

Amazon has gone from 26,100 to 37,900 employees in just one year - ck2
http://mashable.com/2011/04/26/amazon-earnings/

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tylerrooney
I love how this article is speculating on what crazy things Amazon _must_ be
building by adding that many people. I'll tell you what they're building:
fulfillment centers and call centers.

About 5 years ago when Amazon had around 15K employees worldwide and they only
had 3K in Seattle and only a few small dev centers around the world. So even
if every single person in Seattle was working on development that still only
accounts for 20% of the workforce.

I can't find up to date numbers on the number of people in each location but
considering there's now 40 FCs worldwide I don't think my math can be that far
off. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Locations>)

If I had to bet, I'd say 2000 of 11000 new employees are either developers,
dev managers, or project managers.

It might also be worth asking when the headcount for Zappos got tacked onto
Amazon.com.

~~~
neuroelectronic
1,900 were hired in Seattle alone. I saw that recently on /r/Seattle.
Considering their orders are reported to be 40% year over year, 15k - 3k IT
staff = 12k x 1.4 ^ 5 is 65k. They only have half that staff total so their
efficiency and scaling improvements in distribution means they have to higher
less people year over year for warehouse staff.

This is all uninformed speculation. The only public number I've seen is 1,900
hired in Seattle over a 3 month period. That means a lot more than 2k were
probably hired for development, which means that Amazon is definitely up to
something.

~~~
tylerrooney
1,900 in Seattle in a 3-month span is a huge number. Knowing that, perhaps
they are spending an insane amount of developer time just interviewing more
developers.

There's also a forward fulfillment center in Bellevue which might count as
Seattle headcount.

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ronnier
I started Amazon in January. It really is a great place to work. Fun projects,
smart people to learn from, at least two talks on interesting subjects a week,
and lots of time to write code. After working here, I wouldn't want to work
anywhere else, I like it that much. The only problem is Seattle. Moving from
Dallas to Seattle has resulted in a lower quality of life, but I can deal with
it.

~~~
luker
What don't you like about Seattle? I was thinking about applying and I am also
in Dallas right now.

~~~
ronnier
Housing: Homes are older, smaller, and much more expensive in Seattle compared
to Dallas area.

Weather: It is rainy and cold most of the time making it very difficult to
take kids out.

Shopping/Food: More choices in Dallas and cheaper.

The Seattle area feels small and slow moving, the exception is the heart of
downtown Seattle.

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aphexairlines
And still hiring here in the Tokyo office :)

~~~
nandemo
Do you work there? I checked the careers site a while ago (and now again that
you mentioned it) but there were no technical positions open in Tokyo.

~~~
aphexairlines
Yes, I'm a developer in the mobile web team and we're one of the groups
currently hiring. I really like this team and the company's infrastructure is
very impressive. You should check us out. Here's the position from our jobs
site: <http://jp-amazon.icims.com/jobs/127264/job> and other positions in
Tokyo: [http://www.amazon.co.jp/Search-Jobs-
version2/b/ref=amb_link_...](http://www.amazon.co.jp/Search-Jobs-
version2/b/ref=amb_link_53536406_3?ie=UTF8&node=52265051&pf_rd_m=AN1VRQENFRJN5&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0GB6TRB705DWFYJSGKFA&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=51552449&pf_rd_i=236032011)

I'm not sure where we've advertised outside of our own site, but I'll ask. It
may be that recruiters are posting for us, and recruiters typically don't
mention the hiring company's name until you call them.

If you send me your resume, though, I can figure out where to route it.

~~~
nandemo
Oh, I was searching over at amazon.com. It does return Tokyo positions but the
results seem different. Thank you.

Please let me know how to contact you.

~~~
aphexairlines
daniel@danielsilva.org

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SemanticFog
Please let them hire some decent people to handle communications to AWS users!

And we won't complain if they also get some engineers with world-class
expertise in network attached storage.

~~~
state_machine
I think you mean some _more_ engineers with world-class expertise in network
storage: the fact that EBS/S3 have worked as well as they have at scale should
indicate they have some already.

Sure, they have failures/slowdowns etc, but they are pioneering the space of
providing massive infrastructure to heterogeneous clients at low cost, and
still manage to keep it working enough that companies entrust their business
to them.

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known
I believe it is due to AWS aka Cloud computing

