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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

#291

Post by ensignavenger »

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.

Well, they didn't post their offer letter, so we have no idea if those details were in "small print" or not.

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

#292

Post by antisthenes »

t05ter wrote: post #242
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…

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…

What exactly do they do that requires 60 hours of work and no less?

When you say "check emails", can you describe the typical task that would be assigned to employee?

I ask because it all seems very vague as to what the employees actually do. Are they all software engineers? Customer service? Which ones are overworked?

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

#293

Post by antisthenes »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #288
Kiro wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, from your initial sentence I was expecting something way worse. Those problems seem very trivial to me compared to most normal jobs where you don't get offered anything at all, ever. Not to mention the many jobs where you get abused for real.

Well, all of these are standard perks in SV. So compared to them Amazon is a really bad place to work.

To everyone outside of SV, this sounds like the smallest violin playing for the software engineers in their salary/perk bubble.

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

#294

Post by Bartweiss »

serge2k wrote: post #137
morganvachon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. Punishing an employee for risking their life to try to come in to a job they already hate? That's textbook sadism, ruthless is too weak a word. In inclement weather our critical staff can depend on officers in 4x4 vehicles to bring them in, with no reprimand for being late due to the weather. Non-essentia…

This is the same company that stationed ambulances outside of a fulfillment center instead of paying for Air Conditioning. They also went to the supreme court (and won) over making people wait in line (unpaid) for 25 minutes before and after work in order to do security checks.

Wait, was it the US Supreme Court? How did they win?

I ask only because Cargill just lost a very similar suit over failing to pay employees for suit-up/down time before and after their shifts, which I thought would apply here.

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

#295

Post by hexagonc »

s_q_b wrote: post #259
amazon_employee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that. I work for AWS, and I like to think we're pretty organized. I'm not sure what part of your experience was "unorganized". You probably caught the team on a busy day or something. LPs are just guidelines for what the company "wants" out of its employees. They're used heavily in hiring to weed out small thinkers and bad culture fits, and a bit in performance reviews. Outside of that, nobody really ca…

When I was in high school my father made me work as a janitor in our family's office building. At that point I had been an independent IT consultant a few years, so the position frankly felt like an embarrassment and a waste of time. There was also a condition; I couldn't tell anyone my last name, or that I was related to the building owner. At first I thought it was to teach me a lesson about hard work, which seemed…

So your dad wanted you to report anyone at his building that treated you poorly?

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

#296

Post by Bartweiss »

Dickie_Sticks wrote: post #95
rdtsc wrote: post #22

I was interviewing for AWS, and it was a circus. Completely disorganized. However, I have to say, I enjoyed the parroting back of "the leadership principles" part. It was like being in the Soviet Union again and singing praises to the great party leaders. Very much worth wasting a day over it. However my nephew didn't have such a fun time. He was working for one of their warehouses in Kentucky and they were ruthless…

Over the course of my career Amazon is the only place I've interviewed and come away having lost all desire to work there.

I was warned that for my online programming interview with Amazon, I needed to submit a picture then spend the entire interview with my face clearly in the frame of a webcam. Any movement out of the frame or connectivity issue would be viewed as potential cheating and terminate the interview. My internet at the time was a bit shoddy, and I figured there was a very real chance that I would lose video briefly and get booted.

I may have had a weird experience, but the entire pipeline process was a hostile and miserable one.

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

#297

Post by t05ter »

antisthenes wrote: post #292
t05ter wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What exactly do they do that requires 60 hours of work and no less? When you say "check emails", can you describe the typical task that would be assigned to employee? I ask because it all seems very vague as to what the employees actually do. Are they all software engineers? Customer service? Which ones are overworked?

I specifically kept it vague for reasons of anonymity, as these types of statements have cost people their jobs in the past, and also due to the fact that what I described was work habits of people I talk to across different engineering roles (software, hardware, infrastructure) in the company I work for.

You can work less than 60 hours, but it will show in your output, as deadlines are aggressive and set tops down.

Examples of the kind of thing someone is answering emails in the early morning for is bugs discovered in your code, a regression that's failing, or something found that's blocking another coworkers' progress (since they were working late into the night as well).

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

#298

Post by serge2k »

Bartweiss wrote: post #294
serge2k wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same company that stationed ambulances outside of a fulfillment center instead of paying for Air Conditioning. They also went to the supreme court (and won) over making people wait in line (unpaid) for 25 minutes before and after work in order to do security checks.

Wait, was it the US Supreme Court? How did they win? I ask only because Cargill just lost a very similar suit over failing to pay employees for suit-up/down time before and after their shifts, which I thought would apply here.

So it was actually a contractor, but Amazon was involved in the case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rul...

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

#299

Post by clifanatic »

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…

Yeah, same here (more or less): I think Amazon doesn't compare favorably to Google or Facebook, but it compares pretty well to almost every other employer out there...

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

#300

Post by clifanatic »

manish_gill wrote: post #88
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…

Is tuition reimbursement a thing at companies? That would be pretty awesome. TIL

Travelocity paid for 100% of my tuition and books to finish my Master's degree. I did sign an agreement that I would stay there for two years after graduation, though, and I had to maintain a B or better average.
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