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Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

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Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#241

Post by anthonybsd »

chris_wot wrote: post #162
rifung wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't even know how to write bash scripts Is this weird? I only know of one or two coworkers who knows how to write bash scripts.. Despite almost knowing no bash, I was hired as an SDE1 at Amazon so your story adds up though!

It's super weird that anyone exposed to a Unix system can't write a bash script!

>It's super weird that anyone exposed to a Unix system can't write a bash script!

Why is it weird? I've been working with UNIX systems for more than 20 years, somewhat of a Vim expert and I don't think I can write a bash script. Never needed to. Sure I can modify .bash_profile and I can read bash scripts but writing them to do something useful? Nope. I'd use something like Perl or awk instead. The only time I ever wrote any kind of shell script on my memory was a tcsh (csh?) one in the 90s because the box didn't have any scripting languages installed.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#242

Post by t05ter »

joshstrange wrote: post #181
u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

I don't work in SV so maybe my comment doesn't matter but most of these things seem pretty trivial.... > - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years I haven no equity in my company or opportunity to get any. > - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. I don't think my company offers any relocation packages (I could b…

I understand where you're coming from as I've worked both in and outside of SV (Amazon isn't in SV but shares the culture). Though it may look like they're asking for a lot, it has to do with the demanding nature of the jobs they're working.

To answer your question about being woke up in the middle of the night, there is no such thing as a "shift". Most of us are expected to work at the very least 60 hour work weeks (no additional pay, everyone is salaried), with many jobs beings 'always on', extending our work into nights and weekends with take home laptops. A typical (though not universal) day at Amazon is like follows:

- Wake up and open laptop to check emails and get some work in.

- Shower, eat, etc. before going into work.

- Work until around 7-8pm.

- Come home and eat, then open up laptop to work (maybe with the tv on in the background) up until going to bed.

Waking hours are pretty much consumed by work, and on weekends a lot of people will do a couple hours here and there and between other things, to stay current with issues.

If people in SV look like they're asking for a lot or getting upset over petty things, it's because of the sheer soul sucking amount of work that's being imposed on them. Small conveniences like a catered cafe makes the difference in helping them work through it.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#243

Post by numbsafari »

herge wrote: post #199
joshstrange wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work in SV so maybe my comment doesn't matter but most of these things seem pretty trivial.... > - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years I haven no equity in my company or opportunity to get any. > - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. I don't think my company offers any relocation packages (I could b…

Whatever your work conditions may be, it still stinks for him to be given an offer on paper which looks comparable to other companies of Amazon's reach, and yet in the small print wind up being a lot worse.

If you don't like the fine print, don't take the offer?

Why be offended by an offer? It's just an offer. Counter or just say "no".

Being offended is a waste of time.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#244

Post by mikeash »

u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

"No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes."

This seems totally out of place to me. You have to pay for your own food, who cares? That's the way it is for pretty much everybody.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#245

Post by Bartweiss »

intended wrote: post #188
praptak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that spreading rumors can magically transform a micromanaging boss. What it can do is keep them occupied, just as any other form of employee micro-sabotage. It also makes the workplace generally crappier.

This stuff is so deeply frightening, to someone like me. I am color blind to a vast range of interpersonal interactions, the fact that people have a vocabulary/taxonomy of interactions which includes or can generate - "micro sabotage"... hints at a world too exhausting to imagine

For whatever it's worth, the amount of this in different workplaces seems to vary from "virtually none" to "run away screaming".

At the best places, I assume this happens a bit, but it's pretty easy to ignore it completely and still do well by being a good employee.

At the worst places, it's apparent even to someone unaware that something is up, because people will make comments that are totally nonsensical unless you're neck-deep in the politicking. It also shows when smart people make obviously awful decisions - they're probably getting something out of it other than the good of the company.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#246

Post by intended »

arethuza wrote: post #224
intended wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff is so deeply frightening, to someone like me. I am color blind to a vast range of interpersonal interactions, the fact that people have a vocabulary/taxonomy of interactions which includes or can generate - "micro sabotage"... hints at a world too exhausting to imagine

Have a read of this: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o... You probably won't thank me if you do read it - it changes the way you evaluate people...

Haha, I've read it, and It's great fun.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#247

Post by jonnathanson »

YCode wrote: post #233
ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "little tough" for "those whose morale is easily damaged" sounds like an attempt to blame employees. Amazon is not as meritocratic as people imagine. People are often praised for building a shiny thing or stopping a fire. Rarely for preventing a fire, or a security issue, or doing the hard work it takes to keep an old system running. A lot can depend on being in the right team at the right time. On top of that, exp…

> People are often praised for building a shiny thing or stopping a fire. Rarely for preventing a fire, or a security issue, or doing the hard work it takes to keep an old system running. A lot can depend on being in the right team at the right time. Seems like most organizations I've worked at. That and organizational volunteer work get you awards.

Shiny things and organizational volunteer work seem to become incresingly important as companies grow in size, the volume of internal projects increases, and thus it becomes a lot harder to gain consistent internal visibility. So working on a "shiny" project becomes your best (if not only) shot at getting noticed. The truly Machiavellian will recognize this environment for what it is, and just pitch shiny new projects if none are immediately available -- the necessity of those projects usually being a secondary consideration.

The problem often grows worse, not better, when you introduce concepts like top-down goal alignments and stack ranking. These can easily backfire by forcing savvy employees to scramble for maximum-impact projects and deprioritize all others. You end up with a handful of hero projects and a whole bunch of misfit toys that nobody wants to touch.

I'm not sure any company has ever truly solved this problem at scale. Obviously some company cultures are better at it than others. (I've never worked at Amazon, so I can't speak honestly or credibly to its culture.)

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#248

Post by Dayshine »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #178
dagw wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Do you think it weird that most Windows user couldn't write a .bat script? I've worked support at a large university that used Unix as its main desktop OS for staff and students in most departments. I'd bet that most people there couldn't write bash script. 90+% of peoples interaction with the OS was click browser icon, click e-mail icon, click text editor icon and click icon/type in name at command prompt of wh…

Aren't we talking about software engineers not just generic users? I would be very surprised if an engineer working primarily in windows couldn't write a .bat/powershell script

I can use powershell.

Never had to write a script, whatever for?

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#249

Post by YPCrumble »

candiodari wrote: post #225
77pt77 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We may end up favoring “goody two-shoes” personality types who were on the straight and narrow from their earliest years and disfavor those who rebelled at young ages, even if those people might end up being more creative later on." We'll keep on doing what we've been doing since the dawn of time: reward Machiavellian behavior. The guy that creates a controlled fire and puts it out will be praised. The guy that cle…

Exactly. But you forget one: Any attempt at anything short of wildly positive feedback will be met with extremely aggressive reactions, because of the reaction from the organisation that will follow. Plenty of managers do that today of course.

This argument is flawed.

It's a strawman because nobody is suggesting that feedback should only be "wildly positive". Positive reinforcement is very different from being wildly positive.

It's also a slippery slope fallacy because there is no evidence that there will be extremely aggressive reaction to constructive criticism.

If you could provide evidence that managers who use positive reinforcement have underperforming teams this would be an interesting comment. I suspect that would be hard to find.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#250

Post by sulam »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #147
sulam wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, seriously legacy software (still a lot of Perl in their production web code, including ancient Perl template engines) and the on-calls are truly bad. AWS is more modern, but still not entirely awesome from what I've heard. On the plus side, hiring people out of there after a year is usually pretty easy.

What are the typical on-calls?

You are paged most nights and often more than once a night during your rotation and you are on rotation a lot.
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