Comment by manyxcxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manyxcxi | Hacker News Reader

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Having spent a number of years in Seattle working with ex employees, having friends that work there, and even having a very cool project with Amazon that I'll probably never be able to talk about- I can tell you it is 100% about the team or group you are in that determines whether you live one of these horror stories or not. I have no doubt about the accuracy of anyone's story when they're saying how screwed over they got by Amazon, but I'm also not surprised when I hear someone say they love it.

There seems to be hot-spot groups that seem to originate a majority of the complaints, and they're not the tech teams we think about first when we're on HN reading these stories- a lot of the horrors happen on the 'non-tech' side.

With all that, I'd still never work there. It's generally a very tough place to work and I've heard of all kinds of funny ways those big bonuses have a way of disappearing/shrinking. As I tell the recruiters every two weeks when they inevitably call or email- I appreciate the tools they've built for me to run my company, I'm a Prime subscriber, and Alexa basically runs my house, but I want nothing to do with stepping foot in that campus as an employee.

I interviewed there a year or so ago. One of the guys in the 90000000 different in person interview sessions was extremely frank with me. He saw that I enjoyed working on open-source projects in my free time, and felt that there were some relevant Amazon policies (which I won't get in to) the he wished he had known about before he went to work there.

Anyway, this guy was frank enough with me about that stuff, that I actually believe him when he said that all those bad articles about amazon's culture (which had just come out weeks prior at that point) were probably accurate for some parts of the company, but he had never encountered it.

I didn't end up getting an offer from them ( I wouldn't have hired me based on the tech interviews either. Every single applied programming problem was some form a tree traversal, which I don't use regularly anymore) and was a little relieved that I wouldn't end up working there.

I don't know Amazon's policy, but many companies have you sign something when you start saying that they own anything and everything you work on, even if it's in your free time. Most of these companies also will provide you forms you can fill out explaining the projects you work on (or own) that will give you control/ownership of it rather than the company. I've filled out the same paperwork for all 4 companies I've worked at during my career.

If you have something new you want to work on, you normally need to contact your company's legal or HR team and get signoff that you are allowed to work on it (and that you can maintain ownership of it).

It's disturbing that this is considered normal. I would never work for a company that required this of me.

I first signed one of these in 2004. Most medium-large sized tech companies in the US will require you to sign this if you want to work for them.

https://www.quora.com/Can-a-company-claim-ownership-of-a-per...

I work for a medium-large sized engineering company based out of the midwest. I was not asked to sign such a document.

I personally liked working at Amazon, and think most of the horror stories are from bad teams (there are also good teams!) but you pointed out one of the few downsides that applies across the board.

Amazon is not very friendly towards open-source. When I was there, I believe their policy was that you needed to ask for permission to contribute to any open-source project. The policy was broad (covering things like code snippets on StackOverflow or /r/programming on Reddit) and strict (I heard they would not approve anything related to game development). There definitely were folks who contributed to open-source projects -- I think those people either didn't ask for permission or had friendly managers.

I've been through their process twice at different points early in my career and received offers both times- the reason I didn't join both times was that I was interviewing for a specific position on a specific team and because of whatever reason I was getting an offer for a similar position on a completely different team.

The first time I assumed that it was just a freak thing, after the second time I asked around and got the vibe it was completely normal for a variety of reasons, often because a manager on the interview cycle with more clout decided they liked you and you were therefor going to be working for them.

I like a lot of things they build and believe there are some very talented people there, but at what cost am I willing to participate in that activity directly? Not that high, I'll just reap the fruits of their labor from the outside.

I'm frankly surprised there are not sites to name and shame these specific teams yet given how bad it seems to be. You could even design it to look like an Amazon style review system!

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