I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months • Hacker News Board

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#301

Post by benadam11 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #123

monster_group wrote: post #53

FTA - "I was assigned to had an engineer who had never done web development (didn’t know HTTP, HTML, CSS or Javascript)" But hey, you bet he knows topological sort and dynamic programming.

The article writer said he was in the Devices org so I would bet there are a huge number of hardware engineers there. That engineer could be very proficient with C and firmware and might have not touched web stuff since college, even if that was covered then. Really telling of an organization that your personal skills don't matter when they just need bodies.

Nailed it ... they were experts in firmware and systems programming and had never really done web development before (that said, they were working very hard to do a good job, just unfortunate that they were set up for failure in a lot of ways).

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#302

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #257

robby_w_g wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then…

I would love to know how long the average FANG dev spent on leetcode practice before their interviews. From my small sample of friends who've done stints there, it's far less than "months". I similarly have had - but declined - an offer from one of them with prep measured in "hours" not "days."

[deleted]

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#303

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #113

brazzledazzle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>he came back from parental leave and his direct reports had all been put on a PIP while he was out Wow. It’s really difficult to imagine a likely scenario where that’s justified.

They had a quota to fill, and they didn't know or didn't like anyone on that team. Not that that is a justification, but it's almost certainly the reason .

A quota of people who needed to be on PIPs? That's insane.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#304

Post by hotpotamus » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #253

CrazyStat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps every other org is a good one. --- "I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Two pence a week, and jam every other day." Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire me – and I don't care for jam." "It's very good jam," said the Queen. "Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate." "You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and…

This is perfect :) . I am as illiterate as one can be, but loved this reference.

It's even cleverer than that - it's also a reference on latin conjugations builtin to the Queen's joke. Carroll was a smart cookie.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#305

Post by monkeybutton » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #233

monkeybutton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how motivated you are to to your current job. On two occasions I've witnessed a fellow developer mentally check themselves out after a round of layoffs, start doing the minimal amount of work necessary, and then spending the rest of their time cracking coding problems. When the next round of layoffs came, they were gone to Amazon and Google.

Where are they now?

Sorry if I was a bit ambiguous. They are at Amazon and Google now. The point is treat your staff well or they might spend their time between tasks prepping for a FAANG interview.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#306

Post by jkingsbery » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

peakaboo wrote: post #143

I glanced through the leadership principles and laughed a bit. I feel sorry for the people who think they have to put up with that bullshit. It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as possible, that's the single reason those principles exist. To make specially young and clueless employees forget it's just a job, because hey, it must be an obsession! If you are young, this may seem normal i guess but…

Current Amazon employee here.

> It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as possible

This has not been my experience. The way I've looked at it as, these are more explicit ground rules for how decisions are made. At most other places I've worked, the mechanisms for making decisions was often quite arbitrary, and boiling down to whatever the most senior person in the room wants. When the Leadership Principles are done well, you'll see there are checks and balances built in. For example: yes, we have "customer obsession," and we try to work hard for customers, but if my boss told me to work unreasonable hours, he would fail in the "Earn Trust" area, and he would be in danger of losing his team.

I've found my work-life balance at Amazon to be pretty reasonable, and much better than pretty much any where else I've worked.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#307

Post by w0mbat » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #198

yonig wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replies laid out what it means on paper but what is the employees actual best move? Sounds intentionally impossible to climb out of. Are they given a buyout option to leave or just sit in purgatory for 6 months?

It depends on the employee and the organization. If the employee in question really has been under-performing, believes meeting the goals is possible, and wants to stay, then accepting the PIP and trying to succeed is a risky but valid choice. On the other hand, if the employee in question is fairly certain the PIP conditions can't be satisfied, signing the PIP is a very bad idea. It amounts to written acknowledgemen…

Exactly. Object to the PIP suggestion, and say it is being imposed without proper cause for a discriminatory reason, e.g. to harass and force out an employee over 40. That totally fucks their attempt to gather fake reasons to fire you, their only option is to offer you money to quit. I ran into this at a company where my good work was documented, but I'd accidentally annoyed someone really high up and strings were being pulled to ditch me.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#308

Post by mikestew » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

lloydatkinson wrote: post #256

prirun wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep saying this. Every state except Montana in the US is "at will": the employer can fire you at any time with no reason. I suppose you could try to prove discrimination because of age or something else, but just like you can walk out and never come back, the employer can ask you to leave and you're done. Companies have no liability if you are fired other than a discrimination lawsuit.…

The internet is bigger than america, it's a shame I need to remind you.

Remind me again of the location of the corporate headquarters of the company that this portion of the thread is specifically talking about? Need I remind you of context?

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#309

Post by analognoise » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

tucaz wrote: post #183

strgcmc wrote: post #116

I see a lot of these comments have taken to a kind of Amazon-bashing and venting their own experiences, where the author actually... didn't? I thought the author was incredibly fair/objective, and at least the way I read it, it wasn't so much that he had such a miserable experience or could only stomach 10 months of pain/abuse (in fact if you actually read to the end, he praises his manager, his teammates, etc.), and…

People on this forum are usually too good to find problems within. With folks here, usually the other party is always at fault.

The company who ordered people back to the floor when a hurricane was coming causing their death when the building partially collapsed, has people pissing in bottles to meet insane work quotas, stack ranks employees, flys drones over delivery trucks to surveil drivers to ensure efficiency, repeatedly busts union efforts, might run through literally every available American because the churn at it's distribution centers is so high, uses its platform data to compete with it's suppliers, and whose founder Bezos is one of the richest men to ever live who built himself a literal space craft while income inequality is higher than during the French Revolution?

Are you absolutely sure that there are no legitimate problems with Amazon, or that maybe we're a little itchy with Amazon for a reason?

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#310

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #186

peakaboo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soul searching is easy. The only people who put up with that shit are people who don't feel good enough, so they are begging their master like a dog to please, please like them!! The cure? Don't allow corporations to set your value, specially not mad and crazy corporations like amazon and space penis.

Some people are genuinely hired above their level or have been coasting so long the don't realize they are coasting, and so there are legitimate uses for PIPs. That being said, I hear it's a perverse shadow of that at companies like Amazon that use quotas to go looking for reasons to fire people.

In my experience, some people can be really oblivious. I've seen past situations where a company didn't have a formal PIP process, but it was blatantly obvious to everyone concerned--except apparently the person themselves--that they just couldn't do the job and were a massive time suck on others and weren't improving in spite of all sorts of attempts to help them. And they were totally shocked when they were fired "out of the blue."