“In meetings and one-on-ones with colleagues, there’s so much uncertainty and lack of clarity from leadership. … It’s an unsettling time to work at Amazon.”
It's been this way since beginning 2022. Tech employees were told to "be grateful to even have a job" during an Amazon-wide All-Hands.
Needless to say, with no real innovative direction, incompetent managers (when there are managers; it's hard to fill positions at Amazon these days), and company culture wreaking havoc (including the ominous "we're monitoring everything you do, across all devices"), Amazon is not a place people desire to work.
Lie, cheat, steal, and swindle your way to the top has finally lost its steam. Even the most despicable in leadership positions are taxed.
How can employees feel good about breaking federal laws, schlepping counterfeit goods, spying on Alexa, Ring, and Blink customers, and bombarding every foreseeable avenue with tasteless, low quality Ads?
At this point it is embarrassing to be associated with Amazon. "Out damned spot! out I say!" Yet the mark remains, poisoning the companies Amazon executives and managers end up, reminding individual contributors of the intense psychological trauma undergone for no good reason.
I'm really struggling. All of the industry is now driven by greed. The transition to agile micromanagement happened when we became a means to an end - making money. Whatever happened to building cool things and making enough money while doing it to stay in business?
> Whatever happened to building cool things and making enough money while doing it to stay in business?
if you're the founder, you can continue this. Unfortunately, it's highly likely that you'd be outcompeted if your domain is not moated with a tech that others cannot replicate by throwing cash. One type of domain that _is_ moated, is game development - because you can't throw cash in and get creativity out.
unfortunately, game industry is one where you make no money (unless you hit a lottery winner).
Yes, I am also embarrassed to say I work in “tech” lately.
It’s just not what it used to be, the new wave of job taking threats and AI harm news, social media privacy and targeting, misinformation is really killing it for me personally.
It’s not that I’m not optimistic about the future, but everything just seems to greed fuelled I hate it.
I saw Google was training a LLM to be able to match and potentially replace Wendy’s assistants…why do that?
> It’s just not what it used to be, the new wave of job taking threats and AI harm news
That’s what happens when crypto bros turn ai experts over night. Their marketing strategy revolves around fud. Sam Altman at some point that tech has created huge income disparity and that needs to change. What he meant to say is that tech workers should earn less, not that others should earn more. And this philosophy reflects in openai’s toxic campaign.
Now, ai is excellent tech and will stick around but there’s no reason openai should. That company should be replaced, or freed, by open source competing products asap.
Tech has undergone a seismic shift over just the past few years while we creaked under covid, accelerating at a quicker pace everyday. Yet our political systems are legacy, defunct and dysfunctional and chronically underprepared to handle the change that is occurring.
I look at my own country (UK), and we still have an antiquated political system, full of grandiose pompous ceremony and old boys clubs, like its still 1806. We elect people like Jacob Rees Mogg to lead us, someone stuck in the 18th century about as out of touch with modern life you can get.
There are no grand minds in the one area where we badly need them most.
A country whose capital is loaded with firms figuring out how to make money trading inside a 100ns window, while everyday people struggle for months to transfer ISA assets from one account to another because the banks involved still use snail mail and cheques behind the scenes.
I find that hard to believe, tech workers just got their biggest pay bump in the last 2-3 years across all levels. If you can make the case for this bump being eliminated by inflation, maybe I'd believe you - you must show evidence of this. Otherwise, no, you're wrong. Definitively, you are absolutely wrong by the qualifier of experience based compensation.
Not at Amazon. Your cash pay was (is) capped at 160K in Seattle and you earned all the remaining in stock. Given that there has been little to no hiring the last 9 months and most people got their initial grant when the stock was at ATH, they are all looking at substantial pay cuts of 30% - 50%.
"The action — which will only go forward if at least 1,000 Seattle-based employees sign up to participate — is the combined effort of two parties: one is an informal group that sprang up in response to the return-to-office mandate, and the other is Amazon Employees for Climate Justice."
I'm not sure how many tech workers are in Seattle, but 1,000 seems like a tall bar to clear.
> an informal group that sprang up in response to the return-to-office mandate, and the other is Amazon Employees for Climate Justice
Ha, they'll never be able to agree on anything. An easy win for Amazon corporate. It's only a matter of time until the climate hardliners will alienate all the work-from-homers and their alliance self destructs. Who needs Pinkerton anymore?
Amazon has (in Seattle) >75k corporate workers. With the (now ending) WFH it’s undetermined how many are actually in the city today, but likely the vast majority still.
It's been this way since beginning 2022. Tech employees were told to "be grateful to even have a job" during an Amazon-wide All-Hands.
Needless to say, with no real innovative direction, incompetent managers (when there are managers; it's hard to fill positions at Amazon these days), and company culture wreaking havoc (including the ominous "we're monitoring everything you do, across all devices"), Amazon is not a place people desire to work.
Lie, cheat, steal, and swindle your way to the top has finally lost its steam. Even the most despicable in leadership positions are taxed.
How can employees feel good about breaking federal laws, schlepping counterfeit goods, spying on Alexa, Ring, and Blink customers, and bombarding every foreseeable avenue with tasteless, low quality Ads?
At this point it is embarrassing to be associated with Amazon. "Out damned spot! out I say!" Yet the mark remains, poisoning the companies Amazon executives and managers end up, reminding individual contributors of the intense psychological trauma undergone for no good reason.