stuff about the company and their hiring process, learning etc. I practice alot, so I felt like I could do well with the Amazon interview. In fact, I did one once before and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it just didn't work out at the time for me to join.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#222

Post by no_wizard »

no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

As explained lower in the thread, I should have given more context to my offhand remark. Since I can't edit the post itself, here's the context:

I say fallback in the sense that I felt confident I could interview there and apply without much friction. I got alot of LinkedIn invites from recruiters - typically once a week - for over a year.

I also don't believe the interview is "easy", but it felt available and I'm someone who - even for companies that don't crazy rigorous hiring practices - goes really deep before any interview, reading many weeks in advance worth of stuff about the company and their hiring process, learning etc. I practice alot, so I felt like I could do well with the Amazon interview. In fact, I did one once before and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it just didn't work out at the time for me to join and I had to pass on the opportunity.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#223

Post by Andys »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #119
throwaway23597 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I hate frontend so much. Frontend sits right at the uncomfortable intersection between overly complicated tech that's tough to understand, and demanding PMs and UXs who need the feature to look or behave a certain way. I initially enjoyed frontend because of the hands-on nature of it, being able to make something and then play around with it in my browser. But after the 100th time wrestling around with CS…

I super enjoy pushing innovative new front end technologies in personal projects where a 30 second fix might take as much as 5 minutes after test automation and all necessary due diligence, but at past jobs I just dig that hole they tell me to dig. If you try to bring up that the days work could be solved in less than hour if only we didn’t make all the wrong decisions and fear the platform they will look at you like…

Best argument around for doing your own startup.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#224

Post by kenjackson »

warner25 wrote: post #148
kenjackson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this part of the premise of the book Hackers? Haven't read it in like 25 years, but that's what I vaguely remember.

I don't recall this coming up in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , but it was definitely in The Soul of A New Machine , the story about Data General trying to build their first 32-bit computer.

Thank you... it was Soul of a New Machine. I don't think I even ever read Hackers!

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#225

Post by jodrellblank »

sangnoir wrote: post #106
insanitybit wrote: post #102

And how much is Bezos worth? If your company is posting profits and executives are rolling in unprecedented piles of money there's no excuse for layoffs.

How about the sacred "fiduciary duty" to shareholders and the Wall street gods? Sacrificing thousands employees on the altar of cutting costs stays their wrath,and they will bless you with higher share prices.

> "the sacred "fiduciary duty" to shareholders"

It's imaginary:

https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia...

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#227

Post by tennisflyi »

no_wizard wrote: post #222
no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

As explained lower in the thread, I should have given more context to my offhand remark. Since I can't edit the post itself, here's the context: I say fallback in the sense that I felt confident I could interview there and apply without much friction. I got alot of LinkedIn invites from recruiters - typically once a week - for over a year . I also don't believe the interview is "easy", but it felt available and I'm s…

I'd start with with a lot instead of al(l)ot from allocate...

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#228

Post by hawaiianbrah »

no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

This is the joke in Seattle. You can always get a job at Amazon. Not anymore, currently!

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#230

Post by turdprincess »

malfist wrote: post #211
hn_acc_2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, among the MAGMA companies I've found the _least_ bias for leetcode-memorization at Amazon. My interview with Meta was exactly as you described (a CS riddle taken from a textbook, to be solved without running the code or receiving hints). But in my interview with Amazon, each coding interview also included a couple leadership questions. If you want you can look up the exact questions that they'll give you to…

We have a question bank that we are required to ask from that can be found online. Coding questions and system design challenges are individual to the interviewer. Some are good, some are bad, some are leet code, some are reasonable, it's kinda a crapshot. I saw a bar raiser (a bar raiser!) asking path finding algorithms as his coding challenge which is nuts to me. All that signals is if you've worked with path findi…

It could also signal that you got motivated and took many hours out of your busy day to do a meaningless task like memorize a path finding algorithms. This might be a good signal that you will also be motivated to spend many hours doing meaningless things at your job.

Actually, if you think about it, the whole concept of getting a college degree isn't much different - its not about what you learn in the classes, it just shows that you have the capacity to go through an arbitrary social experience, follow a bunch of rules, learn some stuff, and stick with it for a few years - pretty similar to a job.

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