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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

You could't pay me enough to work in such a sweatshop. It's like Bezos read Karl Marx and figured people are stupid enough to exploit. And yes no matter the pay working people voluntarily as if they were slaves on plantation is still exploitation.

Of course the article might be hyperbole and people venting but I don't doubt there is truth in it.

100 years ago titans such a Carnegie and Rockefeller worked people to death and didn't care as long as they made money. The only difference today might be more money. Sometimes.

Amazon would never hire me anyway no matter my long skill set as I would never put up with such crap.

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I worked at Amazon right out of college - I wouldn't do it again, but there's a reason why Amazon continues to hire a lot of people despite their growing (and already rather notorious) reputation as a workplace.

Amazon is considered one of the big AAA-tier companies, at the same venerated level as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al. Having Amazon on my resume opened so many doors like you won't believe.

I think a lot of people join Amazon knowing the toxic workplace culture out of necessity - our industry doesn't have a fucking clue how to hire people and leans heavily on "signals" like working for specific famous companies.

As long as we continue to not be able to interview people effectively, and instead rely on things like "having worked at Amazon" as a positive hiring signal, the Amazon hiring machine will continue to function.

When a friend relocated to London for a well-paying job to "move data around" at Google, I couldn't help to think how similar it seemed to banking. When I read you post about "paying your dues to be in the club" I think the same thing.

Hey! Just a heads up - you seem to have been shadow banned. I'm not sure why - possibly posting a link to an article about the HN rules?

>>our industry doesn't have a fucking clue how to hire people

The software industry isn't special in this regard. There are many industries where having a Harvard degree, for example, is a very strong "signal" that you're a top-tier individual.

I'm curious what you think about a piece I published a couple days ago on the topic: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alanjohnson/were-hiring-engine...

I'm not a great expert or anything, but it's basically my thoughts on engineering a better interviewing system than we had before.

"I worked at Amazon right out of college "

They count on finding people who want that on their resume and don't care about how awful it is for a couple of years. But once you get beyond that point you realize how terrible it is.

Most jobs "right out of college" are grunt work jobs. My first job out of college was for a big consulting services company. At this time their clients were still all mainframe shops; there was no internet at least not that the general public was aware of, and certainly no web dev jobs yet.

So I worked 60 - 70 hours a week writing COBOL code. It was crap work but the salary was good and having that employer on my resume was worth it.

I knew in less than a year that I wouldn't be there long-term, and their business model actually counted on it.

Amazon is doing nothing new or unusual here.

No matter the pay? That's nuts.

If you're on 200k you can save up and quit with a hell of a comfortable cushion. If you refuse to right size your life to be able to do that, you have nobody else but yourself to blame.

If you're on 20k living paycheck to paycheck, doing so is impossible.

I'm not normally of the persuasion to get all social justice-y, but I feel that there's a massive blind spot around here for the struggles of the poor, because the average user of this site can trivially get a high paying job (even if they choose not to).

Some things, like death, sickness and love, hit the poor and the rich alike. Career trouble is not one of those things.

Is it reassuring that Amazon treats its white-collar office workers just as terribly as their blue-collar warehouse workers? http://gawker.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-are-treated-like-...

No, they don't.

They treat the FC workers horribly on another level. Refusing to install air conditioning in a hot warehouse and just having ambulances outside instead. Having people wait in line 30 minutes coming and going and refusing to pay them for it.

Do you know of any distribution warehouses that have air conditioning?

No, the no-AC thing is old news, from when they were still mostly selling books. Books don't really mind the heat, so Amazon didn't give a shit.

Now that their warehouses have a bunch of other shit in them too, to my knowledge, they all have AC.

I don't think Amazon pays well. I turned down an offer from Amazon recently. It was to work in an area that was nearest and closest to my heart. Unfortunately their offer was 50 to 100k behind other offers.

Amazon does _not_ pay as well as Google/FB/Apple/Twitter/Netflix/LinkedIn/Salesforce/etc.

And at least for Google, their salaries, except for the top tier maybe cannot be considered as 'pays well'

Really? Whenever I see people talking about Google they always say "pays really really well." Care to elaborate why you are saying that?

Evidently they pay well enough to hire the talent they need.

They have 4,500 open positions in Seattle alone.

I don't know. When I made the decision to leave Amazon, my offers at Facebook and Apple were less than what I was making at Amazon. Google was only slightly more.

I encourage you to learn to negotiate better. Just like hen companies go from round A to round B, their share price should jump up. ;)

I followed your interviewing guide. It is very useful.

But seriously, 50 to 100k more? That sounds like a huge differential. That means going from 100k to 150-200k.

amazon pays even their college grads more than 100

This is very true, it's something that I've never done well, and have always been really uncomfortable doing. When being a hiring manager, I always expect the candidate to make significant counter offers, but it's not something that I've ever been able to do effectively on my own behalf.

check out 3 and 4. read all of the links.

http://kelukelu.me/interview/notes.html

hope they help!

>And yes no matter the pay working people voluntarily as if they were slaves on plantation is still exploitation.

I don't follow this. I would certainly put up with a lot for one billion dollars per hour pay. I assume you would too. Would you really not take a job there for one billion dollars per hour? I know it's boring, but I think the simple calculation workers make of tallying salary vs working conditions still applies here.

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