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I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

benadam.me

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Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#451

Post by LordDragonfang »

majormajor wrote: post #291
ghaff wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how impressive their GitHub is. Or another mostly (rightfully so IMO) choice you see here. Set a low bar to hiring but have a probationary period after which you fire a notable percentage.

Yeah probationary period would be great for companies, maybe better for people trying to break into industry (unless they can't fired and can't get their old job back), and not so good for most people already in the industry.

From looking at job postings, there's no shortage of jobs for people already in the industry, and a proportionally much lower number of positions for entry-level. Every company has open positions for seniors, but no one wants to train them up.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#452

Post by dylan604 »

ghaff wrote: post #444
dylan604 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every new hire has a probationary period to it. If you go into a new job thinking you'll make it past 6 months automatically, then that's a big assumption. While it shouldn't be hard to just do your job and get past the probation period, it's hard to know if the company didn't just hire a bunch of people to get past a crunch without an intention of keeping them.

Implicitly. But there's a difference between "wow, you're a bad hire" and "you're not an 80%er."

"Does not meet expectations" is always a cop out, but a great catch-all if aren't an 80%er.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#453

Post by sbierwagen »

darkwater wrote: post #370
ubermonkey wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I thought the horror stories out of MSFT had put an end to stack-ranking forced-PIP evaluations. It seems incredibly counter productive, and leads to things like hire-to-fire that are just indefensible. Having a team where everyone is excelling is a GOOD thing in most orgs, right?

What would be the rationale behind this? In their ideal world, why do they need it?

Every company over a certain size will have stack ranking or something like it. Division leaders and VPs need an available knife to stick in the backs of their rivals. If stack ranking or URA doesn't exist, then they'll use a down quarter to create it, ("With the economy the way it is, we have to do some belt-tightening") then wield it to destroy their enemies.

If all the VPs are cheerful, happy, nice guys, then someone will emerge from the lower ranks to overthrow the weakest member. From there, the bloodbath begins.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#454

Post by cipheredStones »

cwkoss wrote: post #190
MattGaiser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of nearby human beings to be concerned about retention. https://www.essence.com/news/amazon-burning-through-workers/

I read a stat that 1 out of ~154 Americans currently works for amazon.

American workers, not Americans overall - it's still astonishing, but they have a bit less than a million US employees rather than 330M/154 = 2.1M employees.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#455

Post by dpark »

User23 wrote: post #226
dpark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% - second , then 5% each quarter, i think...) They don’t want to fix that. I’m sure they save a ton of money by backloading vesting like that. With their turnover rate, they probably pay out a pretty small portion of their awarded grants. As I understand it (having never worked there), they are also stingy with granting new stock, and consider unvested grants…

> You had an amazing year, but you’re sitting on a bunch of stock already, so take this tiny new grant and fuck off That's true, but it can go the other way too. One person I know got a needs improvement rating and no stock at all, but turned around and did rockstar work the next year. Because AMZN happened to have crashed about 50% in that time, getting the person back to target total compensation for the exceeds ra…

I think treating vesting as the time of compensation is a poor model. The compensation was when the stock was granted. Otherwise why grant vesting stock at all?

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#457

Post by kaashif »

majormajor wrote: post #250
geodel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT field. Very good point. I didn't really think about it much before. It is even difficult for candidates who are in IT field but not in FAANG type companies.

Now imagine if instead of coding exercises we had the interview process from other industries that weighs degree and past experience more heavily in the absence of any other sort of testing. What would it look like to break in then? Completing a BS in your spare time? EDIT: Most ideas I've seen about replacement for live coding - like take home projects or contract-to-hire - are not really any more friendly to people…

I think take-home projects might take the same amount of time as leetcode, when you count studying, but are much less stressful. As long as enough time is given.

This really doesn't fix the problem of breaking into CS, and it's not even practical when there are too many candidates. Leetcode gives a gigantic number of false negatives, but that's a price companies are willing to pay.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#458

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

darkwater wrote: post #370
ubermonkey wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I thought the horror stories out of MSFT had put an end to stack-ranking forced-PIP evaluations. It seems incredibly counter productive, and leads to things like hire-to-fire that are just indefensible. Having a team where everyone is excelling is a GOOD thing in most orgs, right?

What would be the rationale behind this? In their ideal world, why do they need it?

It's intended as a simple forcing function against the strong incentives for managers to say that all their reports are performing well. Companies that don't stack rank still have to solve this problem, and while I'm ultimately opposed to stack ranking, it's probably true that the alternatives are more subjective and error prone.

Re: I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months

#460

Post by coliveira »

autokad wrote: post #278
robby_w_g wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> "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…

> I told google that this style of interviewing is discriminatory, especially towards people with families

But this is exactly the point, to be discriminatory while using a valid excuse for doing so.

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