Comment by 20yrs_no_equity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 20yrs_no_equity | Hacker News Reader

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20yrs_no_equity

First off, Glassdoor is not objective. Employers can "object" to reviews that are derogatory and Glassdoor has so many "requirements" for reviews and a fear of getting sued that they just remove the bad ones on the rationalization that the negative review is not supportable, rather than deal with the irate HR department. Remember who pays Glassdoor. It's the companies, not the ex-emplyoees. I have experienced HR departments who actively groom the reviews there to ensure nothing too bad sticks around.

Amazon is an okay to great place to work if you have low standards and low self respect/esteem. Many engineers are this way without realizing it even. (Because we can see all the flaws in ourselves and our systems and don't realize that this isn't objective, so when we're mistreated we figure it's more legitimate than it is.)

Of the people at amazon who were happy there when I was there, it was mostly people with low requiremetns- they figured if they got their paycheck every month they were happy. They weren't bothered by their bosses abusing them verbally, or the other nonsense that others have talked about.

I live in the Seattle area too. I don't know a single person who work/worked at Amazon who disliked it or had any experience like what the NYTimes article described.

I like how you just make a blanket statement like "It is okay or great if you have low standards and low self respect/esteem". Way to play the superiority card. I know guys who went from Amazon to Google and say they liked Amazon way more.

Our experiences are obviously both anecdotal.. but only one of us is making condescending value judgments of others.

I was responding to the general assertion that people who are unhappy should be discounted because they are the ones who are going to complain. That's a value judgement.

I wasn't being condescending. There are a lot of engineers who have low self esteem (that's not a value judgement- too high self esteem is bad, as is too low, but "low" means "Lower than their value as a person", eg: they under value themselves. I'm not devaluing them.) And there are a lot of people who just aren't too picky about their workplace. I think that many of them are people early in their careers who don't know that they're being mistreated as poorly as they are.

Before I worked at Amazon I heard many stories from people who worked there about how terrible it was. I foolishly discounted them, and went to work there anyway, in large part because I undervalued myself, (eg: low self esteem effectively) and I was not being as picky as I should have been.

Just because people made the same mistake I did and might have felt the company was ok, because thy didn't have the alternative experiences I did, doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I consider you to have turned my comments about the topic to the person, by making a condescending characterization of me that was unwarranted by my comments.

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