
Everyone is quitting - po1nter
https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/everyone-is-quitting
======
stupidcar
Last time there negative press about Amazon's culture, Bezos wrote an email
encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse.

Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-
for...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-
contacting-jeff)

~~~
0xmohit
> Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they
> suffered abuse.

> Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired

Apparently, firing ensures that there is no further "abuse".

~~~
masklinn
The white-collar version of "beatings will continue until morale improves"?

~~~
tympaniplayer
More like "Beheadings will continue until morale improves."

------
whack
Everytime I hear these stories, there are 2 things that go through my mind.

1) I'm never going to work at Amazon

2) If you're judging a company based on the experiences of those who are
dissatisfied, isn't that always going to be heavily biased?

At any large company, there will be many people who are unhappy and
dissatisfied. If you go out looking for stories from such people, and compile
them into a single digest, it's going to make any company look dysfunctional.

Using a glassdoor-esque rating system seems like the best way to judge a
company. And Amazon's rating there is 3.4
([https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.h...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.htm)). Which is nowhere near Google (4.4) or Facebook (4.5), but
it isn't horrible either. It's even slightly above average (3.3) across all
companies in Glassdoor.

Which does kind of make sense... no tech company can churn out great
technology products over many years, if the work-culture is dysfunctional.
Purely for that reason alone, I'm sure Bezos would put a lid on how bad the
work culture at Amazon can possibly get.

All of which is to say... I get the feeling that Amazon is probably an _okay_
place to work. It's not great. It's probably a little below-average for the
tech industry. But it's probably not as dysfunctional as these reviews and
horror stories seem to suggest.

~~~
shados
Amazon is large company. A really large company. Like all large companies,
there are good/great departments and bad ones.

Sometimes, the people part of the bad ones wake up and start bitching, then
you get this.

Google has great reviews, but it has its share of bad departments. It also has
a lot of koolaid drinkers, so the people who work in those just bitch about it
a lot to their friends and it never goes any further than that... Eventually
someone will post a NYT article about it and make Google sounds totally
horrible because of those localized issues, just like Amazon. Or maybe they'll
just keep drinking the koolaid. Who knows!

~~~
Touche
> Amazon is large company. A really large company. Like all large companies,
> there are good/great departments and bad ones.

I don't buy this as an excuse. There are too many stories about Amazon culture
to write them all off as a loud minority. Either Amazon has _more_ bad
departments than other companies or the bad ones are just _worse_. Either way
I don't care, I don't want to work in a toxic environment and am not going to
coin-flip that I get put into one of the good ones.

~~~
shados
from the people I know who work there, yeah, there's a bit more bad ones than
at other places for sure.

Though I blame it more on their slightly looser hiring practices. A lot of
people get hired there that have no business working as engineers on hard
problems anywhere. Then Amazon does what most tech companies seem to have
trouble doing: can them (they should not have hired them in the first place,
but still). Then they write stories about it complaining about how great they
were and were canned.

~~~
Someone1234
> A lot of people get hired there that have no business working as engineers
> on hard problems anywhere. Then Amazon does what most tech companies seem to
> have trouble doing: can them (they should not have hired them in the first
> place, but still).

You're suggesting Amazon struggles not because of bad management (as almost
every story suggests) but because their developers aren't skilled enough?
That's a really strange claim on the face of it.

~~~
shados
More people say Trump would make a great president than people say Amazon is a
bad place to work. Tons of people saying something doesn't make it true.

That said, they totally have bad management. Like the majority of tech
companies minus a couple of shiny ones. What I'm saying is that, aside from
the fact they are a pretty visible target among tech companies with shitty
management, one of their main issues is that they have very lax entry
requirements, so not only people bitch about the real issues, they ALSO bitch
about non-issues because a large segment of their devs suck. Yes.

~~~
20yrs_no_equity
Yeah, when I quit %80 of my team had already quit because our manager was
terrible. They were not bad engineers. He literally was trained to be a prison
guard, and was managing programmers as if they were prisoners.

Silly of you to claim amazon has lax hiring standards.

------
henrik_w
I thought this was pretty funny (from The Onion a year ago):

"Jeff Bezos Assures Amazon Employees That HR Working 100 Hours A Week To
Address Their Complaints"

[http://www.theonion.com/article/jeff-bezos-assures-amazon-
em...](http://www.theonion.com/article/jeff-bezos-assures-amazon-employees-hr-
working-100-51121)

~~~
mk89
> Nothing matters more to me than the well-being of our employees, and our HR
> staff will continue to work their fingers to the bone— not seeing their
> families or friends or anything at all outside their offices [...]

Is their HR outsourced? Because they should also be their employees, right? :D

EDIT: Judging from the down votes, I guess that someone didn't get the
sarcasm. :)

~~~
elbear
That was the joke :)

------
tristor
Just more fodder for my mental reasoning for why Amazon is on my lengthy
blacklist of companies I will never work for. It's kind of amazing to me how
many companies in the tech sector have given up even the vestige of being
about technology and how it benefits people in favor of being some of the most
ruthless and sharky people in the business world.

There was a point in my life where I'd say I'd never again work in government,
finance, or healthcare related companies, and now I actually find I'd rather
do that because management politics is /less cutthroat/ and more reasonable in
those industries than it is in tech. I hope maybe we'll see a real revival in
the tech industry one of these days, but so many of the companies that have
made it big have done it by stomping on the people who actually matter. Tech
these days is all about big egos fueled by big dollars, but the numbers don't
actually matter so things are irrational from the top all the way down.

At least in finance, the numbers are all that matter at the end of the day. At
least in healthcare there's a semblance of care given to the patients. At
least in government there's an understanding if not a fulfillment of the
social contract. In tech all we have are douchebags with big wallets and
bigger egos (Bezos, Ellison, et al) destroying the lives of their employees
(and sometimes their customers) to enrich themselves at the expense of all
others. It's completely pathological.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>in favor of being some of the most ruthless and sharky people in the business
world.

A lot of techies, especially young guys, are hyper-competitive from very early
on. I think a lot of shops have a problem where the cut-throats are a good
part of the staff, then these guys start graying a bit, have kids, etc and
realize they can't keep up but they've already created a cut-throat culture.
So they burn out and move onto a company with better benefits and values.

Its easy to blame CEOs, and obviously they should share the blame here, but a
lot of this culture is grassroots. The most miserable environments I've been
in are CS classes and early career tech work. Holy shit, are the egos huge and
the attitudes bad. Social skills in IT are below average in general in my
experience, so we're talking a lot of serious and dedicated misanthropes with
stereotypical male social aggression, bullying, and intimidation. (gee, women
don't feel comfortable in CS classes, I wonder why?)

The real question is why aren't we teaching the values of work-life balance,
win-win, etc from early on. Is it schooling with its emphasis with grades and
"doing better than the other guy?" By the time it gets to the CEO level, its
already been ingrained in society. My pet theory is that CEO behavior just
reflects the rest of us. If it didn't they'd be kicked out of by the board or
an employee uprising. A lot of people love Bezos and his heavy-handed ways, in
fact, they think this is why Amazon products provide such a good value.

As we move towards automation and post-scarcity these questions are going to
become important. It may be the case that today's batch of CEO bad guys are
the last generation as GMI and other concepts become political realities to
handle later stage capitalism, economic drive-downs, loss of jobs via
automation, and lower costs of living.

~~~
afarrell
> schooling with its evidence on "doing better than the other guy"...

Is this culture common at many tech-focused universities? It certainly wasn't
at MIT 5 years ago.

~~~
davewritescode
Yes, I can't speak for MIT but where I went to school your grades basically
dictated where you ended up placed in internships.

Grading on a curve also fosters competition by its very nature. Doing well on
a test doesn't mean mastering the material, it means beating 90% of the class
to ride the curve to an A.

~~~
afarrell
Yea grades as a zero sum game really decreases collaboration.

------
Kurtz79
PSA: In case you need more context, just go to the parent url:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home)

Which from my understanding is a collection of anonymous rants from Amazon
employees, and the posted link is just an example.

As someone already posted, it would be interesting to hear if someone in HN
can provide some counterexample, or if the rants are spot on.

~~~
cm3
Let's assume the rants are true for the most part. How is it possible that so
many people work for Amazon despite the antics, especially in Seattle where it
should be possible to get a similar job elsewhere. Are there benefits people
work towards while coping with the toxic workplace?

~~~
InclinedPlane
The median tenure is 1 year at Amazon. Lots of people cycle through there.
Though plenty of people stay for a while. They pay alright and it's not too
difficult to get hired.

Also, when I was working there I had a difficult time reconciling myself to
how bad it was to work there. On paper it doesn't seem so bad. You get to work
on pretty interesting stuff sometimes, you make good money, typically you only
have to work 40 hour work weeks, etc. I convinced myself to walk away from a
good chunk of money just in bonuses to get out of there, some people might be
able to stick it out longer or find the money harder to leave behind.

The problem is that having such a huge portion of the economy being involved
in knowledge work is a relatively new thing, and we don't understand the
differences between knowledge work and physical work. And especially we don't
have thoroughly established standards on what constitute good and bad
conditions for knowledge work. We tend to think that sitting in a chair for 8
hours a day is "easy", but it very much is not. A stressful working
environment for a knowledge worker is just as bad if not worse than a physical
stressful job working extended hours. I only spent a year at Amazon, and most
of the time I probably didn't even put in full 40 hour weeks, but I hated it
there. In comparison I view the time I spent years ago doing data entry at
sometimes up to 70 or 80 hours a week during peak times as comparatively
inconsequential. Depending on the team you're on and so forth, working at
Amazon can be a painful and stressful experience.

Take being on call for example. In theory this isn't so bad, it's good to give
devs exposure to how the ops side of things works, and it's in theory good to
give them ownership of their own mistakes so that they have incentive to write
good code. The problem is, you're not in charge. You're never going to get
permission to dump the resources into making everything run well, ever. Most
teams have other priorities and they don't have enough resources to spare to
allow you to properly fix the code you're responsible for. Worse, it's not
even your code, it's code that was written by someone else years ago who also
left years ago. And the next person is just going to get whatever mess you
leave behind when you leave. So in the average case you can't actually work to
improve things, so being on call is going to always be an extra pain, and a
significant intrusion into your theoretically off-work life. Worse, it'll push
you behind on all the other stuff you need to deliver.

Meanwhile, you have all the typical office BS of politics, ranking, bad
corporate culture, reorgs, etc. that you have to deal with day to day. Some
people manage to find good teams in that mess, and others manage to just turn
off whatever makes people care about work and just suffer through it for the
paycheck. But for a lot of people, more so the more you care, it'll be a
stressful nightmare. And the easiest way to avoid dealing with all those
problems is to just leave, which lots of people do.

~~~
smcl
"it's not too difficult to get hired" \- is this right? I've had friends go
through 3-4 (I think five, for one) rounds of interviews.

~~~
rebeccaskinner
I interviewed there several years ago and although the interview process was
long (several phone interviews and then a full day on-sight) it never really
felt like a hard interview process. Of course after I interviewed there I
heard nothing from them for 2 months, assumed they weren't interested, then
they gave me a written offer out of the blue for a completely different job
that had nothing to do with what I'd interviewed for and wasn't really aligned
with my skills or interests, so I have no idea what kind of bizzaro twilight
zone interview process I might have fallen into.

------
lhnz
Almost everything I've heard about employment at Amazon has been negative.

Now obviously, I can't say whether that's fair to the company, however it must
be costing them a lot of money. I bet there are a lot of people that have
heard the din of politics and would never consider working there.

Are there any HN readers that are currently working at Amazon and that are
happy?

~~~
ajkjk
I worked there as an SDE for ~3 years, until recently (in Seattle, in a core
business area) and liked it a lot.. As far as I could tell, most of the people
in my organization were very content with their jobs. We've of course talked
about the negative reputation about the work environment. It seems like those
conditions must exist _somewhere_ , to hear this much about it, but they must
be in other parts of the company since they're totally unlike what I've seen.

That or it existed until several years ago and the rumors have a time delay in
coming out.

~~~
losteverything
Other face posts mention a structure of hiring bonus (getting less after 2
years) and some 4 year reason to stay. Can you elaborate?

~~~
temp_8675309
An example of salary from one wholly-owned Amazon subsidiary: Base salary 78k.
First Year signing bonus: 30k, 10 RSUs vest after first year Second Year
signing bonus 25k, 30 RSUs vest after second year Third year & Fourth year, 40
RSUs vest after every 6 months of employment

This was directly from an entry level offer and it is general practice to get
a salary increase at annual reviews and more RSUs for after your fourth.

Like many RSUs, if you leave before your RSUs vest, you forfeit them. This is
pretty much your 4 year incentive to stay.

EDIT: Clarifying RSU forfeiture

~~~
vthallam
So when the first and second year RSU's mature and you quit, you can still
sell the 20 RSU's though right?

------
rdtsc
I got a glimpse of the craziness just interviewing there. I enjoy telling that
story (sorry mentioned it many times here in the past).

* They missed first phone call.

* Then on interview day my future manager was not there. Heck, I suspect they didn't even know I was supposed to come in (yes, I did check my email 3 times that morning to make sure I wasn't crazy).

* People I talked to expected to be told about the stupid leadership principles. I talked more about those than actual cool stuff I did with distributed systems. One would think Amazon would care about distributed systems, but I guess not...

* Forgot about me during lunch. I was just left in a room by myself for an hour. After some point I started to walk around aimlessly hoping someone would ask if I am supposed to be there (I even had a funny comeback line ready)

* After promising to get back to me in 2 days, got back in 3 weeks.

* Didn't get the offer. Feels like dodged a bullet.

Take it as an anecdote, a fluke, but I see it as pointing to a systemic issue.
I can see some problems, but it was just too many in row. From various people,
at various points in time.

~~~
tronje
So what would the funny comeback line have been?

~~~
rdtsc
"I am here to steal your CA private key" ;-)

Then probably ask them how they like their job or such.

------
aworker
Worked at amazon for 4 years in late 90s and early 2000s. I think there are
two distinct employment experiences: If the company (that is, your team and
hierarchy) found you promising, the rewards were usually good, at that time
that meant incentive stock options. More importantly, you were given
significant managerial responsibility and opportunity to drive strategic
initiatives. If you fell into this group, you could be reasonably well off in
in 4-5 years, and wealthy in 10. Your job, while demanding, was generally
fulfilling. For those that didn't fall into this group (by my guess about 80%
didn't make the cut,) life was more brutish. Significant stress, poor rewards,
and no possibility of advancement. The company didn't really care if you
stayed or not, and actively managed you for maximum output. My guess was it
usually took about a year for management to make decision as to which group
you fell in. So my advice, join Amazon if you feel you can really be good
(both technically, as well as in your ability to manage the politics of a
large organization) The politics itself was not anymore than you would find in
any org that size. One just had to make a point to understand and work the
system.

~~~
ryandrake
So, basically like every other medium- and large-sized company. Get into the
small, privileged "in" crowd and you're smooth sailing, up the hierarchy and
up the pay scale. Otherwise, get on the treadmill--you're going to have as
much value as possible burnt out of you until you quit or get replaced with
another "resource".

------
hifumi
The reason I refuse to work for Amazon is because they claim ownership of
every side project you make on your own time, with your own equipment, just
because you are employed there.

~~~
dhimes
Is that enforceable though?

~~~
quantumhobbit
Doesn't matter what the courts say if the mere threat of a lawsuit can scare
off investors in a future startup.

------
wukerplank
I constantly read how badly the pickers in the (European) dispatch centers get
treated. They can get away with it because those are low wage jobs and the
workers easy to replace. It becomes more evident that this is a fundamental
issue in the company's culture.

------
harryh
I wish more of these stories had some indication of what department the author
was from. I have a bit of a suspicion that the closer you get to the retail
operation the worse it gets (and of course doing fulfillment in a warehouse is
the belly of the beast). Part of it is certainly Amazon culture but part of it
is surely that retail businesses are a grind. Margins are slim and there is
constant pressure to gain every possible efficiency even at the cost of human
pain.

------
fatdog
What are the attributes of a crappy manager? A lot of people say what they
hate, but there is a theme I have seen in tech.

When you think of these managers, you need to ask, who are they? Where are
they from? How did they get the job? What did they do before (large/small
org)? What is their social background? What is their style?

At the root, I suspect it's shitty leadership at the top. The Valley execs I
have met, let's just say they are not the sort of guys you would willingly go
into battle for. Tech lacks a real officer class that commands respect.

I have also yet to see a non-white person quit over company culture issues.
Thar be some elephants in thar rooms.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The fundamental difference between good and bad managers is usually how they
deal with "shit". Bad managers are shit funnels, good managers are shit
umbrellas.

~~~
arielweisberg
I think there is more to it then that. All my managers have been shit
umbrellas, but still some of them were not worth the investment of my time.

Once my management was split over several people and that was an issue as well
as one could set incentives and then the other would obstruct because they
didn't share the incentives and didn't care about the outcome. Not having
shared incentives and outcomes has been the most common problem across my
entire career.

Managers can set up goals and incentives and then change them at the last
minute without telling you and claim you failed. Not maliciously in my case,
but the effect is the same.

I'm sure the ways in which a manager can be bad is quite diverse.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Certainly there's more, the shit umbrella/funnel factor is just the first
order approximation of goodness.

------
wccrawford
This makes me wonder what would happen if you took a job there and just
refused to do the sucking up? What if you just competently did what they asked
and didn't worry about getting fired for bullshit reasons?

With that kind of turnover, it occurs me to that you very well could survive
without doing all the soul-sucking bullshit because the managers simply
couldn't afford to lose _more_ workers.

I'm not the one to try it, though, as I've no interest in working in those
high-stress situations in the first place. I'm fine with making a little less
and having a personal life outside of work.

~~~
imaffett
You can cruise and do nothing. I worked at Intel for 3.5 years and watched
"old white guys" collect $200k+ in pay/bonus/stock and do about 1 month of
real work.

But it is soul sucking...if you piss the wrong people off they will do their
best to get rid of you and promote their lackeys. It really is welfare for the
middle class.

~~~
fdsaaf
> old white guys

Why did you inject race into the conversation for no reason? I've seen
layabouts of every description

~~~
imaffett
Because thats what i was exposed to. Im a 34 year old white guy and have no
problem saying it felt like welfare for "middle" class. the bonus and stock
handouts were absurd. Yes Intel has different races/gender (the diversity push
is a joke), but on the software side it was dominated by one demographic.

~~~
fdsaaf
Please stop. Invoking race was completely unnecessary for making your point.
If you really meant class, you should have said so. I know middle class people
of all backgrounds.

~~~
Blackthorn
You asked and he answered. You don't get to complain about his answer when you
explicitly asked for it.

------
musha68k
Don't work for Amazon, don't buy from Amazon if you can.

I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently, it's
surprisingly easy. I do my research online (often times via AMZN tbh) and pick
up the books on my way from/to the office.

~~~
vijayr
Almost every big company [1] does something or the other that is so bad
ethically (and sometimes legally too) that if we decided to boycott, we'd end
up boycotting them all - and this is assuming people are even willing to,
which most people aren't (convenience and product price trumps everything else
to most). I just wish there is a way to protest and protest strongly enough
for them to change their behavior. There have been some good attempts [2].
What else can a normal person do to protest?

[1] Some examples here -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_big_industry_secret_that_isnt_supposed_to/)

[2]
[https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse](https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse)

~~~
gdulli
You can find positive and negative anecdotes about any company, but with
Amazon it's a qualitatively different situation. It's a long-term ongoing
pattern of unethical behavior, a cacophony of negative feedback that outweighs
the positive. The way they treat their blue-collar employees, white-collar,
business partners, sellers, etc. (All parties except the buyers.)

I've stopped buying from them but I'm realistic, very few people will care
enough to do so, not enough to affect their bottom line. I do it because it
supporting them would feel wrong to me. Not because I expect I can make them
change.

~~~
vijayr
I don't shop at a few places (Walmart etc), can add Amazon to that list. Will
it make any difference though? You and I are probably in the _rounding error_
minority, unlikely to move the needle. We can feel good about our choices
though, I don't see any other positive result.

~~~
gdulli
Whether it makes a difference or not, I'd rather feel good about my choices
than feel bad.

With its current practices, it's only a matter of time before Amazon has a
recruitment problem that it can't fix.

~~~
vijayr
_it 's only a matter of time before Amazon has a recruitment problem that it
can't fix._

That is to be seen. There are lots of horrible employers who are still around
(EA for example). Supply of workers is much greater than demand (even software
industry is not immune to it as more and more youngsters enter the profession)

------
anacleto
>Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it becomes
a great company for its really hard working employees as well.

Hat off.

------
johan_larson
What do their turnover numbers actually looks like? Chances are they get a lot
of management attention.

IIRC, 15% per year is pretty standard in the software industry. I think
Google's figure was something like 5% when I was there.

------
mcguire
Personal favorite:

[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-
and-...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-
bathrooms)

Don't often hear about health and safety in this business.

~~~
artursapek
It sounds like there is some serious passive aggression (or even just
aggression) going on over there.

------
skc
Everything I've ever read about working at Amazon has been terrible.

Despite this, from the outside at least they still seem to execute flawlessly
and are still adored by geeks who don't work there.

------
strooper
I wonder how they are managing and keeping up with excellent products without
right management behind the scene?

~~~
Spooky23
IMO, it's a part of the API driven culture.

If the API is the glue that ties business units together, you don't need as
many knowledgable employees who understand the guts of the company -- the
company itself is self-documenting.

~~~
berntb
Interesting thought.

If you're guessing correctly, this will probably be the future of the
development business.

~~~
fdsaaf
It's terrifying that Amazon is doing so well despite treating their employees
terribly. Behold, the future of software development!

Are we sure we want to keep inflating supply with all this "everyone should
code" nonsense?

------
option_greek
No wonder they are on constant recruitment overdrive. Calls from consultants
recruiting for them have become worse than from banks offering credit cards.

~~~
madaxe_again
It's visible from the outside too. We've worked with Amazon for years, around
AWS, MWS, login and pay, etc., and it's a shambles. Nobody seems to stay more
than ten weeks or so, points of contacts are always changing and one gets the
feeling they're all bluffing because it's their first day - I don't know how
they actually get anything done. They must have a core of people _somewhere_
who aren't rotating rapidly, I suppose?

~~~
brianwawok
So even if only 25% of your frontline staff leave in a year... that is still a
lot of time the higher guys that stick around need to spend teaching the new
staff. If you couple with 25% of frontline staff left + need 25% new staff due
to growth, you are in for a rough ride.

------
pionar
I've learned that there are only two things managers are responsible for -
getting the performance and achieving the goals the company has set for them,
and keeping their people. If you achieve goals but don't keep your people,
you've lost.

------
mirekrusin
Am I the only one who thinks that at least some of those reports may be
complete bullshit? I've red couple and to be honest they don't go into details
on what actually happened, like this one
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/assaulted...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/assaulted-
at-amazon)

Why was he assaulted? Just randomly, without a reason 40yo guy came to him one
day and assaulted him?

How was he assaulted? Did the guy came with kitchen knife and said he's going
to cut his fingers or something? Or he thrown a paper ball in his direction?

~~~
trentmb
> Lesson learned... if you're ever assaulted or harassed at Amazon (and most
> _females_ will be, eventually, in one form or another)

Different kind of assault.

------
patmcguire
Another one on the site:
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-
and-...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/osha-and-
bathrooms)

This is not the only tech company I've heard this about, and it's been a
problem everywhere I've been. I'm not especially opposed to open offices, but
if companies are _routinely_ cramming more people on a floor than the
designers of the building ever imagined, it might be time to reconsider a few
things.

~~~
shostack
At a certain point I wonder if OSHA complaints or calls to the local fire
department would help at all.

~~~
patmcguire
They do fix it when there's a complaint, because they have to.

------
20yrs_no_equity
Amazon was terribly run a decade ago, in 2006. At the time my manager had
training to be a prison guard- that was his intended career. He didn't know
how to run a spreadsheet well, and he was managing programmers. His boss was
an ex-DMV employee, literally, and had carried the same sort of passive
hostility over.

Amazon is a retailer that thinks it is a tech company and so its management is
the kind of management you want at Walmart to keep the "associates" from
pilfering the goods.

At least in 2006 it was that way.

I think the really interesting thing is, how can a company that is so
notoriously terrible still be able to hire as many employees as they want? How
is it that so many young (eg: 19-24 year old) engineers think that getting
Amazon on their resume (or Facebook, Google, etc.) is somehow a big feather?
Are further employees really that impressed by the name of the companies on
the resume?

When I was that age I certainly did think that a big name meant something but
after I got to the other side- where I'm interviewing people- I realized that
it's a huge mistake to try and judge whether you should hire someone with
these kinds of correlations (including college and GPA).

Amazon was the most terrible work experience of my career. I strongly urge
everyone I meet who is considering them to avoid them.

~~~
andrest
> getting Amazon on their resume (or Facebook, Google, etc.) is somehow a big
> feather?

Because it is. Everybody knows these companies get to skim the cream and they
vet their candidates thoroughly. As a start-up with no HR and poor hiring
processes it, more often than should, gets the interview/job.

~~~
20yrs_no_equity
I don't know why so many people believe it, and I know for a fact that
"Everybody knows" is false. Amazon does not skim the cream and they do not vet
their candidates thoroughly. I don't know where these ideas come from, though
I would guess marketing done by the companies themselves. Amazon engineers are
lower than average. I'd say "the cream" is the top %10 of engineers I've
worked with. (I'd put myself at %80). The average Amazon engineer is %40.
Engineering managers are %20. I think the average Google engineer is maybe
%60. Apple %80-%90. Facebook I have less visibility into but the impression
from their attempts to recruit me is that they are probably getting pretty
average engineers.

Note that I would work for Apple and I will not work for google, because
google is not high enough quality to meet my standards. (And I personally saw
Mark Zuckerberg say "never hire anyone over 30 years old.. they just don't get
it" at a YC Startup School in 2007 or 2008, so I'm of the impression they
probably are close to as bad as google at being able to tell who is good and
who is not.

Being able to hire good engineers is not an easy task, because you have to be
an excellent engineer to be able to tell who is good and who isn't.

I have the distinct impression that people in their 20s do not realize that
these companies names on their resumes are only feathers when presented to
lower quality hiring departments.

If you want to work with the best of the best, you're not going to rely on the
fallacy of correlation.

~~~
discodave
Firstly, you cite no actual data about who is "the cream" vs not.

Secondly, you have no data to back up this claim:

> (I'd put myself at %80). The average Amazon engineer is %40.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

------
amelius
I think we should limit the size of companies (in terms of number of people).

Because capitalism is great for competition, until a company has grown so big
that there is no choice left. Both for the consumer and the employee.

Also, big companies usually have an internalized economy, which limits its
usefulness for the outside world.

Basically, keeping companies small would increase the modularity of the
economy.

~~~
sevenless
The number of employees in a company doesn't necessarily limit its monopoly
power or ability to collude, though.

If you tried this, you'd just get companies avoiding the law by working with
subsidiaries or contractors, a bit like they do already for different reasons.

~~~
amelius
Certainly true, but this can be considered a (secondary) side-effect. Law
could prohibit this behavior, but can of course never eradicate it.

As for your point about monopoly: I don't think it will be very easy to
maintain a monopoly if the number of people you employ is limited (because
other companies could easily equal that number of employees).

~~~
thecolorblue
Their advantage is not the number of people they employ, but the customers
they have and the patents/applications/property/reputation they own.

------
dotemacs
Interesting to see Amazon people writing these complaints on Google's
services.

Also, what effect will this have on people using Amazon? Should we try to use
Google cloud offering instead of AWS?

I guess with any service that offered super cheap costs, there was a place
where something had to give...

~~~
RandomOpinion
>Interesting to see Amazon people writing these complaints on Google's
services.

If they used Amazon's own services, IP and other logs would be available to
Amazon's internal investigators without so much as a subpoena.

The old Mini-Microsoft blog was on a Google service as well.

------
kevindeasis
Does Amazon offer relocation and tn visa sponsorship? There isn't a lot of
great opportunities from where I'm from (western canada).

Wouldn't they look good as my first job in my resume for a person who recently
graduated that never had a software job?

~~~
ajkjk
Yes, they do. (Well - I'm not sure about TN Visas specifically, but I was
aware of their sponsoring plenty of visas).

It was my first software job and as far as I can tell it's an amazing thing to
have on my resume.

~~~
kevindeasis
How was your experience there?

~~~
ajkjk
Generally very positive. I posted about it elsewhere in this thread.

------
ohstopitu
everyone's quitting... but Amazon's hiring does not seem to be picking up
slack (unless they just increase the workload on current employees).

I mean, if a lot of people were quitting, recruiters would be trying their
best to replace them. While I have seen a lot of open positions on
amazon.jobs, they have been open for months (some even for a year) and are
still accepting resumes (they seem to be taking their time replacing people if
at all).

and in all honesty, I'd still want to work there if I can get a chance (so if
Amazon employees / recruiters are hiring in Canada, please email me).

~~~
Practicality
I've been getting a strange number of recruiters contacting me from Amazon
recently, when I am not looking for a job.

I mean, there are always recruiters, but the Amazon ones are always like
"You've got 1month+ experience, you get a job!"

I was always put off by how entry level they sound.

~~~
ohstopitu
I have had a couple of amazon recruiters contact me (I applied via their
website), and both appeared to be confused (I wanted a position in
Toronto/Vancouver) which they assured me was what I was selected for (to go
through the interview process). However after the first online test, they
changed it to a Seattle-based position and made me do the test again.

As for the entry level jobs, it's weird because I applied to both SDEI (0 - 3
yrs of exp) and SDEII (1 - 3 yrs of exp) - and they rejected me for SDEI
(which I'm more qualified for) while I was "under consideration" for SDEII.

------
chris_wot
If Amazon try this in NSW, Australia then they want to watch out. If they get
a complaint about bullying and it's not dealt with, directors can go to
prison.

~~~
brianwawok
Non-IT staff will be robots eventually. I think this post is about IT.. if not
this entire thread is out of context ;)

~~~
chris_wot
It applies to IT and non-IT staff alike.

------
user5994461
A Google site criticizing Amazon...

Am I the only one seeing the irony?

------
johnnyfaehell
Amazon's treatment of non IT staff is well known to be bad. It's CEO said they
have no intentions on improving to reduce employee turnover.

------
TomMasz
I was recently recruited by Amazon's video division but I had to decline due
to personal issues. Looks like I dodged a bullet.

------
muninn_
Sometimes you get a bad manager or you get into a bad situation. Sometimes you
don't. Without the details on why this person actually was fired, we're just
speculating and adding more to rumors.

~~~
kelvin0
"You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all
the time..."

------
nartz
The bad grammar makes it hard to take this post seriously (my something-is-off
spam-detector goes off I guess, trained from years of sifting through
fradulent emails).

~~~
callumlocke
What bad grammar?

