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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#331

Post by nirvana »

haldean wrote: post #327
simplekoala wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex-Amazonian, I have to second your opinion. It was by far the worst employment experience I had at a tech company. In my 10 year tenure, I fortunately didn't come across any company as bad as Amazon, when it comes to how it treats its employees. The management doesn't have any value for the lives of their developers, and use them as tissues. Use and throw seems to their policy. If you can take their abuse, and…

Advice taken. I have an offer from them right now, as well as an offer from elsewhere -- after seeing this whole thread, I think I'll go for the elsewhere. Thanks for the advice!

Good luck, and hopefully the other company is more of a startup.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#332

Post by nirvana »

simplekoala wrote: post #309
nirvana wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon internal propagand emphasizes that Amazon is a startup. "It's day one!" is a phrase I heard way too many times. They have "door desks" -- which actually cost them more than regular off the shelf furniture would-- but they pretend like they're being frugal to perpetuate the perception that they're a startup. (When I found out about the door desks costs, I was sworn to secrecy, it is very important for morale.)…

You last few statement sum up my feelings too. I am curious to see, how long they can get away with poor conditions for Devs. It still amazes me that they get away with it.

I think there are huge numbers of low level, new, or just... B and C level developers who come in to fill the ranks. A lot of the best devs at Amazon, when I was there, were indians who had to keep working at Amazon as it was the only way they could stay in America. I felt a bit sorry for them (and of course, from their perspective, Amazon might have been great compared to the alternative.)

This country really needs a damn visa for technologists, or something.

Anyway, at some point software development became a very popular career choice and so there is an endless supply of warm bodies graduating from colleges each year, all of whom know the Amazon brand and think working there would be really cool.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#333

Post by jsolson »

jeremyjarvis wrote: post #121
jrockway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed at Amazon and got an offer recently, but I have to admit, it did kind of sound like this kind of job. I really liked the offer stage, where I asked for 4 weeks vacation (what I have now) instead of their standard 2 weeks. "That's not negotiable! It wouldn't be fair if you got better benefits just because you're better at negotiating than others on your team!" True. Offer rejected.

Noooo. They seriously only give 2 weeks holiday a year? that's insane.

Two in year one, three in year two.

Plus an additional 6 "personal days".

That being said, I've yet to actually take a vacation day at Amazon, despite regularly getting automated e-mails about it from HR. I send a polite OOTO e-mail to my team and that seems to be sufficient. This may very from team to team and manager to manager.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#334

Post by nirvana »

potatolicious wrote: post #268
nirvana wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a healthy, functioning, company there is some politics. The thing about amazon is, it doesn't matter to anyone that I had pointed this out months ago. From my boss up to the person who reported to Bezos, every one of them would be embarrassed by it, but what could I do? Threaten to tell Jeff Bezos? He doesn't care. He was in the ticket and they were all pointing the finger at me. Me coming back and say "Bu…

> ""But, I pointed it out months ago"... would result in "therefore its your fault because you weren't persuasive enough!"" And then this would get noted in your performance review. Weakness: bias for action.

Absolutely. Hell, at one point, praise for me from a former manager in a performance review was twisted around and used against me.

If I never hear the phrase "Bias for action" again, I'll be happy. (Though I laughed when you used it.)

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#335

Post by nirvana »

aphexairlines wrote: post #133
nirvana wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. It would have meant I lost my job. When Bezos is posting on a ticket, everyone knows it. All the pressure rolled downhill right onto me. This means that, even if I did tell them to fuck off, I wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep. On some level I would have felt I was shirking my duties, and after all, I'd lobbied hard to get it fixed, months before. I think, ultimately, it is kind of…

> I'm actually a bit hesitant to talk about this, even years later, because I expect to be attacked for it. A bit unfair, don't you think? There have been several HN threads about Amazon in the last few months where former employees chimed in, and nobody has been maligned for it.

I have mentioned this in the past, on HN, though much more briefly, and was attacked for it. (Though this was on a previous HN account.)

I don't consider HN to be a very receptive environment, especially if you're saying anything perceived as "negative" about certain companies, including Amazon, Google, Facebook etc. Though it varies widely, of course.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#336

Post by j_baker »

ellyagg wrote: post #190
nhashem wrote: post #2

What really struck home for me was Steve's line, "I hate... plussing" because I actually think his entries like this one are a great niche for Google Plus -- it's basically a built-in blogging platform/RSS reader. Facebook and Twitter are pretty bad platforms for posting 5 paragraphs (or 25 paragraphs, in Steve's case) worth of thoughts, but Google Plus works pretty well. It has all the sharing/social goodness of tho…

You too, huh? That's what I do now. Our company's been a paying user of Google's APIs for a couple years, and it's been a nightmare the whole time: Inadequate features, bogus data, weird malfunctions, etc.

Which API? Not that I think Google's APIs are all brilliant, but on the whole, I curse them much less than I do some other companies' APIs (like Facebook and just about anything by Yahoo).

But then again, the quality of their APIs varies pretty wildly from product to product.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#337

Post by nl »

noblethrasher wrote: post #324
frwololo wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're constantly blocking ads, you're a google customer and you give them money. Don't be fooled by an apparently "free" service :)

Viewing ads makes you the product not the customer.

There is a thing called a "multi-sided market".

Saying "you are the product not the customer" is not only popularist, but wrong.

Think about Skype - most of their customers don't pay, but they derive value FROM Skype - AND they add value to the paying customers.

Simplifying complicated markets with statements like "you are the product not the customer" is a disservice to the discussion.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#338

Post by itsmeritesh »

pitdesi wrote: post #120

It now 404's so I've posted it here: Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.…

Wonderful post. I especially understand why the dogfooding is so necessary. Here's An article I came across that talked about how the senior management at G were using G+ http://theunderstatement.com/post/11018308302/googles-manage...

As for platforms, IMO even Yahoo did a great job. The hackdays they conduct twice a year is testament to this fact. It's a different thing that they are not able to capitalize/monetize any of those wonderful ideas but I am guessing the reason for organizing those events were different.

Totally agree on the Amazon doing platforms right. Still a little skeptical about FB given that their APIs seem messy, at least at the moment. But given the demand, I am sure they will deliver.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#339

Post by chwahoo »

gms wrote: post #316

I find it hard to believe that any significant number of people use things made using Facebook Platform. Vast majority of people simply use the product itself.

Spotify, MOG, Pandora, Farmville, are all popular users of the platform.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#340

Post by flinty »

msg wrote: post #276

Amazon engineer here, just a couple of observations after a few years at the company. As many people said, there's a wide variability in experience at Amazon depending on the team. And I would say even more, depending on where you sit in the graph. The bottlenecks at the center have more clients, higher TPS, more stringent latency requirements. And their support burden is worse and the engineer's life is worse. It's…

Hi msg, Since you worked on SOA projects what book/resource would you recommend to build an app from the ground up to be service oriented. Thanks
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