> CRMs, Email Builder, Complex Automations etc,
hmm are Amazon in the CRM space?
I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
421–430 of 706 posts
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#422> I can’t think of a single internal tool at Amazon that is better than a commercial counterpart. I haven't worked at Amazon in 6 years, but when I was last there, these tools were leaps-and-bounds above publicly-available equivalents: * Pipelines (CI/CD tool. Still better than all alternatives IMO, including the AWS offering for some reason) * Igraph (Amazingly good, wipes the floor with Grafana which I have used si…
Yeah, I was pretty surprised to read this complaint, but I would say iGraph is actually the weakest of the bunch. Logging and metrics tools at Amazon leave a lot to be desired. They get the job done, but definitely not best in class.
Incidentally, when I moved to Google after a decade at Amazon, one of the few tools that I missed was iGraph.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles. It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field." I told google that this style of interviewing is discriminatory, especially towards people with families, or other commitments. Never got another call for…
the best part is that when you're done with the on-site you get a survey with a question like "do you think google's making the world a better place?" hah personally I think they do make some pretty cool things here and there but they do have very pretentious vibe all throughout the phase of technology that they own/owned is nearing end soon anyway
> do you think google's making the world a better place?
Silicon Valley, season 1 episode 1: "But most importantly we're making the world a better place. Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility."
Mike Judge is a genius.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
The company who ordered people back to the floor when a hurricane was coming causing their death when the building partially collapsed, has people pissing in bottles to meet insane work quotas, stack ranks employees, flys drones over delivery trucks to surveil drivers to ensure efficiency, repeatedly busts union efforts, might run through literally every available American because the churn at it's distribution cente…
> The company who ordered people back to the floor when a hurricane was coming causing their death when the building partially collapsed Question about this specifically. Was it ever revealed if that order was to get people indoors to a reinforced building that happened to collapse? I remember SMS screenshots of a delivery driver who was killed, and to have sent him on the road would have been a death sentence.
That’s an exceedingly charitable stance to take, because the actual proper thing to do would have been to send people home before the storm hit, and possibly give them the option of sheltering in the warehouse if they needed to (assuming it was actually reinforced).
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#425Hey congrats on making it 10 months! "Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver critical work" Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six weeks because he wasn't immediately delivering on som…
> I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years later). Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first technical interview for my first job out of college. The interviewer laughed at my code, and then…
Just in general this is extremely rude to do as an interviewer. I remember interviewing at Google a few years ago and the interviewer laughed at me when I asked her if they used Kotlin in the mobile app that they were hiring for. Kotlin was pretty standard at the time in most 3rd party apps and nowadays Google never shuts up about it in their dev talks, but back then I guess it was so unlikely that Google itself would be using the language in its own apps that she thought it was funny. It came across as pretty rude in that interview setting, though she probably was not intending to be so.
When I interview people I try really hard not to do stuff like laughing at a serious question or suggestion from a candidate unless they're obviously trying to be funny.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For me, the main reason I don't want to work for FAANG is they have a reputation for long hours I thought working at Google or Facebook was supposed to be a pretty chill "rest and vest" situation, esp at the former (?)
My understanding (at least where Google is concerned) is that it's a jungle situation and there's a lot of team-hopping and connection-making until you find a place to land for awhile. That may be where R&V comes into the picture, maybe some people are able to negotiate a less stressful First Act, and possibly most likely, maybe my understanding is out of date. Remember, with the kinds of education people have at the…
> My understanding (at least where Google is concerned) is that it's a jungle situation and there's a lot of team-hopping and connection-making until you find a place to land for awhile.
I think this is only true if you want to work on something interesting. If you're willing to work in some obscure corner of ad infrastructure or Google Surveys or something and you're not trying to get promoted, you can stick around for a long time at Google and not get much done. At a big organization like Google the pace is pretty slow even if you are trying to get some work accomplished, so that provides cover for those who aren't as effective.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still have to decide who gets the probationary period and who doesn't. To figure that out you still have to do interviews and filter. Probationary periods don't solve anything except it makes it easier to fire people before the end is over.
Firing people is not exactly hard in the USA.
It's perhaps not hard but the expectation if you take a new job is that you won't be randomly fired in a few months because you don't meet some unstated high bar.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, my partner just went through the interview process at both Amazon and Google. The Amazon process was horrendous, with an insulting “good cop/bad cop” series of interviews. It was a relief when they decided not to move forward as the process was enough to know they’d be horrible to work for. The Google process was great, productive, and generated excitement about working for them. In the end they offere…
My personal experience was almost the exact opposite (granted, this was in 2020, and things might have changed since then). Both companies asked leetcode-style questions and behavioral questions. The Amazon interviewers were engaged, excited when talking about their work, and seemed like they were rooting for me to succeed. Google interviewers were condescending and looked like they were unhappy to be part of the int…
I'm pretty confident it's just luck of the draw. At both companies, giving interviews is an expectation for promotion, so many interviewers don't particularly want to be there and some are bad at hiding that fact.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You might as well test a French Cuisine Chef on how well his Chinese cooking is. A way more apt comparison would be evaluating him on his knive sharpening skills.
As someone who has worked in professional kitchens, I can say that any professional chef that isn't comfortable sharpening their own knives isn't there because they love cooking. All of the ones I know take great pride in their knives.
A butcher can sharpen knives very well, but that doesn't mean they'll know how to cook. Same goes for a line cook, while a chef knows how to run a kitchen... sorry for being pedantic, but being good at grinding out Leetcode questions doesn't mean you'll be a good programmer. It'll mean you'll be good at answering Leetcode puzzles.
Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
#430Is AWS terrible to work in as a PM-T? These stories in the comments are pretty somber, but not sure if it’s isolated by role.