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Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

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Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#41

Post by DavidSJ »

daeken wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, their tech job listings list tech degrees as a must-have . That seems to be a common attribute of companies that care more about HR box ticking than technical excellence, alas.

I thought about going to Amazon when I decided to get out of the startup world about 6 months ago. I went through the standard application process, and promptly closed the tab when I found that they would only accept my r�sum� in MS Word format -- rejected PDFs, HTML, and even plaintext. It may seem like a silly reason not to work somewhere, but I think that the hiring process says more about a company than just abou…

I never went to college. I submitted a PDF résumé. Amazon hired me.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#42

Post by haberman »

jordanb wrote: post #5

Judging from things Steve Yegge has written about Amazon, and from friends of mine who have worked there, I don't get the impression that Amazon is a company dedicated to technical excellence. In particular I seem to recall something about 40 million lines of C++ code in their core product, and about mediocre engineering talent and high levels of burnout due to the technical debt they're required to deal with... In f…

I worked at Amazon from 2004-2007. On one hand, Amazon does some really excellent and novel work like Dynamo and AWS (S3, EC2, EBS, etc). They organize developer conferences and bring in really good people to lecture. They hire really solid distributed systems people like Pat Helland and give them reign to work with engineering teams to improve their designs.

On the other hand, when you're in the trenches of a product team at Amazon, good engineering takes a back seat to features, deadlines, and keeping everything running. There was an incredible amount of pressure from the top to maintain high levels of service, but not a lot of support for taking the time to refactor or rework those systems to address the underlying causes of service disruption. Everything was always an emergency, but we always had to make the shallow fixes.

Overall, I'm much happier at Google where there is a lot of support for good engineering at all levels of the organization, not just as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#43

Post by tmarthal »

jordanb wrote: post #5

Judging from things Steve Yegge has written about Amazon, and from friends of mine who have worked there, I don't get the impression that Amazon is a company dedicated to technical excellence. In particular I seem to recall something about 40 million lines of C++ code in their core product, and about mediocre engineering talent and high levels of burnout due to the technical debt they're required to deal with... In f…

Maybe not working at Amazon, but their suite of companies are still technically innovating : their http://www.a2z.com subsidiary is doing some amazing stuff, with top-tier talent.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#44

Post by nerfhammer »

ghshephard wrote: post #40
daeken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about going to Amazon when I decided to get out of the startup world about 6 months ago. I went through the standard application process, and promptly closed the tab when I found that they would only accept my r�sum� in MS Word format -- rejected PDFs, HTML, and even plaintext. It may seem like a silly reason not to work somewhere, but I think that the hiring process says more about a company than just abou…

Of course, that goes both way. Any engineer so fixated on not using Microsoft Word, and unwilling to submit a resume in the format requested by their potential employer, might not work out well in a number of environments where they might gasp be required to use operating systems, applications, and methodologies that they were unfamiliar with, or downright opposed to. Works out well for everyone - so, to some degree,…

Not everyone owns a copy of Word these days

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#45

Post by technomancy »

daeken wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, their tech job listings list tech degrees as a must-have . That seems to be a common attribute of companies that care more about HR box ticking than technical excellence, alas.

I thought about going to Amazon when I decided to get out of the startup world about 6 months ago. I went through the standard application process, and promptly closed the tab when I found that they would only accept my r�sum� in MS Word format -- rejected PDFs, HTML, and even plaintext. It may seem like a silly reason not to work somewhere, but I think that the hiring process says more about a company than just abou…

> closed the tab when I found that they would only accept my r�sum� in MS Word format

Why not just send it in a decent format and see what happens? Just because they say they'll reject it doesn't mean they will.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#46

Post by technomancy »

jmelloy wrote: post #28
pkteison wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some negative stories about working at Amazon. I don't recall seeing anybody write that it's a great place to program. Anybody have any stories or links about the upside?

I know a lot of people who work/have worked there, and it seems to be a very love it or hate it company. They work people hard, but the people who like that kind of environment thrive. They seem to be pretty ruthless about improving in certain areas and are very metric-focused. I'm not sure it's a great place to program, but it's certainly a great place to learn about programming.

I've heard it is very dependent upon the team.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#47

Post by Eliezer »

czhiddy wrote: post #16

Interesting how AMZN jumps 5% after missing earnings, yet GOOG drops nearly 10% with nearly the exact same results (increased hiring and expenses resulting in lower than expected profit).

Stocks don't react to how results in announcements compare to last year, stocks react to how results in announcements compare with how Wall Street priced the stock yesterday based on their guess to what the results would be. Efficient markets 101 - otherwise you could make money by buying, one day in advance, stocks that obviously probably did well compared to last year. If this is not obvious to you then you should never invest in anything besides index funds (seriously, I've seen people do really badly by not understanding elementary implications of the inexploitable markets hypothesis).

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#48

Post by mlinsey »

petercooper wrote: post #6
jordanb wrote: post #5

Judging from things Steve Yegge has written about Amazon, and from friends of mine who have worked there, I don't get the impression that Amazon is a company dedicated to technical excellence. In particular I seem to recall something about 40 million lines of C++ code in their core product, and about mediocre engineering talent and high levels of burnout due to the technical debt they're required to deal with... In f…

In my experience, their tech job listings list tech degrees as a must-have . That seems to be a common attribute of companies that care more about HR box ticking than technical excellence, alas.

I was hired with no college degree, when Microsoft and Google would not even consider me on that basis.

Also, for Amazon and other companies, there is a world of difference going through their public-facing recruiting process and getting to know someone on an interesting team through your network, and getting hired through them.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#49

Post by natrius »

nerfhammer wrote: post #44
ghshephard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, that goes both way. Any engineer so fixated on not using Microsoft Word, and unwilling to submit a resume in the format requested by their potential employer, might not work out well in a number of environments where they might gasp be required to use operating systems, applications, and methodologies that they were unfamiliar with, or downright opposed to. Works out well for everyone - so, to some degree,…

Not everyone owns a copy of Word these days

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of programs that output MS Word format, or even RTF.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#50

Post by EricBerglund »

nerfhammer wrote: post #44
ghshephard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, that goes both way. Any engineer so fixated on not using Microsoft Word, and unwilling to submit a resume in the format requested by their potential employer, might not work out well in a number of environments where they might gasp be required to use operating systems, applications, and methodologies that they were unfamiliar with, or downright opposed to. Works out well for everyone - so, to some degree,…

Not everyone owns a copy of Word these days

True, but Open/Libre Office is freely available and can save to Word formats.
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