Who’s in charge at Amazon? Moves on secretive S Team signal giant’s priorities
seattletimes.com
seattletimes.com
AWS has a lot of things I don't love (not least of all, their policy towards developing games in your spare time), but they had a ton of rigor around setting goals while still giving dev teams the opportunity to (mostly?) drive the details of what those goals were. (I've heard this is maybe not the case in all AWS teams, but I had some great local leadership as well.)
If they could fix a couple of deeply set cultural issues (open source and side projects were definitely hard or impossible), not lean quite so heavily on their employees (I was oncall 24/7 for months in the worst times and received no extra comp), and disconnect themselves from whatever is going on with the retail side's treatment of labor.... Well, I'm not sure I'd come back, actually. They'd have to change quite a bit more -- the promo process, the stack ranking/"top grading" twice yearly, better benefits and comp...
But I do genuinely miss working in the AWS org. There's a lot of incredible things to learn there. While I don't see myself coming back, the lessons I learned there have been absolutely invaluable.
Games development are limitless in scope and technical complexity and very passion driven. So, a developer could spend countless hours each night improving his game.
Next day, all the team has is a tired developer, drinking coffee and unable to code straight or analyse issues without missing subtleties.
Opening a wordpress for your mom and her gardening hobby is a significantly less time consuming task.
He said it was a common response.
That looks like a PR landmine.
Maybe I misinterpreted, but it sounds like you deify L6 engineers as "better" and that's why they remain. I don't think that's exactly it lol.
Also..people leaving in 2 years as L4/5s aren't "failing fast." They're bailing for better gigs with a few Amazon projects on their resume - I'd even go as far as to say that's many of their plans coming in!
I agree with you on Amazon not being so bad. I had a lot of autonomy and was asked to both be an engineer and build technical solutions and own processes end-to-end (which included some project management.) It was a great experience!
Nice guy that referred you! Not everyone is that open, usually people learn it the hard way.
That’s a good point that some people leave by plan. On the other hands there are tons of L4/5s get into “PIP” within a year or less and generally we know Amazon holds a lower bar at interviewing, that’s why I think it “fail fast”
I’m at Amazon right now (Ads) and honestly this makes me really sad. It feels like I’m not allowed to be proud of where I work.
Personally speaking, I've had Amazon try to pull me a few times and I just stopped responding to their emails. It's a large company and I can agree that there's leagues of separation between, say, AWS and warehouse operations... but I also just don't care, I can't co-sign the kind of stuff that you hear about (and has been verified by people coming forward).
The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options.
My 2 cents, I guess.
Money is a tool. Once basic material needs are met, tying personal self-worth to a numeric value is not a recipe for happiness, and chasing other people's expectations of what you should be earning is even worse.
I would say you probably do have options, if you choose to go for them.
And certainly not a recipe for morality
Just because someone is willing to pay for it, doesn’t mean it’s good for society or the world.
Some people will pay for all kinds of things that are extremely harmful. Your comment seems rather disingenuous. Why are you trying to twist my words to reflect badly on me? Guilt about the products you buy? (See what I did there? Same thing you were doing :D)
I am not ignorant. Of course i see, that with my buying decisions, i kind of maintain all these side effects, that come from working off this planet. I want the best product that can be created with as little resources as possible. That would be of big value for me.
But who am i to judge someone else's decision to buy something, that they value. I might not like it. It might not a good decision in the long term. I would prefer that certain decisions were not made. Personally i can only try to make things better. I will not become a dealer, who has to provide a good product to my clients.
In any way, i was just curious. No bad intentions.
(and to the other commenter, i dont know what to answer.)
Cheers!
My apologies, then!
have you looked at how most of the smartphones, clothes or even food are made ?
I can't even say if your comment is supposed to be satire
Opioid manufacturers bribing doctors to prescribe more opioids so people get addicted and will buy more opioids.
To see my point all you need to do is imagine either a bad person or an ignorant person having money. If you think either of those situations is plausible, then you can surely imagine such a person paying for something which has a bad effect on the world. For most ideas of morality, doing things which can reasonably be expected to have bad effects on the world is considered immoral (this is very loosely stated, but hopefully you can see my point).
Hi,
I don't want to dunk on you, but I would truly encourage you to gain some perspective on just how myopic a view this is.
(I couldn't reply to your comment below where you said this)
There's any number of reasons why that number might not be myopic.
I enjoy what I work on..I just wish I was treated more like all of my friends and former coworkers.
Hell, you don’t even need to be rich to go to nice places. My uncle is a great example of someone who optimises for happiness: he earns very little but does a job he loves, he brutally cuts out expenses from his life for things he doesn’t care about and loves quite cheap, but instead he spends the money he does have to go on an island holiday once a year and to visit his family (especially his grandchildren) multiple times a year. It’s all about perspective on what’s important to you. Money shouldn’t be it outside of enabling you. (Obviously you need enough to pay your bills, take care of your health etc)
You're not myopic but you just follow a niche group of people.
> I've been rejected at Google and Facebook
These two statements are not contradicting each other...
I had a co-op who used to be chill, laid back, and wasn't strong from engineering perspective (a wee bit lack of passion too). All he did was leetcode and he got MSFT -> Google.
Bit scary to know that yet say it. There's many ways to scale the same mountain, perhaps going the packed out tourist route isn't the best for most? Might take a bit longer.
build a startup and pray to get acquired
join a startup and pray to get acquired (there's still a post acquisition interview though)
contribute to OSS and pray G/F noticed and maybe ask to hire you (still have to go through some interview)
This ain't the old Silicon Valley anymore. Majority of the companies in SF applies Leetcode as filters.
Good for you, but some people have to take whatever opportunity they can get.
Tech interviewing is so fickle that just because you pass an Amazon interview doesn’t necessarily mean anywhere else would take you.
We shouldn’t criticise anyone for taking a job to support themselves and put food on their family table.
Like I said, I think it was a really valuable 6 years. I'm glad I was there, I learned a ton, met awesome engineers.
I have worked in ads for over 15 years. I certainly don't believe it's any more "against your consent" than stores coloring their walls to modify behavior or placing goods in a more visible location to sell more, or that fluffy animals are perceived as cute. The work is good and I have never been happier than when I work in adtech.
It's the difference between having some vapid happy tunes playing in the super market and them analyzing your profile and previous purchases to bombard you with customized messages to make you feel bad because you'll buy more. The level of invasiveness is very different, and you need thorough tracking and denial of privacy for one but not the other.
I'd rather be like them than be considered a "blue collar engineer" as I currently am considered by my peers.
I might be completely wrong about this, but I feel you have low-self esteem and you are tying your sense of self-worth to where you work.
Whenever I have heard something negative about Amazon is that they overwork people and there is no work life balance. But almost all of them have said it was worth it in terms of growing and learning.
If you feel that what you are working on has enough impact, and you are learning a lot. Put your head down, fuck what others think of Amazon, and grow as an engineer. After that a lot more opportunities might open for you.
Generally they'll be quite small and niche but they do exist.
Money is not going to make you happy or proud, comparing yourself to others is a zero-sum game, and living to work comes at a cost.
Seriously, find and talk with a professional. How you are feeling now is probably not going to change even if you achieved everything you want.
How is that even legally possible?
Exempt status has little to do with salary (minimum salary for an exempt employee is $35,568). In general, the only requirements are... salaried (vs hourly), and perform any of executive, administrative, or professional duties. So, darn near everybody on a salary gets lumped into the exempt category.
More details here... https://www.thebalancecareers.com/exempt-and-a-non-exempt-em...
American work culture seems very strange.
You have a conversation about it, adult to adult. Why’s that so hard to do?
> sure they wouldn’t terminate you, that’d be too expensive for a skilled employee of which there is rumored to be a great shortage
Yes that’s your leverage in a deal.
> American work culture seems very strange.
Individuals being able to work out what balance of work and compensation works for them by talking to their employer is strange?
The question was how is it legal - it’s legal because the government lets highly paid professionals with leverage manage their life themselves.
So, the smart thing to do is to make an example out of anyone who pushes back.
Tech workers have no solidarity, so management is very successful at divide and conquer tactics.
https://www.deputy.com/us/glossary/what-does-it-mean-to-be-e...
Edit: That said, I don't think the negative media is sensationalist. I would absolutely believe that some people cried at their (door) desks. I would believe that people were verbally or emotionally abusive. Amazon operates in little pods, and if there's a bad leader organizing a set of pods, they can really turn the culture there toxic. I was lucky to have a fantastic set of leaders (shout outs to Builder Tools) who really supported their people. I've heard some first person accounts of orgs that were... not out of line with media accounts.
And even then, you say they drive all this culture, but you don't say anything substantive. How? What events?
I'm not sure I'm allowed to disclose which events/meetings their s-team regularly attends. I will say that I did have several opportunities to interact with them directly in meetings, and indirectly via goals setting and annual planning exercises.
Peter Desantis is a long time AWS guy, and was present at many of those same meetings/exercises. Peter, and other s-team members, talk about what it means to be AWS. That they've chosen to make him an s-team leader says to me that they like the culture the s-team is cultivating, and want to continue to grow it.
I'm not going to litigate this further with you.
I'm at a different place in my life and the things I commented on are fair criticisms. (Critiquing something is not the same as hating something. I have plenty of media I critique that I also enjoy.)
I thought it was a useful and interesting comment. If you've had your fill of some subtopic, do what I do: keep scrolling.