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Comment by curiousDog | Hacker News Reader

Word of advice, never work for Amazon. Out of the FANGs, it is quite easily the sleaziest place to work. As someone who worked there, I can believe OPs side of the story. At this point, most of the people who tolerate working there are indentured Indian H1-B employees because they’re stuck in the Green card queue. Even amongst them, the good ones left for greener pastures a long time ago!

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Which team? Before I joined I spoke with a few friends who work there (after reading the NYT article and comments like yours) and got positive feedback. I work here for the past 3 years and so far touch wood nothing even near this. Pretty happy all in all. It’s like people talk about a different company. I’m at AWS, Sr SDE, any teams the above warning is more applicable to? Asking for myself in case I want to switch a teams to know what to avoid but also since we are hiring, I’d like others to know if it’s a specific team / department to avoid... Also, all of us in “good teams” should take ownership and figure out how to systematically fix the issues others obviously experience in other teams. If it’s a specific branch or department, I’d like to see all amazon employees protest to eradicate any toxic bosses / culture in these teams. I just have no way in knowing which ones are, it’s a huge company

Since you mentioned you want to protest, are you going to join Oleg? Seems like a good starting point.

I’m not located in Seattle, but if I was there, and got the details, and was convinced Oleg is right I’d try to mobilize some like minded people, make sure there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job, maybe give my boss a heads up (maybe he would even join) and I’d be happy to join his protest. But I believe this should start internally, it will look better to leadership if some of us for example write a one pager on this amazon good bad discrepancy and that the fact many teams are happy doesn’t cover the fact there are apparently some toxic ones. I love my job and I hate the fact the same company can cause others have the opposite experience, it hurts them but also much to lesser extent, hurts all of us at Amazon. Ego hurt, can intimidate candidates, lost prestige. Small problems but still should make us all concerned and driven for action to fix it.

> make sure there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job

You realize that any retribution would be a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, right? You can't sign away your right to protest, unless you work for the government as a critical employee (read: firefighters, police).

> At this point, most of the people who tolerate working there are indentured Indian H1-B employees because they’re stuck in the Green card queue

I used to think so myself, and mentioned that to various people including friends and acquaintances who worked for Amazon. All of them told me that they really liked it there and don't know why I had this perception. I haven't met a single person, friend or not, who would validate my view.

I still don't know how prevalent bad working conditions at Amazon are, but the data points I gathered point against the blanket statement you made.

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