Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

macintux

A long, compelling piece by The Atlantic covered this and other Amazon horror stories this month.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo...

View on HN

Additional story: https://amazonandmykid.com

( my own )

Suffice it to say Amazon does not care about employees, neither at the warehouses nor at their corporate headquarters.

When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team. They also similarly tried to prevent me from switching teams when I was there.

A week ago I was at one of the Amazon retail stores and an employee there agreed that Amazon cares nothing for their employees. Obviously one should take this with a grain of salt as this is just a random statement from a random retail employee, but this is generally what I hear from Amazon workers both current and ex.

The general word on the street in Seattle is "Amazon sucks" to the extent I've heard Amazon employees referred to as Amholes.

> When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team

I mean, they would have let him leave the company, right? It seems unreasonable to blame Amazon for this guy’s tragic decision, since any reasonable person would have taken a more reasonable exit.

This seems a little cold to me. The fact that there’s an environment at amazon that leads someone to kill themself by jumping off a building doesn’t lead me to think “oh a more reasonable person would’ve left the company.” There’s plenty of other things wrong about the article. This true story was not one of them.

I didn't read the article. But to think that a more reasonable person would have left the company is exactly you should think. If someone jumps off a building due to not being able to join their team of choice then there's a lot...a lot, more going on than job issues. They needed help that they unfortunately never received.

You’re not thinking about any number of reasons that could have ruled that out in his mind.

Top of the list? Visa problems.

> The general word on the street in Seattle is "Amazon sucks"

Just about every dev that it's in the region knows this. It's why their recruiters constantly spam talent in the region. Insane turnover, and you have a very short shelf life due to burnout. It's also why their compensation is mostly in stock. They know you won't last to collect your RSUs.

The engineer in me respects that Amazon built an engineering org that can handle that rate of attrition and still be relatively reliable and release new products.

On the contrary, the amount of wasted time and effort from attrition is mind-boggling. If the level of engineering discipline were higher, it might not be so bad.

>It's also why their compensation is mostly in stock. They know you won't last to collect your RSUs.

Not only that, the stock doesn't follow a typical vesting period like "4 years, with a one year cliff" but instead is HEAVILY weighted to later years, so that at the end of year one you barely get any of it percentage-wise.

This is extremely misleading. A typical package looks something like:

  year 1: $150k cash + $100k bonus + $10k stock
  year 2: $150k cash + $80k bonus + $30k stock
  year 3+4: $150k cash + $110k stock

The bonuses vest linear, daily, so there's no clawback if you leave during the first two years.

Realistically, it means that you only get into stock comp if you've stayed for a few years and have decided that it's where you want to stay. Otherwise, you just get a nice big pile of cash each month.

it's misleading for new hires, amazon has to pay them well. but internal growth at amazon is horrible and additional comp is heavily delayed

> When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team

This guy's manager was also promoted in the next promo cycle.

Amazon really makes it clear they're a fucking awful company filled with immoral employees.

I've got a laundry list of Amazon horror stories.

Another Amazon horror story:

https://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-f...

I don't understand why people in these situations don't quit or internal transfer. Everyone else on the team left except for him but he thought things would get better? He should have left long before the bad performance review.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com