Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by pcvarmint » Thu, Dec 01, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

to3m wrote: post #175

chris_wot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've been using Unix on and off for 20 years, and I've done a bunch of Unix development work here and there (and more than just "did some programming and it was on a Unix system") - but I've no idea how to write a bash script, or a zsh one, for that matter. If I need to automate something, I use a GNU Makefile, or Python. That way it works on Unix as well as on Windows...

When you write commands for building targets in GNU Makefile, you are writing them in bash.

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

#332

Post by nharada » Thu, Dec 01, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

btdiehr wrote: post #326

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but: * Access to educational opportunities as a child (the "easy" path to developing the right brain structures software engineers need) * Lacking the first point, the extreme amount of time and the tolerance for the effort involved in "learning how to think" as an adult. * The free time to learn to become a software engineer. * Ideally the money to get a CS degree or equivalent. * Raw aptitude. Some peop…

A privilege is a special right reserved for certain people. Making good choices isn't reserved for those who are middle class and above. No doubt the path to career success is easier for those with parents who made an a collection of smart decisions, as well having made past smart choices. If I must accept this definition of 'privilege', then we can simply call all outcomes in our life to be a direct result of the am…

> If I must accept this definition of 'privilege', then we can simply call all outcomes in our life to be a direct result of the amount of 'privilege' we have.

You can accept this definition without reducing your entire life to a preordained path. There’s middle ground where you can accept that some portion of your life was your choice, but the rest of it was due to circumstances you were raised in or had no choice in. Nobody is suggesting you didn’t work hard to get where you are, but it’d also be crazy to pretend that the white child born to rich engineers has the same path as a poor person of color who had to help work at a young age to support their single mother and siblings.

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

#333

Post by ebrenes » Thu, Dec 01, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

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?

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

It's not so much the type of work, but other factors like volume, availability and perceived engagement. Even if you were capable of getting done in 20 hours what takes 60 hours for someone else you'd be expected to be available to help the team or respond to issues. Often times, in these types of environments you'll be expected to reply to issues quickly, respond to managers/leads if there's a question and these will arise at any moment within those 60 work hours, because even though you finished "your tasks" the team is still working to finish theirs and you're expected to be around "adding value".

As regards to the "checks emails", the task can literally be anything: a question regarding code, a response to an inquiry, a prompt for a decision on some topic, or a request for information that's needed ASAP. I've seen organizations that track the time taken to get a reply to these emails and they keep track in Excel sheets the average response time from individuals and their number of responses.

For example, I've also seen people get reported to management for taking a nap during their lunch break, even though they had finished their assigned task. The details of the tasks become irrelevant in those types of toxic environments.

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

#334

Post by euyyn » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #330

euyyn wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, formal with the paperwork and everything. It wasn't my manager who "brought HR in", though. Performance evaluation at my company isn't just the manager's discretion, and low performance will eventually get you a PIP.

Okay, fair enough. In that case, it may have been the case that your manager disagreed with HR's assessment and was willing to give you a second chance. In all of the cases I've heard of, however, HR has been brought in at the manager's request, when other, more informal mechanisms have failed.

I'm not even sure a manager here can fire you by his own choice, for what it's worth. The company invests a ton in its engineers; a failed investment is a big waste. Also, it's the manager's job to make his reports more productive, so that kind of failure reflects on him too.

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

#335

Post by quanticle » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 8:36 AM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #334

quanticle wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, fair enough. In that case, it may have been the case that your manager disagreed with HR's assessment and was willing to give you a second chance. In all of the cases I've heard of, however, HR has been brought in at the manager's request, when other, more informal mechanisms have failed.

I'm not even sure a manager here can fire you by his own choice, for what it's worth. The company invests a ton in its engineers; a failed investment is a big waste. Also, it's the manager's job to make his reports more productive, so that kind of failure reflects on him too.

Agreed, but if it's truly a bad fit, there comes a time when you have to stop throwing more money into a failed investment, to use your own terminology. It's up to the manager to decide if/when an engineer isn't a good fit for his or her team. Obviously, some managers are better about it than others, but hopefully senior management is looking at team turnover, and noticing that certain managers' teams tend to have higher turnover than others.

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

#336

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 02, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

nharada wrote: post #332

btdiehr wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A privilege is a special right reserved for certain people. Making good choices isn't reserved for those who are middle class and above. No doubt the path to career success is easier for those with parents who made an a collection of smart decisions, as well having made past smart choices. If I must accept this definition of 'privilege', then we can simply call all outcomes in our life to be a direct result of the am…

> If I must accept this definition of 'privilege', then we can simply call all outcomes in our life to be a direct result of the amount of 'privilege' we have. You can accept this definition without reducing your entire life to a preordained path. There’s middle ground where you can accept that some portion of your life was your choice, but the rest of it was due to circumstances you were raised in or had no choice i…

[deleted]

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

#337

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Dec 03, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

anthonybsd wrote: post #241

chris_wot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

That's choosing not to write a bash script. That doesn't mean you couldn't.

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

#338

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 7:12 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #191

dagw wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Movies (and games) often have very hard deadlines and missing the release window can mean losing a fuck-ton of money. I remember working on a TV Christmas special once, and let's just say that letting the release slip to early January was Not An Option.

Companies have deadlines, sure, but that doesn't mean they need to routinely require overtime. I mean, if all my recent projects required 10% overtime, I've got a bunch of options for my next project: a. Hire 10% more staff b. Increase my existing staff's efficiency by 10% c. Reduce scheduling and rework inefficiencies by 10% d. Quote 10% longer delivery times to customers e. Promise customers 10% less f. Start work…

> Why employees in the games industry put up with this sort of thing is frankly beyond me.

They typically don't, forever.

But there's an unending stream of fresh meat entering the game industry who will put up with anything to achieve their dreams of working on video games.

I've been lucky, in that I've done a lot of games, but haven't worked anywhere that routinely required overtime of me. The occasional project here or there would go south, or there would be a bad manager, but other than the last week or two of crunch to get a project finished, I've not done too badly.

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

#339

Post by madman2890 » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 10:37 PM UTC

uw_rob wrote: post #234

madman2890 wrote: post #39

268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.

I don't think it is correct to get the expected value of suicides using the national average. College-educated people employed at a high paying job living in Seattle may be much less likely to kill themselves. (Making some assumptions about the person who attempted suicide). (Disclaimer: I completed an Internship at Amazon and I am returning for a second one)

Ok, this isn't a presentation it's a comment. Albeit, I agree with you.

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

#340

Post by intended » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #245

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

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 yo…

Thanks. I've thought about what you said, and I hope its largely true. It feels like something which would be true, but feelings arent evidence, so I am taking it as a source of hope.