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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

#491

Post by [deleted] »

jkingsbery wrote: post #306
peakaboo wrote: post #143

I glanced through the leadership principles and laughed a bit. I feel sorry for the people who think they have to put up with that bullshit. It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as possible, that's the single reason those principles exist. To make specially young and clueless employees forget it's just a job, because hey, it must be an obsession! If you are young, this may seem normal i guess but…

Current Amazon employee here. > It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as possible This has not been my experience. The way I've looked at it as, these are more explicit ground rules for how decisions are made. At most other places I've worked, the mechanisms for making decisions was often quite arbitrary, and boiling down to whatever the most senior person in the room wants. When the Leadership Pr…

[deleted]

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

#492

Post by krallja »

anonporridge wrote: post #400
tech_tuna wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting to me is that a few of the people I know how were AWS "long haulers" are massive assholes. It's almost like the kind of person who makes it there is not the kind of person I want as a colleague.

We call them 'Amholes'.

not Aws-holes?

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

#493

Post by [deleted] »

mikesabbagh wrote: post #467
autokad wrote: post #278

Earlier 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…

why do you want to work for Amazon and Google when there are so many great companies that would appreciate you every day (and pay you more)

[deleted]

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

#494

Post by charcircuit »

dylan604 wrote: post #435
that_guy_iain wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles. For me, leetcode is basically just what is taught at university level. So they're hiring people based on if they know stuff they would learn and forget from university. The thing is, it's not about having free time, it's about being so dedicated to getting the job that you'll spe…

So when it gets to the part of the interview where they ask you if you have questions for them: "When and where has anyone here ever needed to use this code for this job? I want to meet that team". Silence and crickets would be the appropriate response, but you'll receive a word salad avalanche instead.

Why would they? The point of the question is to see your thinking / problem solving process.

It's like asking why you should write a resume when you won't resumes as part of your job. It serves a similar purpose of trying to get to know who you are.

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

#495

Post by _huayra_ »

Dig1t wrote: post #425
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…

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 woul…

> 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.

Anyone who has worked at a big company knows how much terrible legacy cruft runs the world, and it does take an effort to not be jaded during the interview.

I work for a major cloud hosting company and was fighting with the team that owns a resource manager that runs on each node over some "fancy C++11" features I used, and in an interview I had the same day, the doe-eyed new grad candidate asked me:

Candidate: So do you guys have a chance to use C++20 yet for work? I find it pretty neat Me: Well...it's hard to explain C: How about C++17, are you at least on that? Me: ... C: 11? Me: the standard we use is older than you are

The guy eventually joined and at least I have a pal to commiserate with now.

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

#496

Post by bogomipz »

Jemaclus wrote: post #102
netizen-936824 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does PIP stand for? I haven't run into that acronym before

Performance Improvement Plan. On paper, it's a program where management works with you to improve your weak points so you don't get fired. In practice, it's HR protecting the company by documenting reasons to fire you before they fire you. It's rare (not unheard of, but rare) to work your way out of a PIP. In general, if you get put on a PIP, I would immediately start doing some soul-searching as to why I might be on…

Do you know is there a built-in per year PIP percentage at AWS? Does PIP involve a severance payment?

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

#497

Post by quacked »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #411
ljm wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN Law of Analogical Accuracy: for each attempt at an analogy, an attempt at a more accurate yet more abstract analogy exists in a reply.

If it continues long enough, so we eventually reach a point where the original situation is used as the analogy?

Hilarious. "... Okay, but this is more like if instead of on a cruise ship in Borneo, the monkey is a guy at an engineering interview who only has JavaScript on his resume, and the recruiter is making him implement linked lists in C."

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

#498

Post by encryptluks2 »

nostrebored wrote: post #119
encryptluks2 wrote: post #33

I finally started just marking their recruiter emails as spam. I still get a couple a month despite asking them to stop. I interviewed for them a few years back and it was clear then that they are looking for people that are technically smart but total pushovers. If you are the type of person that are susceptible to abusive relationships then you'd fit right in. The sad part is many of their employees prob feel lucky…

This is explicitly the opposite of what the interviews look for. If you are a pushover you will not have the disagree and commit, dive deep, and ownership lp stories you need. I’ve done quite a few interviews for Amazon and the debrief was never ‘this person has strong opinions, not inclined’. If you’re not interested in getting the data to prove or disprove your opinions then that will count against you.

Okay, just because a rat works hard to get out of a maze doesn't mean it knows it is in one. When your interviewer asks to video record you, then proceeds to ask questions while refusing to look at you and pounding away on their laptop keyboard saying they are taking notes. Mind you this goes on for about 4 hours with multiple people that appear to be performing some sort of unethical psychological experiment to see if you're a good fit for their cult.

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

#499

Post by khazhoux »

ryanianian wrote: post #66

> The churn I experienced was significant One thing I don't see mentioned enough is the forced PIP policy. Basically every manager is forced to stack-rank their entire team, and the bottom N percent is put on a PIP. So even if your entire team is comprised of very top-notch engineers you will see forced attrition. It also disincentivizes helping team-members in deep ways and incentivizes back-stabbing politics. Of co…

Counter-point (and I'm a manager):

Every single team I've managed, I've given the lowest performers a huge benefit of the doubt, and a long timeline for improvement. In some cases, it wound up being a PIP->firing. But more often than not, I wind up trying one thing after another with the lowest performers, because I so much want to believe in them. They're always nice people, but they don't deliver. They say "I'm working on X... I'm still working on X... Will have something ready in 2 weeks... I hit a blocker, it'll be another 2 weeks." And I try to help them, unblock them, mentor them, reassign them to some other task that might be better suited. But the harsh reality is that many many people are just not good developers, no matter how much you both want them to be.

So on every team I've ever managed, if I'd been forced to put the lowest performer on a PIP, it would have been good for the whole team. And I think I'm probably not alone in this.

(Of course, this applies only to a limit. At some point, you've eliminated the actual low-performers, and shouldn't ever manufacture a PIP just to meet a numbrs threshold.)

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