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Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#41
post #30

What does Amazon need thousands of engineers for, exactly? Amazon.com is a fine website. It is finished. It is complete , perfect as it is. The website could remain the exact same for the next ten decades, with minor adjustments to the product menus to reflect new products, and it would serve its purpose perfectly without risking being dethroned by competitors. Why do millions of lines of code need to be written each…

Consider this metaphor: You go on vacation. You stay at a hotel, not a “B&B.” Your vacation, your money, so you find a place close to the things you want to see, with plenty of free amenities like free continental breakfast and free WiFi. It’s somewhat reasonably priced, too. Now you go on a business trip financed by your employer, who books you into a “business class” hotel. It’s also close to things you want to see…

While I don't disagree with your general point, I'm not sure it broadly applies here.

Honestly, a nice B&B is probably priced pretty similarly to a business-class hotel.

Why do I usually stay in business class hotels in cities? Chain hotels like Marriott's brands are pretty consistent quantities. A random B&B really isn't. Business class hotels also tend to have 24-hour desks, I can leave my luggage after checkout, etc. If I don't really care much about the hotel, which tends to be the case when I'm traveling in a city on business, some mid-level chain hotel is just less mental overhead.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#42

“ If you're someone who likes your 7 hours of sleep a day, stay away.” how do people function long-term with so little sleep? I need at least 9 hours to not be a useless husk the next day.

I started today with 4.5 hours of sleep and I’ll do just great with that. Once a week my body grabs 10-14 hours in a single night to “catch up”.

"Catching up" on sleep is a myth. If you're getting wildly different amounts of sleep night to night (even on a "schedule" like yours) it's a biological/physiological certainly that you're operating at a deficit. Maybe not cognitive, but there is a deficit there whether you realize it or not.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#43

I read a telling point about Jeff Bezos yesterday, he believes people, all people, are inherently lazy and will work to avoid work. The description seemed to be trying to say, without saying, he's an Ayn Rand disciple, meaning he drunk the Kool-Aid to believe he's a John Gault or an Roark and we're just the peons preventing him from greatness and his destiny.

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. Suggesting such a thing, however, is "radical" and "communist", and essentially one step away from a dystopian fascism hellscape something something ANTIFA.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#44

“ If you're someone who likes your 7 hours of sleep a day, stay away.” how do people function long-term with so little sleep? I need at least 9 hours to not be a useless husk the next day.

I knew someone who went years with 5 hours a night. He was notoriously quick to anger and tended to over react to everything. Toward the end of my knowing him he started to take better care of himself and suddenly he was the nicest man I'd ever met. Sleep matters.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#45
post #20

I've had two job offers from AWS for SA and TAM and I turned both down. The actual position was always lower than what I was originally interviewing for (Senior instead of Staff) Literally the only company I've seen that does that. It's like a bait and switch. If I'm not actually qualified just say no lol

This might be a dumb question but if it's standard to drop everyone a level (I've heard this too) is it possible to interview for Principal or something where they would drop you back to Staff?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#47
I’m guessing another lousy side of this is the toxic HR as mentioned in the post. Let’s say you lasted a year and left. Now you can put Amazon on your resume. However, HR is so toxic that they’ll never give you a good reference if someone calls in. Now all that work and effort was really for nothing.

Edit: I meant if someone calls into HR to verify employment. You run the risk of HR secretly bad mouthing you. Yes, it’s probably illegal, but if they are doing all this other stuff, then would you be confident what they say or don’t say?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#48

“ If you're someone who likes your 7 hours of sleep a day, stay away.” how do people function long-term with so little sleep? I need at least 9 hours to not be a useless husk the next day.

I started today with 4.5 hours of sleep and I’ll do just great with that. Once a week my body grabs 10-14 hours in a single night to “catch up”.

I was under the impression that the idea that one can just oversleep to "catch up" was debunked already, e.g. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-c...

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#49

What does Amazon need thousands of engineers for, exactly? Amazon.com is a fine website. It is finished. It is complete , perfect as it is. The website could remain the exact same for the next ten decades, with minor adjustments to the product menus to reflect new products, and it would serve its purpose perfectly without risking being dethroned by competitors. Why do millions of lines of code need to be written each…

Seems like you should get off your butt and create an AWS competitor with 50 engineers. You'll be able to underprice them by so much you'll completely eat their lunch.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#50
post #43

I read a telling point about Jeff Bezos yesterday, he believes people, all people, are inherently lazy and will work to avoid work. The description seemed to be trying to say, without saying, he's an Ayn Rand disciple, meaning he drunk the Kool-Aid to believe he's a John Gault or an Roark and we're just the peons preventing him from greatness and his destiny.

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. Suggesting such a thing, however, is "radical" and "communist", and essentially one step away from a dystopian fascism hellscape something something ANTIFA.

This isn't specific to Bezos, and it's not specific to any particular class or type of "worker." If Bezos could double his money today with zero work he'd certainly do it. The family business down the road would cut every employees' salary in half tomorrow if it could.

It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some are more successful than others.

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