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An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

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Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#41
Anyone working over their contracted hours needs to realise they're being exploited by their employer. Sometimes this is justified: we pay more than the going rate because we expect you to step up occasionally. Maybe it's kind of expected with Amazon in particular.

But when it descends into perma death march and your manager flings you "a few" days holiday in recompense... does that make up for it? If it doesn't, to whom has the profit gone?

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#42

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

>Is it that they want to believe that they are somehow fundamentally different from the distribution and grocery store workers, and fundamentally similar to Bezos?

I think this might be a big part of it. The idea that "I'm college educated and don't perform physical labor means I'm not like them" seems to be a pervasive societal thought not even strictly related to tech.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#43

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

It’s worth pointing out why it needs to be “revived”: because the first iteration of the tax would have destroyed grocery stores and was protested by construction unions due to its disastrous policy. This iteration is targeting the 800 largest employers in Seattle, many of whom aren’t currently profitable. “Tax Amazon” is classic dishonesty — neither bill has been focused on Amazon, both would be a disaster for Seatt…

Amazon PR at its finest.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#44

I enjoyed reading this. 'Encourage employees to be critical not just of ideas, but also of expectations.' From my experience as a developer; I've never really been involved in the process of setting expectations. Something I find incredibly frustrating at times. It's like sure you can give your opinion but it's too late to make any difference. I think it comes back to the main point in the article about open communic…

>I've never really been involved in the process of setting expectations

Nobody will ask you. You have to be upfront about it from the start.

Request time estimations and fully fledged requirement definitions from the start. Review them before accepting a project, push back against overly ambitious plans and propose changes that allow you to deliver value quickly and iteratively. It's easier to react to surprises if you are able to test the ideas as you go.

Stick to the plan as much as you can. Push back against changes to the requirements if they're not vital. Let others know about blockers clearly, as soon as you run into them. If you get behind schedule, communicate it properly. Stuff happens, unfortunately, and deadlines not being met is a part of life. You just get better at estimating with experience.

There's no way the upper echelons will adapt if they don't receive input timely and loudly enough. If your boss is any kind of decent, they will listen to you and trust your input. If they don't listen, then you should reconsider your current job.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#45

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

It's good to be on top. The reason AWS is so great for those with voices whom we pay attention to, is because of the misery of a whole lot of people below them.

It's not even programmers like OP but also all the servicepeople and staff at datacenters, and the rest of the crew which makes up the infrastructure that makes it work.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#47

The on call stuff sounds outright dystopian to me, it's not even legal in my country. More places should think about adopting something akin to France's El Khomri law's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect ) and ensure that every citizen has enough time to recuperate from work and isn't pestered by their employer 24/7.

I don't understand what's so dystopian about it. Some systems are critical and need to be kept online at all time, or at least have very minimal downtime.

The description in the post is not even that bad. A page a week is nothing. And it is clearly state that your workload is reduced during your on call period.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#48
post #10

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

This guy didn't work in/for/on AWS: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4eu909/i... The divide between AWS employees and everyone else employed at Amazon seems to be "2007 Google employee" against "sweatshop"; they're run mostly-separately, from what I've read. This was also four years ago; the gist is a copy of a post from 2015, by the above reddit poster.

> The divide between AWS employees and everyone else employed at Amazon seems to be "2007 Google employee" against "sweatshop"; they're run mostly-separately, from what I've read.

This is incredibly offensive. I work in CDO and have friends in retail and AWS and the biggest difference day-to-day is that we have different systems to manage our AWS accounts.

Equivocating me to a Wipro employee is honestly really disgusting. These sorts of microaggressions are the worst part of working at Amazon, the WLB is fine.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#49

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

Every company is full of nightmares, especially anyone doing something big enough to be interesting. For instance that guy who started blogging about how janky Tesla's software was, most of us who have been around a while read all that and shrugged. Not that bad. It is easy to imagine perfection or competence but very hard to actually achieve it at large scales with humans. So at the same time it can be true that com…

This. Amazon maybe has thousands of developers working in various departments. The departments can be totally different from each other, have different culture, values whatever. Even in very small companies I have seen this effect.

Re: An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

#50

This is what I don't understand. When Tbray left, he said he was doing so in solidarity with the distribution center types, but he held to the line that AWS was great. This despite nightmare stories like this one regularly bubbling up, and I've heard similar from friends. What is it about tech culture that people within it refuse to admit the level of abuse-by-design that happens at these companies? Is it that they w…

It’s worth pointing out why it needs to be “revived”: because the first iteration of the tax would have destroyed grocery stores and was protested by construction unions due to its disastrous policy. This iteration is targeting the 800 largest employers in Seattle, many of whom aren’t currently profitable. “Tax Amazon” is classic dishonesty — neither bill has been focused on Amazon, both would be a disaster for Seatt…

As someone not from Seattle, the drama around that tax was quite ridiculous. The idea of a "head tax" is utterly nonsensical in that it's an incentive to NOT hire people, which is the entire point that companies are pulled into cities. Jobs. Jobs are one of the things cities care most about more than anything. A head tax actively disincentives hiring of new workers. A head tax can maybe make sense if you have permanently low unemployment and companies can't hire enough people, but that's not Seattle's problem.
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