This is a good post about something that doesn't get talked about a lot. NDAs and confidentiality agreements should be able to cover the concerns of loss of intellectual property.
Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
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Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#82I interviewed with AWS for an analyst/business intelligence engineer role. When asked to write a query to get the total GDP by month per country, I wrote a query along the lines of: select date_trunc('month',datecolumn) as month, country, sum(GDP) over (partition by date_trunc('month', datecolumn), country) FROM the_table order by 1 The interviewer asked me if I was missing something. I said no. "Don't you need an ad…
I'm guessing you didn't get to do this interactively? If I interviewed someone and they seemed knew something I didn't and could prove it by actually running the query/code I would be impressed. At the very least the interviewer should have checked your claim after the interview if they were skeptical.
I think it's a real mistake when you don't let candidates write actual code and run it during interviews.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also a thing called unions.
The tech industry has the best horizontal mobility of any other right now. Why do we need the downside of unions when we can just move company and have only the upsides?
I've never been a union member, or worked as a white collar worker at a unionized place, but I'm curious what you think the downside of unions are? I'd personally be quite in favor of the transparency that unions bring to things like pay scales and HR processes. Is it just the dues you don't like?
Edit: the only story I've heard in tech that involved unions was the strike at the Eugen gaming company, and as far as I can tell, they had pretty good reason to strike.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except the vast majority of your equity award, which itself makes up the vast majority of your total compensation at Amazon as an engineer, vests in your third and fourth years. Your first and second years you vest 5% and 15% (reportedly).
Being an intern is a huge bonus here. My wife got a decent equity grant under the terrible 5/15/../.. plan, but also a 20k cash bonus for each of the first two years for being a returning intern. This makes it very attractive to quit after two years, imo
I don't think you need to be a returning intern to get the cash bonus. At least I got one without being an intern
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#85This is worrying on so many levels. How is a person supposed to provide for their family if a non-compete clause prevens them from taking another job that can match the salary ?
Doesnt the employer enforcing non compete have to provide a portion of the salary if the former employee has to work for a reduced salary in different industry?
Also -- shouldn't the suing company have to show what secret sauce the former employee could be taking with them ? And if that secret sauce is that valuable, shouldn't the former employer get a patent on that sauce instead of suing employees.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#86I've also turned down countless Amazon interview offers. In fact, I don't get how I'm still on their recruitment lists after asking several times to be removed. Amazon has arguably the worst culture out of any large tech company, and generally treats its workers like dirt. Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they ha…
Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they have the second highest employee turnover out of all Fortune 500 companies[1]. Do you think any of the tech companies would treat their blue collar workers any better? It just so happens that all of the products produced by Google, Microsoft and Apple that need a lot of blue collar workers are done by contractors in a different country. I bet none of the…
> Do you think any of the tech companies would treat their blue collar workers any better?
Tech typically skirts around this by using contractor/contingent staff.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A discussion about clauses such as this is well needed in general We can have a discussion, but because money is speech, the voices of individuals will be drowned out by the voices of corporations.
The world has far more individuals than hundred billion dollar corporations.
And their ability to voice themselves is related to how much money they have. After all, nearly all forms of mass communication are directly controlled by said corporations.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#88I've also turned down countless Amazon interview offers. In fact, I don't get how I'm still on their recruitment lists after asking several times to be removed. Amazon has arguably the worst culture out of any large tech company, and generally treats its workers like dirt. Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. Given their abysmal warehouse management, it's no surprise they ha…
> Given all my friends that worked for them, almost all have quit within 5 years. 5 years is pretty darn high by tech company standard, as people already mentioned. Partly because of the culture of "you have to jump ship to make more money and promotions", but even the most employee friendly company will barely edge that, just because software engineers have a huge "grass is greener" syndrome.
>just because software engineers have a huge "grass is greener" syndrome
"Grass is greener" is a strange label to use for the ability of even mediocre developers to get $50K+ raises by switching jobs, while the industry as a whole remains myopic about giving comparable pay increases to existing employees.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#89IIRC salaried workers at Amazon get 10 PTO days. This stops me from even applying. I wouldn't ever again consider less than 20, and really need a minumum of 25.
Re: Why I Turned Down an AWS Job Offer
#90Amazon is not the only company to sue over this, Microsoft successfully sued as well[0]. In fact, several large companies have pushed to keep these non-competes in place in Washington State[1]. I don't think it's fair to focus only on Amazon. The reality is that in Washington State, this benefits many large corporations ( while being harmful to employees ) so it is the company's incentive to try and keep the non-comp…
Did Microsoft actually win the Kaifu case, the one Steve ballmer famously threw the chair about? They settled, but the terms didn’t appear to be in much of Microsoft’s benefit.
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