Amazon CEO unveils 55k tech jobs in his first hiring push
reuters.com
reuters.com
Like I recently interviewed a candidate who was working on a team of over 60 iOS developers working on a single mobile application. I've built fairly complex products with a team of 4-5 people - how would 55 more people manage to keep busy, let alone add value?
I realize Amazon is a huge, multinational corporation with a lot of product offerings, but do they really have enough to work on that they need another small city of tech workers?
Don't get me wrong, being in the industry I'm happy to have big players driving up the price of talent, but part of me wonders if they really understand how scaling works (or doesn't) with tech headcount.
I knew somebody at Twitter years ago, and he said their mobile teams were bloated and individuals didn't do much. I mean, the Twitter app is quite simple overall, how can you have hundreds working on the UI?
My guess is it becomes hard to contribute quickly at an individual level due to process, lots of overhead with planning, and perhaps codebase not being clean, or just overly large that you don't have good sense of the scope.
Would love to hear from somebody that's worked on a team like this
I probably could have earned more, but working with a few good people and directly impacting the end product made work mostly a pleasure.
Needless to say, I'd rather look at other FAANG options.
I would have thought about working for Amazon as an inexperienced engineer, but at this point after getting just 3 YOE, I have way too many options to go work for Amazon, they would have to more then double my salary because Amazon is known for backloading pay, so you won't make that much money until you have been there 2+ years.
As we all know, there is not an infinite number of experienced devs and Amazon is burning through them quickly
My point is even with a relatively small amount of experience, I have an unbelievable amount of opportunity, so I wouldn't take an Amazon job.
If Amazon becomes a revolving door of new grads who are just trying to get a year or two experience and bolt, it will not be good for Amazon as a company and eventually and the Amazon stamp on your resume will loose its prestige, at which point even new grads won't want to work there.
Amazon desperately needs to change its reputation.
I understand the argument you are making, but it seems like Amazon is one of the most successful companies ever, and is absolutely printing money.
I'm not saying you are wrong, I just don't know if this reality or whether this is what people wish would be the case for emotional reasons.
It's not a binary thing, it's a scale. Fact is Amazon could keep better engineers for longing if they weren't so cut throat and that is not helping them. Will they be able to stay successful regardless of this? Who knows, they will probably become worse at innovation, but they could potentially keep running their store and delivery for a long time without much innovation.
You are probably right in regards to emotion, who doesn't want to see a company who treats workers like that fail? I still shop there, it is way too convenient and cheap.
If I had no other options, I would obviously go for it. That said, despite a good addition to resume, its not something I would personally go for of my own volition.
The National Labor Relations Board has determined that Amazon violated labor law after workers at its Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse tried to join a union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union said Monday. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor...
"I resort to peeing in bottles, and women urinate through funnels into bottles, just so I'm able to get done with my deliveries," Valerie G, a driver for one of Amazon's Delivery Service Partners (DSP), told Insider. "Those conditions are extremely unsanitary, and we are there with all those packages and our own urine and bodily fluids. That's unsanitary for the customers receiving the packages." https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-drivers-interview-gia...
My understanding is that max salary is capped at ~$175K, bonuses/options take years to vest, and managers play games with these.
If you get hired and manage to stay for years, you'll do well in terms of total compensation, but the chances of that seem low.
Base salary caps around ~160k in non-Bay or NYC areas. You'll get a competitive sign-on bonus split between the first two years to compensate you for the fact that 80% of your stock options vest in year 3 and 4.
Fired, but with extra steps.
I haven't seen many cases but PIP were 100% leading to firing. Also my corpo didn't respond to work reference bar HR letter stating you worked for them.
So in my experience PIP is a sentence but you will face no consequence for not working.
(In two cases the PIP were purely because manager didn't like the guy and just wanted them gone)
Heh, I like this one
It's what they put you on, before you are fired. Some people think it's purpose is to get people to quit before they are fired.
The financial costs is to keep unemployment insurance premiums lower. The more unemployment benefits your ex employees receive, the higher the unemployment insurance premiums. Ex employees are not eligible for unemployment benefits if they are terminated for cause.
Ideally, a PIP in a white collar setting is also for the benefit of the employer about to be terminated to serve as advance notice that they should start looking for other employment. It benefits the employer because if they can start planning and looking for work elsewhere earlier.
Ideally, they do and resign from their position, and the employer benefits here also since there is reduced risk of litigation from a resigned employee, and the ex employee is ineligible for unemployment benefits due to resigning, so the employer saves money on unemployment insurance premiums.
There is nothing special about Amazon in this regard - including the fact that the vast majority of PIPs result in termination.
> Even I was interested before
To me as an American, often hearing "even" used this way by Indian coworkers, it's confusing. To me the sentence reads like this:
> Even I, who you would expected not to be interested, was interested
Something like it's an unexpected claim. This is confusing to me because there's no reason for me to expect that you, specifically, aren't interested. But in contexts like your sentence and talking with coworkers, it seems like the intended meaning is something like the following:
> I, too, was interested
Please don't take this the wrong way; this is just a question from somebody who's a fan of linguistics. I've encountered so many constructions in English from Indian speakers at work that I've never seen from other speakers (like the way "itself" is used [1]) that it makes me wonder where it's coming from. Based on my research so far, some things come from trying to carry over words/grammar from Indian languages, and some come from British English as used during colonization.
1: I often hear sentences like "today itself" to mean something like "today [emphasizing today]" which is not said in standard American English, in my experience
'trying to get me to apply' would be the right thing to say. A recruiter can't make you do anything. Your parents or spouse on the other hand...
Also, a lot of Indian English grammar rules are leftovers from Victorian England. For example, rarely would you see an Indian speaker use the word "too" after a verb for emphasis. But I see most of my American colleagues use that word way "too" much.
Your example of "Today itself", probably has roots in Hindi where "Aaj hi" is a commonly used term.
> Also, a lot of Indian English grammar rules are leftovers from Victorian England
This is about what I gathered from looking into the topic online. It's a fascinating thing to think about and makes total sense. Similar to how Korean and Japanese are influenced by Chinese, but the Chinese of centuries ago, not today.
Is "aaj hi" "today itself" or "itself"?
> Even [if] I was interested before, ... after reading this?
I know Amazon gets a bad reputation these days but I really enjoy working there so if you are considering applying I'd say go for it.
There is OnCall duty which can be a pain from time to time but it really depends on your product.
TLDR: Your team's work-life balance usually defines your work-life balance. Never met anyone working 60 hours but that anecdotal.
In India, on call expectation is to be available for 24 x 7. Is that the same?
I find it mildly amusing.
Naturally, it could just be PR.
Obviously Amazon doesn't actually pay more than Google so I guess we'll never know.
I haven't heard them from Google either, but also I haven't heard horror stories from Google.