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Inside Amazon

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176 pointsdochtman98 comments

I used to work with Tim at Sun, and I think very highly of him; I know that he's only being earnest here.

That said, there's a bunch of hard data that supports many of the assertions in the New York Times article -- to which I will add one from my own experience: Amazon routinely pursues its ex-employees for violating its non-compete.[1] I have already offered my own experience with respect to Amazon in this regard[2], so I won't rehash that here, but I offer this to show that Tim is engaged in bad science: as with busted software, it's not a particularly interesting data point that "Amazon works for me." Amazon routinely engages in acts that I personally find despicable; that some of its employees are comfortable or happy or perplexed that their company could engage in such acts doesn't negate those acts or in any way exonerate the company behind them.

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2014/amazon-sues-employee-taking-goo...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975428

I think Tim just doesn't realize how privileged he his just by the fact of being Tim Bray.

Yeah, I'm totally astounded an internet personality who is well known to have a very loud voice and is financially secure enough not to be easily controllable isn't treated poorly...

He did list the reasons why he might have little idea about the realities of Amazon as he works in a remote office on a niche product. After reading his disclosures, I'd say that yeah, he may not quite realize that he doesn't know what it is like for the mean Amazon employee.

Excuse me… SQS, Route53, Auto Scaling, and Simple Workflow are “niche”?

Excuse me, compared to Hollywood produced multi-media presentations, consumer goods, and literature?

Yeah.

Edit: Someone better throw up a definition of 'niche' that explains the downmods.

> That said, there's a bunch of hard data that supports many of the assertions in the New York Times article

What is the hard data? I only read about half the NYTimes piece, and skimmed the rest, so I very well might have missed it.

> it's not a particularly interesting data point that "Amazon works for me."

Tim described his observations about a large number of co-workers, not just his own situation, and found them roughly in line with industry norms. He acknowledged the limitations of his observations, unlike the Times piece which lavishly illustrated shocking anecdotes in order give the reader the impression some behaviors were widespread. For instance, a reader of the Times piece would be forgiven for thinking that crying at your desk is the norm at Amazon, but I have now heard four Amazon employees say they have never seen that, and one that gestured vaguely like they maybe had.

If you're going to argue this, and especially if you are going to ask that other people provide "hard data", have the courtesy to read the entire article.

This is a silly requirement (and seems equivalent to unfortunate perception that asking for tl;dr summaries is always bad, when in academics they are called "abstracts" and are considered essential). If someone obliquely cites one part of a long reference, it's not unreasonable to ask them to specify which part.

And as you can see from his reply, it would not have been useful to read the article.

What I meant was: "The assertions made by the New York Times piece are corroborated elsewhere." That is, to those who know AWS, it wasn't a terribly surprising article (Tim's shock notwithstanding).

Everyone I know who works in AWS (several engineers, either closely or as acquaintances) say their experience was nothing like what the article described. My evidence is anecdotal, but so is NYT's.

I'm not saying who's right here, but I don't think you can say an assertion is considered corroborated because you can find anecdotes supporting it..

Fair enough.

I think many forget that talking about a particular division or team doesn't reflect on the company as a whole. This applies to both this and NYT article. Tim might be looking at this from his perspective and the people you interacted with might be looking from theirs. While we would like everyone working at a particular company to have consistent, that certainly is not the case. I personally know people from Audible, who have great things to say about Amazon as well as people from e-commerce side, that too non-customer facing ones, describing it as a nightmare.

I worked at Amazon for three years, 2010-2013. My experience was better than most of my coworkers', but I watched a lot of people including some friends go through exactly what is described in the NYTimes article. There's an old team that I'll see about once a year at somebody's house. People tell me that our conversations sound like we all have PTSD from our time there.

I have a friend still at Amazon, on a particular Kindle team. I got him an interview there, and felt a lot of guilt about that for awhile. I've been relieved (and quite surprised) that he's still happy there; the team he describes is quite different from any team I worked on or saw first-hand.

You can find a place in the company that isn't totally insane. But most of the many Amazon folks I keep in contact with are either looking outside for different jobs, or switching teams rapidly to try to find something better.

Just out of curiosity...

It seems to me much of the "mess" in Amazon's culture is on the MWS/eCommerce side of the house + any physical products they sell [e.g. Kindle].

AWS seems to be far more relaxed environment wise.

Would you agree with that?

The reason I ask is the OP is AWS and I've only seen people on the AWS side post rebuttals to the various articles about Amazon's culture.

I think there is something to that.

Product marketing is really hard. I heard about the culture at Proctor and Gamble and it being really hard as well - a lot of burn outs but also a lot of people saying that the challenging culture taught them a lot that was useful later on.

But AWS is a tech place and not really expose to the same type of pressures.

Thanks :)

AWS is for sure different; I would not call it more relaxed. (disclaimer: former AWS employee from 2008 to 2014).

I worked at AWS for a little while and would agree with that. My experience matches up with this article, but while working there I did hear plenty of horror stories, mostly coming from the retail side.

I think people, including Amazon employees, try to put things down to some difference between AWS and retail. With the amount of cross-pollination between those two giant sides of Amazon, I doubt there's any significant macro difference in culture.

I know people who have been dissatisfied on both sides.

I had an offer from Amazon after grad school. There was only one reason I did not accept it: I had heard first person stories from a couple of my friends who were working at Amazon. And it did not make any sense to me to join such a work environment. One of them left Amazon to join Google, and is thriving at Google, which works well for him and his company. While at Amazon, he was constantly cynical, negative and it felt that the work environment was affecting him personally. As a developer, I need to be happy and stress free to provide good quality, thoughtful solutions (I'm sure not everyone is like me, and many would certainly thrive at Amazon). I couldn't see myself doing that at Amazon.

Plenty of anecdotes like this, I'm sure, which is why the article. I also had a friend who interned at Amazon who did not want to go back.

Disclaimer: I have worked at AWS for 6 years, from 2008 to 2014.

I like Tim's attitude here. However, the fact that he's writing about this on his blog is by itself a testament of how privileged his position is. For any other employee, especially if not VP-level but not limited to, blogging about this very hot issue would have meant some serious consequences. Amazon's PR is not exactly that friendly - although, one has to admit, Amazon's PR is also one of the most structured out there.

Which makes m wonder if he was encouraged to write this. Seems like there's a lot of visible damage control being done in the form of these types of blog posts.

"Nobody asked me to write this, nor did I ask anyone’s permission. It’s the weekend and I’m at my cottage."

And I believe him 100%.

Agreed, the piece gives the impression that Amazon employees can just blog about whatever they want. Nothing could be further from the truth. I remember when a Distinguished Engineer (VP level) I worked with had to get PR clearance to be able to speak at re:Invent.

I have a good friend who works there that I talk to frequently. It is most definitely still going on. He has called me many times stating that he is miserable, that the stack-ranking, secret-pact, politics and backstabbing are still alive and well. The Office Space scene where Peter describes that every day you see him is on the worst day of his life has been mentioned.

Why does he work there, then?

Maybe he took a signing bonus and a relocation package and will have financial troubles if he quits too early? Maybe not, but I would see that as a decent reason to stay a bit longer.

Because it takes 5-7 months to realize how much you have screwed up. And by that point you want to stay a year so you don't look like a flake. If you are astute or experienced (or read these articles and realize they are painful truth) then you can bail within the first couple weeks and not even put it on your resume.

Maybe people in that situation can now point to the NYT article to explain why they "flaked" after only a few months and it won't affect their chances of being hired elsewhere.

That sounds nice, but it's not really how it works in the real world. Any recruiters looking at his or her resume won't bother to ask the candidate why they stayed at their job for less than a year, they'll just move on to the next candidate.

I don't know skwirl, maybe he has a wife and kids and he can't financially support a career move?

...in today's tech industry? Unlikely.

I have a friend who interviewed at Amazon and now works for a startup. He told me one of the people interviewing him told him not to take the job as he looked behind his back to make sure nobody was watching. Ouch!

>There’ve been weekends when I haven’t opened my work computer.

That doesn't sound all that great. I feel that if things are managed well employees shouldn't be working on weekends at all (barring a major crisis)

Yeah, that sentence made it hard for me to trust anything in that entire section. If he considers spending some time working on weekends to be so normal that the fact that he occasionally doesn't is notable, then he has an entirely different view from me on what sort of work hours are reasonable.

You are also probably not a senior leader at a major tech company. This guy isn't some random junior developer.

It has little to do with rank. At my employer the more senior guys are just as likely to go home on time - if not more so. They're aware enough to realise they'll burn out if they don't aggressively defend their personal time.

I guess its a question of work culture.

Seriously, he says that as if it's amazing that there are a few weeks out of the year that he doesn't have to work on the weekend.

You never get curious about things you've been working on? Curious enough to want to quickly dig in and see how things are going?

I work on stuff that I find immensely interesting, it's not unusual for me to pick up my work's laptop, jump on and have a look at stuff. Not because I'm expected to or required to (to the contrary co-workers grumble at me when I do), but just because it's enjoyable. Does it come at the expense of anything else? Nope, my family comes first and foremost, the laptop quickly disappears. I've other hobbies that I do over the weekend.

Let's not cherry pick one sentence in a blog and turn it into a epic.

I've been in jobs where I felt I needed to check email, check commit logs, look at proposed patches, etc. etc. on weekends, on holidays, even when I was on vacation.

I hope not to have a job which involves that kind of "curiosity" again.

For anybody else who missed the context, "Kantor and Streitfeld" refers to this NYT story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-w...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243

And my 2c: an acquaintance of mine who was a director at Amazon summarizes their corporate philosophy as "people are disposable". I've never seen any evidence to contradict this.

> There’ve been weekends when I haven’t opened my work computer.

This makes it sound like most weekends he does open his work computer to do work. I imagine this is pretty similar at any of the top tech firms though?

I think it's fairly similar to anyone at a senior leadership level most anywhere. The world doesn't stop turning and problems don't stop occurring just because it's your weekend, and the decisions on how to solve these problems have to end up with someone.

I was wondering the same...

His metric is valid data point.... However I am curious how often his team of direct reports, and their reports, and so on down the chain, work on their laptop on the weekend.

I work at a company where I got in minor strife on my first project for answering emails an hour after leaving work.

This year I took a three week vacation to the far side of the planet. Didn't check email for 3 weeks. Nobody minded.

I tell new employees working with me not to add work email to their phones. If they're at work they can use the machines, out of hours, they're not at work, so why are they checking email?

So something like "sometimes I have a weekend without work email" is frankly foreign to me.

Edit: "anathema" is thesaurus abuse.

That's abnormal for any place I'm aware of. There's something between "zero contact outside work hours" and a sweatshop.

I don't work at Google, Amazon, or on the west coast.

It's normal for parts of Europe (where I am from). You're expected to work during work hours, and your own time is highly respected. It's normal to ignore colleagues who try to reach you for work stuff after work.

I work for Pivotal Labs in NYC. It's abnormally better than anywhere else I've worked.

Zero contact outside work hours is the norm for Pivots; though as an Australian I don't find it to be such an incredible concept.

If that sounds good, drop me a line, we're hiring.

There are countries in Europe where it's actually a serious legal violation to require an employee to even check their work email past set working hours.

I work as an SDEII in marketplace, where I've been nearly two years. I also work in a satellite office (Arizona), so maybe that biases things, but I've never seen the environment that the Times article discusses. I work 40 hour weeks, never work weekends (besides oncall weeks), have had nothing but positive reinforcement from my managers, and get to work on software where my lines of code impact millions of people. I think at a company this big there are bound to be good managers and bad ones, and the Times article only points out the bad.

I'm an SDEI in Seattle (also marketplace), and I have a similar experience to yours. While marketplace does have a reputation as one of the tougher orgs at Amazon, I get the sense that a lot of these horror stories are coming out of retail, where there's always been more pressure, especially from the senior leadership at the company.

Curious... do you get paid for on call week/weekend? Other AMZN'ers free to answer as well.

Are you American? Of course you don't get paid extra!

> I’ve only been here for nine months.

It is a big place and some will have good experiences some will have bad. Of course, I am glad Tim likes it there. Another person I know really likes it there as well.

But I think overall I have heard more bad than good so far. And I don't think the stories from the original article were made up. Or everyone who blogged/written/shared over beers are all Google PR shils. On the other hand I usually hear more good than bad experiences from Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Also as another personal story, I interviewed there and had a laughably terrible experience. You'd think -- "Nah, this has got to be a joke" the whole time. ( You can read it here, sorry if you already saw it in yesterday's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065631 )

I can imagine that high-profile senior employees would be treated better than anonymous grunts farther down the totem pole. Bray gives a nod in this direction in his post ("I have an extremely senior position, which buys me extra privileges but also extra pressure"), but unfortunately doesn't really follow the thought where it logically leads.

Yea. Tim is an alpha geek and will be treated like royalty wherever he goes, at least for the first few years. Borrowing some political terms, he is the 1% and will do well no matter what. Nobody is going to make him cry. After all, as he himself stated, he doesn't really need a job.

Re the Google/Amazon comparison, I've been at one and am at the other now. The article is a little bit overboard, didn't see anyone cry at AWS for instance. But overall the general impression is accurate. There's many ways to compare and contrast between the two. Amazon really cares about the customer to an extent I haven't seen at other places. And Google really cares about their employees. Google prides itself on being deliberate to a fault when it comes to hiring while Amazon is a hiring machine, but both have equally high standards. Both pay well, I would say Google is better than Amazon primarily because they don't try to cap your stock grants to a total comp number, but you're not going to get rich in either place if you join now.

Maybe there's also some reporter bias at play? Maybe people who are generally happy with their job don't feel the need as much to write long blog posts about it?

More generally "sampling bias": available data is generally negative because positive data lacks incentive to be reported. Of all the gigs I've had that I liked, I spent my time thinking about the work being done, not the workplace. Hint to managers: workplace culture is strategy.

>>More generally "sampling bias": available data is generally negative because positive data lacks incentive to be reported.

Yes, but that bias holds true for every company. So if many more negative reviews are coming from Amazon than Google, Facebook, etc. then we can reasonably conclude that Amazon is a worse place to work. (Much worse, from the sounds of it.)

> So if many more negative reviews are coming from Amazon than Google, Facebook, etc. then we can reasonably conclude that Amazon is a worse place to work.

That's not a fair comparison. Google and Facebook are high-margin software companies, which hire mostly software developers (who are generally lavishly compensated and receive more perks and benefits than people in other industries). Amazon is a tiny margin retail company (albeit one that sells things online), which hires thousands of people whose jobs are just to make sure products are in stock/ being delivered on time. These people also need to manage to eek out a tiny profit whenever possible.

He is high level and in the Vancouver office.

Everyone I've known who worked on AWS in Seattle have sounded exactly like the NYTimes article (so no, it isn't just the e-commerce side) and I've never heard any positive feedback.

I think that the experience for a highly desirable technology elite like Tim Bray in the premiere highly profitable AWS group is not representative of the standard employee in less profitable groups.

>So what happened? · I mean, how is it that The Times portrays a hell on earth, a culture that would drive me to quitting in about fifteen minutes?

There's a reason for the disconnect for some of the employees who don't see "hell on earth".

If you do meta-analysis of the mainstream media's coverage of Amazon, a few patterns emerge:

-- The NYT almost always has a negative bias about Amazon. Even before yesterday's article about Amazon being a "bruising workplace", they ran numerous articles about Amazon and book publishers renegotiating their contracts and the stories were always biased towards the publishers.

-- articles from Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review are not as negative. Unfortunately, they have smaller circulation numbers, and their articles are more heavily blocked behind paywalls. Their articles are not as widely accessible and therefore not as easy to share. As far as "dictating the narrative" and "shaping public perception" about Amazon employees, NYT drowns out WSJ & HBR.

-- the readership for NYT (more workers) is different from WSJ & HBR (more managers). Therefore, articles about sweatshop pressure at warehouses and white-collar burnout in the corporate offices will resonate with NYT readers. Even if the senior editors at NYT privately don't favor bashing Amazon repeatedly, one can't blame them for always running the stories because they know what their readers like. In the comments section, NYT readers continue the pile on of scorn. It's the same situation with NYT running negative articles about Marissa Mayer at Yahoo and her "unfair" personal baby daycare, eliminating remote workers, etc.

The negative effects at Amazon mentioned by NYT can be true while simultaneously, employees like Tim Bray don't experience it. However, NYT is not interested in running a story that interviews a bunch of "Tim Brays".

It would be helpful for this entire conversation if we could get a data-driven answer for the question of how the work environment is at Amazon. Someone mentioned them having one of the lowest retention times for developers in the industry. If that's the case, it's damning, no matter how many anecdotes come along defending them. If that's not the case, then a few disgruntled employees with axes to grind shouldn't make a difference as to how we judge them.

Payscale.com puts the average employee tenure at 1 year, which is very low, but comparable to Google (1.1 years). Apple is 2 years, Microsoft is 4 years.

http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full-...

Nobody has access to that data except executives at Amazon.

However, I can say that when I was ready to go (and tried to transfer out of the group) we had lost %70 of the employees in the group. After I left, the group basically dissipated... and the incompetent manager who drove them all off, he got promoted!

How can this possibly be beneficial for this to happen? Surely they will eventually run out of developers to trick.

All these lists of what we have and haven't seen are merely anecdotal. That Tim Bray (and others in the last thread) has not seen it does not mean it never happens.

Conversely, while I have seen people crying and get a superficial 7-day PIP so the boss can rapid-fire someone litigation-free, I know that doesn't mean it happens everywhere. Likely all this has happened at MS/Goog/FB as well.

So is the culture toxicity level here above industry average? I think it is slightly, but it's not a huge deal if you're competent; those who are mediocre performers will be impacted most.

The "frugality" is annoying though. Total comp is comparatively low, we pay our own parking $250/mo (and you still might not have a spot!), no free snacks or even soda, and until last year, we had to steal a monitor from ex-employees just to have a 2nd.

It is a huge deal even if you're competent. No one knows if they will have cancer, and even competent people are impacted by bad policies such as no maternity/paternity leave. This argument that people that don't allow themselves to be exploited or that don't like to work at Amazon are mediocre is intellectually bankrupt.

>but it's not a huge deal if you're competent; those who are mediocre performers will be impacted most.

That's not how it happens in real life. You get a mediocre manager who then gets rid of the competent people. In a toxic environment, no one is safe ever. And that is precisely the goal of the environment.

> we pay our own parking $250/mo

Are you saying you have to pay for the privilege of parking at work? That's insane when Microsoft and the larger Bay Area companies are willing to provide free transportation to employees

Parking is a perk that only some employees take advantage of. The rest take public transit. Why should the employees who choose to drive to work, which is basically the most selfish form of transit, get a bonus, whereas the people who take public transit to work get nothing? Keep in mind amazon isn't located out in the suburbs where land is cheap enough to pave a bunch of it - it is right in seattle.

By that logic, why should the people who don't have a convenient work shuttle route to work "get nothing?"

Expecting employees to pay for parking is like expecting them to cover costs for business-related travel

Because you are expected to make the decisions about where to work that has a realistic commute time. If I need to take a helicopter to get to work, should the company pay for it?

To be fair, Microsoft and the big Silicon Valley companies have suburban campuses. Amazon is in the middle of a big city.

I think the parking allowance is something like $130/month.

I'd still be surprised to pay for parking. I recently interned in Seattle, and the Bellevue Microsoft offices all had employee parking. Google's office in Lake Union was also attached to a parking garage for employees.

I also worked at Amazon, and believe a lot of what was on this NYT article was overly dramatic (not surprising). I never saw anyone cry, so the assertion that everyone cries is false (I just asked dozens of my former colleagues that are still there and they agreed). While it could be tough to work there because it was intense, so what? They get stuff done. They don't need to give free food and provide nap pods, you are too busy driving hundred million dollar businesses with your team of 1. While there were definitely areas that could have benefited from change, there are several anecdotes in this article that are out of context or extreme. Amazon never claimed to be full of frills and benefits, and they push you hard but its in exchange for more responsibility than most people will ever receive and the ability to be around extremely smart and hardworking co-workers.

On another note, how long before the Washington Post (which Bezos invested in) writes a 180 view of the NYT article???

Has it ever occurred to you that you could work somewhere else on a $100million project and get to keep a larger proportion of your contribution?

Tim isn't at HQ, as he mentions. In fact, he's in a pretty remote office (Vancouver) that isn't all that large (though trying to grow).

It's not shocking it may have a different culture.

The culture described is by design one that fits an aggressive growth business model. The simplest way to describe it is that you do your time at Amazon the brand and then you downshift in a higher role at a second tier company. The same, for instance, for NYC police: they work hard to build their professional chops and then they write their ticket anywhere in the country. It is hard on the employees and it takes young blood to do it. In the end, that's the bargain: Amazon imparts a little bit of its brand on your resume and then you have to know how to use it.

this is lame. he's not at HQ

I've read through the comments and unions seem to pop up?

I didn't read the entire story. I didn't read the story--because I didn't want to sign up to read the original. I did go to other sites and got the gist of the accusations.

I know a lot of you seem to despise unions, but wouldn't a strong union stop some of the allegations? I feel it might stop that weaselly anonymous snitch gizmo? And it might stop employees from being picked upon when sick?

I don't have anything against Jeff Bezos, other than I think he has too much money. A good Union, besides protecting employees, would distribute that money he's basically playing with? (I said playing with! That's just my opinion.).

What has Amazon done for me? I got a few gadgets, and one rare book at a good price.

What has Amazon done to irritate me? I don't have retail stores, I can browse through anymore. (That isn't Amazon's fault, but they added to the problem? Yes--I think it's a problem. I used to like going to book stores, and seeing people out. I can't now. They're closed.)

I now have the sound of UPS truck engines imprinted in my brain forever. I guess you could say if Amazon didn't find a way to distribute a package to your doorstep, someone would have eventually? This way of shopping doesn't seem good for the environment? I would love to see commercial trucks banned from residential streets on weekends, or at least put a limit on them?

So, yes I'm all for unions. They helped created the middle class. The union my father belonged to took money from the wealthy and gave my dad a shot at buying a house in a wealthy area, and offered him the opportunity to retire at a relatively young age. And for myself, I've never made any real money from non-union jobs--never. Actually--I don't recall one job I liked that wasen't non-union?

Unions do need members though! They also need political involvement--like strong trade agreements, and politicians who don't feel unions are evil. I still can't figure out why we let corrupt China get away with their underhanded business practices? I'm not picking on China--we have already gone to the next corrupt countries looking for the best/cheapest way to make usually a small number of people very wealthy? And who cares about the environment over there; we can't see what's going on? let's just close our eyes and get our cheap gadgets, and I love getting my food from these conscientious countries? The FDA protects me? (I got off base in this paragraph--sorry. Just venting.)

I have found that a person/corporation will do almost anything to make more money. The people I live amongst didn't become wealthy because they offered a fair shake on their business deals. They became rich be because they were ruthless, and no one got in their way. They stopped believing in anything in "The Book" years ago. (Yea, I said it. I still think the majority of those passages are important for society as a whole.) They are just interested in amassing a fortune. Maybe it's time to give Bezos a little Union lesson?

I don't want to argue with anyone about unions--too tired.

Hold on, the guy holds "an extremely senior position" but has only been there for 9 months? Additionally, he claims to be able to retire tomorrow if he wanted. Something doesn't sound right.

Nope, your spidey senses are way off. He's been at Amazon for about 8 1/2 months. His job level is one which is normally associated with a director level role.

Source: I work at Amazon.

It's almost like he did very well at another company prior to joining Amazon.

He helped create XML:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray

He's sort of a tech celebrity. He has the resume to do that.

You need to look him up and read more. He's not your garden variety hire.

Probably a very experienced senior or principal level position.

Isn't it becoming apparent that the sensational nature of the original article is turning out to be one long click bait?

Click bait is usually referring to an article that is based on falsehoods. Can you demonstrate that anything said the NYT article was false? It's not like the writers of that article said that 2+2=5. They made claims that a bunch of terrible things happened that as far as I can tell, nobody can debunk. Not knowing if its true or not is not the same as it being false.

No click bait is an article which overstates itself in its title.

Amazon's shitty culture was well known long before the NYT published their article.

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