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Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#411

Post by cvrjk »

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #368
Copernicron wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

360 peer reviews are such bullshit. I've seen it happen where strong developers on a team of strong developers stagnate at the same level for years while mediocre developers surrounded by terrible developers get promoted. It all comes down to who's evaluating you and who you're in good with. It has nothing at all to do with how good you actually are.

What is 360 peer review?

I believe it is when you review your colleagues, they review you and your manager collates all the reviews to access your performance. Some places allow you to nominate who you want to provide your review, perhaps people you worked closely with the last couple of months etc.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#412

Post by TulliusCicero »

aix1 wrote: post #199
jelling wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend works there and said that virtually everyone gets dropped a rank on the way in. It’s so common that people commonly introduce themselves as “I’m an X but pre-Amazon I was an X+1”.

If someone was L+1 at a similar-tier company, why would they accept the downlevelling instead of a finding a suitable gig elsewhere? Is Amazon that appealing? Are openings that scarce?

Compared to smaller/less prestigious/non-tech companies, a certain level at Amazon/Google/FB will generally come with a higher expectation for technical competence, as well as more comp -- even an L4, mid level engineer at Google makes like 250k. So someone who's a "Senior Software Engineer" from some rando firm in the Midwest may still be doubling their salary or more.

The extreme version of this is being CTO as a startup of 10 people vs CTO at a company of 10,000.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#413

Post by SkyPuncher »

nobleach wrote: post #215

I interviewed with Amazon and Facebook in the Spring/Summer of 2020. The difference was night and day. Amazon felt like I was part of a huge cattle herd. The recruiter contacted me and told me they needed to hire a bunch of people in my area. I was immediately given a course of study, link to common LeetCode questions and told I had a couple of weeks. That fine. I enjoy solving puzzles. Facebook felt VERY different.…

> My feeling on those who use LeetCode as some sort of indicator.

I'm fine if you need me to at least demonstrate _basic_ competency with a few simple Leetcode questions. There are a LOT of candidates who don't actually know what they're doing (either they're new or incompetent). It's okay for you to make sure that I have half a clue of what I'm doing. The problem becomes when Leetcode is used as an actual measurement of competency ceiling.

The best engineers I work with would completely fail at Leetcode challenges because they've found easier, simpler ways to implement something.

For example, anything that lodash provides is Leetcode/HackerRank under the hood (not a dig a lodash, just the type of problems Leetcode tends to ask about). I would expect a senior engineer to be able to replicate any of that code, but I'd first expect them to know that it's not worth their time to replicate that code. Instead, they should find a well tested tool instead.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#414

Post by doktorhladnjak »

awscurrentdev wrote: post #121
salil999 wrote: post #18

Former AWS engineer here. I worked on a pretty critical product in AWS (big AWS service with lots of traffic) and I can safely say that it's totally up to your manager and pre-existing conditions which make up the job. My manager was great as a person but would always lack in my career-oriented goals (bigger projects, promotions, etc) But what really sucked for me was the pre-existing conditions. Our on-call was pret…

Current AWS engineer here, can confirm. I'm absolutely broken. I'd second the point about the manager and pre-existing conditions making up the job. It's not clear to me if it's endemic, these are big orgs with teams run very differently. That being said, the on-call sucks. It's really awful, and something I've never seen before. It's also typically the primary cause of team churn for people in my org. This varies, a…

> pit of despair of our own making, but I still haven't figured out how teams like mine get out of it.

I’ve only seen two ways out: 1. Team implodes when everybody leaves, reorg follows making it some other team’s problem 2. Management recognizes it’s a problem, takes it seriously by staffing the team with enough people to sustainably address the tech debt/operational load AND build new features

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#415

Post by [deleted] »

fridif wrote: post #376
rejectedandsad wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t get any cushier offers out of undergrad and have worked at Amazon since - do you think that reflects poorly on me? I self harm sometimes because many people think it does…

If you don't desire to seek medical help, the best thing you can do is stop self harming and stop caring about all the possible negatives you are imagining. I've gotten fat from all the stress of being a working man. I need to stop caring about all of the pitfalls and just live my life.

[deleted]

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#416

Post by tablespoon »

errantspark wrote: post #283
tablespoon wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t conflate corporate size with engineering competency. It’s counter-intuitive, but oh so common to see this. That’s why so many engineers want to work for start ups! I thought start ups were all about letting tech debt pile up like there's no tomorrow, since there might literally be no tomorrow for them.

The truth of the matter is that I've never seen anywhere where this isn't the case to some degree. Long term thinking is rare. I think it's very safe to assume the level of technical rigor in a given undertaking just falls to the minimum required unless there's a very strong force keeping it in a higher state. Maybe places like NASA JPL or Apple manage to float above the minimum because of a really unified and powerf…

> I think it's very safe to assume the level of technical rigor in a given undertaking just falls to the minimum required unless there's a very strong force keeping it in a higher state.

It really depends on who's setting the tone. If it's an owner or manager taking an active interest, I think your observation is true.

> Maybe places like NASA JPL or Apple manage to float above the minimum because of a really unified and powerful culture, but outside of that I'm thinking it's more or less universal. e.g. the 737 MAX debacle illustrates Boeing's stochastic search for the lower bound of technical rigor when it comes to flight control software quality.

IIRC, Boeing has made a years-long effort to cripple their unionized engineering workforce. I don't remember exactly where I read this, but for a long time they had a very effective, rigorous organization, but management (from McDonnell Douglas. IIRC) make a lot of changes that messed it up.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#417

Post by zetsurin »

steelframe wrote: post #143
pram wrote: 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

I'm at the point of my career where it's all about the manager, the hours, the comp, and the kind of work I'll be doing. I no longer care as much about the title or level. In fact if the level is lower, great -- I'll have an even easier time getting high perf scores. These days, when I negotiate for a new job in Big Tech, I first and foremost maximize base pay. That's [1] immediate (no waiting for vest or anything),…

>Oh, you want 18 months of non-compete?

Is this even enforceable? Maybe if your C level, and they pay you while you wait.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#418

Post by whoknew1122 »

Immune wrote: post #393
whoknew1122 wrote: post #245

Current AWS employee. I haven't seen anything remotely like what is described in the OP. It strikes me as hyperbolic and a regurgitation of common posts on Blind. My work life balance is good. My manager is supportive of me and my org takes mental health seriously. We don't hire to fire; in fact we can't hire enough people to keep up with customer demand. Amazon is a huuuuge place with many different orgs. Maybe you…

How do you explain the high turn over rate that can be easily seen using the old fart tool?

I'm not sure that it's fair to ask a random employee (myself) to explain the employee churn for an employer that has over 1 million employees. That being said, it is largely based on the org you're in.

My org (AWS support) has a high churn rate because it's largely seen as a stepping-stone to other places in AWS. People get hired into my org, learn AWS really well, and then go one of a few different places:

- AWS operations (e.g. SOC, NOC) - Service team SDEs - Technical account managers - Solutions architects - Training and certification

Or they simply get enticed to work for someone who uses AWS. I've worked on literally thousands of support cases. I've gotten really good at diagnosing and fixing things on AWS. And as such, I have companies reaching out to me nearly daily with some job or another.

Similarly, for SDEs, working for a FAANG can open lots of doors for you.

The question can be similarly asked: If Amazon is 'lethal' to your career and health as the OP said, why are there so many boomerangs?

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#419

Post by johndubchak »

dnautics wrote: post #332
jjtheblunt wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current Amazon engineer: it's far and away the most incompetently run bureaucracy with self-defeating dysfunctions forced on the huge number of layers. The recent "leaks" to Business Insider, pointed out to me by coworkers, are exactly what we see. Everything the parent comment mentioned is exactly what we see. Laughably, our middle manager berates us as incapable noobs, entirely unaware that some of us at least actu…

well the good news (for amazon) is that I used to work at a place where I was trying to build a cloud. And management suffered from EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEMS (though for different structural reasons, there was no "build a feature" incentive). And then we hired someone who used to work on amazon cloud who came with rave reviews, even though he completely failed my interview, which basically tested "do you read the spe…

I feel for all of you in this thread that work at Amazon and complain of the poor conditions. There are no shortage of stories that point to a very large problem in that company, for certain. However, I believe the underlying theme, if there is one, is incompetent Management and Leadership.

This is systemic in Technology companies because, to me, the “bean counters” try to run the companies like a basic Manufacturing organization of commodities where line items and people are substitutable things and can be dialed and tweaked at the planning stage.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#420

Post by pkaye »

awsthro00945 wrote: post #309
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get this. In this market, if you’re good, why take a job with any on-call work? It’s thankless, shitty work. If you can deliver features, that’s good enough to get paid extremely well at other Amazon-scale companies with dedicated SRE teams. What’s making you stay?

Because changing jobs is really fucking difficult. I'm probably one of the biggest proponents of "quit your job, you deserve better" that you'll ever find, but even I have to admit that finding a new job is ridiculously hard. Even in "this market", even if you're a top engineer, it's still ridiculously hard to even get an interview, let alone get hired. There is only a limited amount of companies that will pay at the…

> not to mention has huge implications if you are relying on your job for something like a work visa.

Isn't it just apply for a new job and as part of the hiring process they handle the paperwork? I know people on work visas that have jumped jobs every two years.

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