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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

> Is it possible that a large portion of amazon's employees are only staying for the money?

Why else would an employee stay at any company?

I worked at a company for over ten years mainly for access to their computational infrastructure, source code, and to pick the brains of fellow engineers. By the end I was only there for the money, and that's when I left.

I could have worded that better. The people I know who have worked at amazon have described miserable conditions, but great pay. They stayed (for a while) because the money was so good. So what would happen to amazon if the money stopped being so good?

I think a question to ask in the same vain would be: What would they do, if due to economic changes other companies are suddenly willing to match the money with better working conditions?

Isn't that what Meta is trying to do? They claim to pay in the top 5% of salary and talk a ton about how much better it is to work there compared to Amazon. There seems to be a ton of Amazon folks moving over there all the time.

I think every company talks about how much better it is to work there compared to Amazon.

The sample is obviously very biased, since I mostly hear from people who left, but after listening to ex-employees talk about being there, I'm inclined to believe them.

It’s the same calculus most people do - pay/bullshit ratio. When that starts going in the wrong direction , it’s time to jump ship.

As far as AMZN, it’s down to $2850. The same as it was in May 2020 when I got hired.

What is bullshit measured in? Displeasing incidents per year?

Thus 1 incident per 3 or 4 days = $285,000?

Literally nothing would change if they were to cut wages, the n-1 lower rung talent would go there and top talent would go elsewhere.

Learning opportunities, work/life balance, other non-financial perks like PTOs and parenthood support, just to name a few.

True. I’ve switch jobs for learning opportunities that paid the same as I was already making. But the end goal was to stay for a couple of years so I could make more money somewhere else.

Money is only one part, liking your job and the work you are doing is necessary for many people.

I go to work to exchange labor for money. Why would I like work more that gives me less money in exchange for my labor most other things being equal. In my experience (8 jobs over 25 years) one development job looks about like any other. I wrote code to do “stuff” or later on in my career I showed others how to write code to do “stuff”

I have the inability to focus and tolerate work that isn’t interesting and rewarding beyond the money, I haven’t figured out yet how to exchange money for reduced work-induced misery, and I’m not as fortunate as you in seeing all jobs as the same. In fact, I could easily accept a lower salary for a research ship conference paper job than a SWE ship software job, not that the former jobs are very easy to get these days at any salary.

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