I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by justemre » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #41

kentonv wrote: post #4

Please consider increasing the contrast on your text. As is (light-gray-on-lighter-gray) I cannot read it as it literally hurts my eyes trying to focus on it. EDIT: It seems this is not intentional, some of the stylesheets are returning 404 for me but not other people... weird. EDIT: Amazingly, it turns out this site is hosted on the platform of which I'm the lead engineer (Cloudflare Workers / Pages) and the problem…

A browsing tip: In Firefox, you can right-click on low-contrast text, select 'Inspect (Q)', and a thing will pop up showing all of the attributes of the text. You can uncheck the 'color' styles to restore a good text color, the filter at the top of the list helps find the 'color' entries. For some reason everyone loves grey-on-grey these days, so I find I'm doing this a lot. I've been thinking of writing a Firefox ex…

There is an addon for this actually. Adjust colors for your own pleasure and press F2 (or whatever you want). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...

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

#652

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #494

dylan604 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they are judging your response as pass/fail vs partial credit for showing work, then you're screwed. I'd be doubtful that partial credit is given as showing your critical thinking ability is present.

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

#653

Post by ajkjk » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

doseofreality wrote: post #510

ajkjk wrote: post #90

> 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…

Jira is bad, but SIM is horrendous. SIM makes Jira look good.

tbh it had just rolled out when I left and I was only giving my initial impression. I don't know what it's like to use long-term.

Although I _hate_ Jira so maybe I'm biased also.

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

#654

Post by Jemaclus » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #496

Jemaclus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have no idea. I don't work at Amazon. Typically in the tech industry, departures tend to have severance included, unless it's for something egregious (eg violence), so I would imagine it does include severance. But again, I don't work for Amazon, so no idea. :)

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

#655

Post by morelisp » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #570

mcguire wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few months ago? Wasn't that the case several years ago, or was than MS or one of the other FAANGs?

A few years ago there was a lot of noise about stack ranking at Microsoft, and there was also a lot about people crying at their desks at Amazon several years ago - perhaps you're remembering one of those. I believe the specific "hire to fire" press is pretty recent.

I remember hearing about "hire to fire" at Amazon as far back as 2014, though the claim was that it happened "merely" enough to have a cute name, not that it was endemic.

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

#656

Post by BoorishBears » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #644

BoorishBears wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between this and your other comment: > The point of interviewing is to make judgements. There is no irony. This judgement is: people who assume the worst of others are toxic to work with. Whew. The saving grace here is you're so cavalier about this sort of borderline paranoia and megalomania. It tells me you won't hide it well, and the shrewd candidates will run for the hills.

You seem to be assuming bad intent.... It really is helpful, socially, to assume good intent. It avoids unnecessary arguments (/wars). Additionally, if you spend a little time digging in when you have assumed bad intent, you'll almost always find that the person has good intent, there has just been a misunderstanding, or miscommunication, or they face very different incentives or have a different set of underlying as…

Why do you think I said they'd run from you?

If I caught a whiff of half what you've said here I'd end the on-site early. My industry is too competitive to put up with this sort of childish antics.

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

#657

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #266

aidenn0 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal departments are often fairly conservative. Do you know for a fact that the person you are firing is not a member of a protected class? If they are then they can potentially convince a judge that "fired with no reason" could be code for "fired for being the member of a protected class," at least to the degree that the trial cannot be dismissed. Once you have reached that point, it's almost moot whether or not th…

Also, it's a check against management.

That's also a good point. If the manager for the direct report is racist/sexist/agist/whatever then the CYA becomes even more important for the company.

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

#658

Post by decafninja » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #616

flippinburgers wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had the luck (I guess) to run across a company that is both great to work at and pays well.

If they're great to work at, they don't have to pay top dollar to attract and (more importantly) retain people.

I would argue most* FAANG and similar companies are some of the best companies to work at as a SWE, in addition to paying well.

No company is perfect, not even FAANG. However despite their many warts, I would argue they are still better than working at most other companies outside of the Silicon Valley tech sector where the vast majority of SWEs are employed.

* Of course, there are exceptions. Amazon seems to be particularly notorious.

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

#659

Post by encryptluks2 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #622

encryptluks2 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think virtual interviews are in general a horrible idea. I haven’t interviewed since virtual on sites were introduced.

This wasn't even a virtual interview at the time. They flew me to Seattle for this.

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

#660

Post by trts » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

phgn wrote: post #634

trts wrote: post #285

> In order to be efficient on a macro level, it requires being (very) inefficient at the micro level. This is put succinctly. Seeing Amazon from within was an absolute shock. It is hard to be hyperbolic about the company's technical achievements: Prime, AWS, 2-hour Delivery, Alexa, Prime Video, Amazon Go ... absolutely incredible, world-changing stuff. But the experience of working there felt like the place was on fi…

How would you compare Amazon to working at a startup? Pretty often things are on fire in small startups too, but possibly people feel more responsible for fixing things.

It compares in urgency and chaos but isn't as fun or rewarding.