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Amazon Leadership Principles

amazon.jobs

17 pointsUkiahSmith18 comments

I worked at AWS for 8 years. Overall it’s a good place to work, and I’d highly recommend it to junior developers just starting out. I left 4 months ago, but it wasn’t Amazon’s fault. I was treated well, was paid very well, and I liked the work. But I was always going to be working on someone else’s terms there, and I realized that wasn’t the ideal career path for me. I like working for myself better, but I don’t regret my time at Amazon.

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Edit: Here’s my comp progression at Amazon for those curious:

2010: €50K - Joined Amazon in Dublin, Ireland as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team.

2011: €75K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promoted to SDE-2.

2013: $150K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2014: $185K - Promoted to SDE-3 (senior level), same team.

2015: $230K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2016: $390K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2017: $470K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2018: $511K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2019: Left Amazon last February. You can read more about why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399

All figures are gross income as shown in my W2. My last 3 year-end (Dec) paystubs: http://imgur.com/a/EgIVQln

Did the numbers become so high in later years due to AMZN stock price gains? Or some other reason?

The jump in 2016 was because I got an offer from Oracle and Amazon matched it. I actually lost a bit from stock depreciation that year because most of my RSUs bested a week after Trump’s election.

For 2017 and 2018, yes stock appreciation is the reason for the growth over 2016.

I have (successfully) interviewed with Amazon. One of the reasons I turned the job down was my experience in the interview.

My "loop" was done by people who spend an hour with me asking my questions designed to see if I fit into these "principles". After the third interview, I was exhausted by parroting the same damn story multiple times - I mean, how many stories can you come up with?

The bar-raiser was changed at the last minute and I got some random dude on the phone who clearly had no idea what the job was about. He spent his hour interrupting me and peppering me with random questions. I've been a lawyer and am used to this so it was not an issue, but it was an all around weird, cult-like experience.

I did well enough to get an offer, but when I walked out of the interview I'd called up my wife and told her I would never join a company that seems to be more cult and less company.

The whole vibe was just super weird. I mean, I'm used to big tech companies thinking that they are doing world changing work (Msft, Goog. Never interviewed with FB), but this was entirely on a different scale.

> My "loop" was done by people who spend an hour with me asking my questions designed to see if I fit into these "principles". After the third interview, I was exhausted by parroting the same damn story multiple times - I mean, how many stories can you come up with?

I'm not sure how long ago this happened, but I'm surprised that your recruiter did not prep you for this. They tell you about the LPs and to prep 1-2 stories to demonstrate that LP, so you don't feel that you overlap.

LPs are used as a determiner of cultural fit and most other companies have their own version of this (e.g., "Googliness"). It may seem more cult-ish, and I thought that too when I joined, but it helps to move the business forward.

FWIW, I left Amazon a while ago for unrelated reasons.

Shrug I would take these more seriously if I felt amazon was executing at an impressive level. Honestly though, I feel like AWS (what I consider their flagship, most-profitable product) runs on a windows-95-level interface and is missing the most rudimentary features for over a decade.

If your results aren't successful, then your methodology must not be successful.

What features are they missing? Which competitors have these features? Are AWS’s results not indicative of success?

Here are some example very basic use-cases:

- Ability to show all EC2 instances by creator (e.g. David quits, what servers did he make?)

- Ability to sort EC2 instances by date of creation

- Ability to show instances that seem inactive (< 5% CPU average load).

- Ability for searches on instance names to support partial matching.

- Ability to change PEM file associated with a server

- Option to resize instance HD size and have it immediately extend the FS

- Status indicator on instances that show when the server is under so much load it may not be responding to SSH

- I'm seeing a glitch lately where dialogs follow my cursor.

These are just a few very basic things I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are hundreds that other people have come up with.

An organization that cannot successfully direct such requests to the teams to build them, and then make it happen, within a decade is not an organization I would model after.

They may be market successful, because they were the first mover, but they aren't taking basic steps to solidify that dominance imo.

I like the windows-95 interface joke and I guess your other half is also against that lib

Ugh.

"Are Right, A Lot" - what is this, a magnet for egomaniacs?

"Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit"...

These two mixed feel super toxic. The others are important, but these seem to override the humility necessary for learning...

Cult Commandments

Also, 1) Work new hires to death, 2) Make employees cry, 3) Pay like sh*t

I thought the point of working at FAANG is that you get the first two but you get paid really well

Sounds right.

And its true, at everywhere but Amazon

* $108,000 base salary, $120,000 in NYC/SF

* $24,000 signing bonus, $28,000 in NYC/SF (even more if returning intern)

* $7,000 tax-assisted relocation bonus

* $3,000 stock yr 1, $10,500 yr 2, $28,000 yr 2.5/3.0/3.5/4.0

These are not "shit" numbers for a new graduate with only a bachelors degree.

Amazon does employ more than tech people which is probably what the person was referring to.

No, but they're pretty bad compared to FB or Google, especially for NYC or SF.

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