431–440 of 525 posts
I feel like I should point out the value in surrounding yourself with people like Oleg here who 1. Have a completely different socioeconomic perspective than someone like myself, and 2. Feel (rightfully) entitled to voice their opinion on anything and everything that the judge to be of enough importance to voice such an opinion. If anyone in the Seattle-area values an engineer who will voice such opinions on ethics a…
Word of advice, never work for Amazon. Out of the FANGs, it is quite easily the sleaziest place to work. As someone who worked there, I can believe OPs side of the story. At this point, most of the people who tolerate working there are indentured Indian H1-B employees because they’re stuck in the Green card queue. Even amongst them, the good ones left for greener pastures a long time ago!
I used to think so myself, and mentioned that to various people including friends and acquaintances who worked for Amazon. All of them told me that they really liked it there and don't know why I had this perception. I haven't met a single person, friend or not, who would validate my view.
I still don't know how prevalent bad working conditions at Amazon are, but the data points I gathered point against the blanket statement you made.
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Unless you don't have sick days or your company cuts PTO in half. In that case, in front of the computer or in bed, that's still working from home. Fuck them for not providing sick days and cutting PTO in half. Fuck them for no raises in half a decade. This is the way one can get more money in the same time from the same company without a raise. The less I work, the more money I make per hour, so my incentive is to w…
This sort of attitude does not help. I'm sorry that you've had bad management experiences, but things don't need to be like this, and part of that is the attitudes of both parties.
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Which team? Before I joined I spoke with a few friends who work there (after reading the NYT article and comments like yours) and got positive feedback. I work here for the past 3 years and so far touch wood nothing even near this. Pretty happy all in all. It’s like people talk about a different company. I’m at AWS, Sr SDE, any teams the above warning is more applicable to? Asking for myself in case I want to switch…
Since you mentioned you want to protest, are you going to join Oleg? Seems like a good starting point.
While people working on visas don’t have as much freedom as people who don’t need sponsorship, I don’t think this problem is present in every company that has lot of immigrants. Part of the problem is Amazon’s culture and I think this problem is trickled top down.
It seems like people at the top management of amazon work hard and there is probably better than linear returns for their extra efforts. But it seems like they push that even on the lower rungs where it seems like it is not justified.
I had an horrible experience with a terrible manager about 10 years ago. We didn't get along at all, and he tried to throw me under the bus for a project that he mismanaged. He basically wrote lies about me on my performance review. I fought it via HR. The HR rep couldn't care less about it, but I kept persisting, and I had my coworkers vouch for me that what our manager said was false. He ended up rescinding the ent…
Have heard many Amazon stories around review being used by managers as a revenge tool. A true incident - a friend of mine and his coworker (same level) didn't get along. Their manager left and this coworker was made the manager since he had longer tenure. My friend received a PIP in 2 months flat and ended up leaving the company rather than put up a fight.
It didn't really work out though. New team was better but my past followed me and I let the whole experience get me down.
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Say what you will about Darth Vader, but he was a pretty effective manager.
The first scene in Return of Jedi is literally Vader telling someone: "I am here to put you back on schedule."
"Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them."
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When your date starts trash-talking their ex, they'll do it to you, too. When a prospective employee trash-talks their former employer, they'll do it to you, too. No hire.
Strongly disagree, and I've got hiring evidence on my side (former subordinates going to work for friends, and said subordinates didn't know of the relationship) after airing some pretty reasonable grievances when I hired then and when they worked with me. Of course, there's a scale. "I don't like their tech decisions"--yeah, that's an eyebrow raise, unless there's some real meat there. But I'm never going to judge s…
It's not just me. You will often talk yourself out of getting hired and many will not pursue a relationship with you if you indulge in it. There is nothing to gain by engaging in it.
The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…
Can you clarify whether the manager's feedback is public info within Amazon?
Also, there's gotta be people at Amazon who knew the author. Did they say anything positive or negative about the experience working with him?