Ask HN: Is joining AWS a bad idea? (MSFT, Oracle options)

Will the additional money truly impact your life in any measurable way? If it's just going to cause your investment account to grow a bit faster, unless you're planning on FIRE, you might as well strike that consideration from your decision making and compare the life/work balance you have versus the prospect of interesting work. The former could change if you stay but it sounds like you're pretty comfortable that it won't. The latter is by no means guaranteed. Really seems to come down to just how much is the boredom at Microsoft eating you up. If it's crushing your soul, taking some risk might be justified.

As far as the money, it's hard to say, but I'm not a homeowner right now and houses have increased in value by 45% in my area in the last year, I'm not joking. I'm renting a house that was 1.2 million and is now 1.95 million, in two years. So higher comp is definitely a partial motivation to move, along with the boredom. But I don't want a ton more stress either, and my wife doesn't want to move to LCOL area really. So I'm having a really hard time with the decision.

Wow I just looked at Redfin for the area. What you pay vs what you get is astonishing. Best of luck either way you chose. Seems like AWS work would be "cooler" and might provider newer things to work on and more mobility.

The worst part about it for me is I made the mistake of selling my house in Spokane, WA (where my family is) to rent again for a while to start at Microsoft. I had a $1600/mortgage. Kicking myself for selling that house, which has also gone up more than 50% in just over two years.

Ya, I'm never selling, Image if you rented that sucker out.

> Everyone on "BLIND" says AWS is absolute hell, unless you luck out on team/manager.

Blind self-selects for people unhappy with their jobs. So, I'm not sure Blind is a good source for any job information.

Right. That's why I posted here. On blind, the main complaint with amazon is overwork and toxicity. For microsoft, it's "low" pay compared to other big tech.

I don’t work at AWS, but believe they at least have a public image issue with the culture and work life balance. Review sites like Team Blind are markedly more negative regarding AWS than other leading technology firms. I know several friends and colleagues who are afraid to work at AWS due to the negative reputation.

AWS really needs to address some of these reputation issues if they wish to attract talent. It’s hard for me to believe all the negative feedback is true, but it doesn’t seem like AWS is doing much to address it.

It's pretty bad and scaring me away. As I said the manager told me he thinks the team works 45-50 hours a week and to expect the 2am pager alerts. The main thing the manager/recruiter are trying to sell me on is total comp in the long run and a path to L6 engineer in ~2 year if I put in the work.

Did AWS offer you more than ten days PTO? I saw on levels.fyi that is the listed starting point at AWS, which is noticeably lower than other employers like Microsoft.

10 days PTO 1st year. 7 paid holidays, and 6 flex days (sick, floating holiday)

15 days 2nd year on.

Microsoft gives you 15 days from year 1, 7 holidays and 10 sick days which you can use just for "mental health".

So Microsoft is definitely better but it's not huge. Microsoft has WAY better 401k and free health benefits for family etc.

I'm taking that all into consideration and yes, I'd make 50k+ more at Amazon and that would help me retire a bit earlier. I'm also not a homeowner currently, and houses here are insanely priced.

Just because you have the PTO doesn’t mean your Amazon manager will let you take it without consequences.

Are you serious?

Yes, of course.

Sorry for asking so directly but since I don’t have any idea how „work“ works in other places, does 10 days mean that you have 10 days of total vacation days per year? Or is it 10+7(+6)? If it’s 10 days/year, is it normal in the US?

The 10 "vacation days", would typically be for planned things, like taking a family vacation.

The 7 holidays are literally holidays, like Christmas, thanksgiving, etc, where most everyone is off work.

The 6 days are basically sick days, but you can also use them as one-off "dont feel like working" days .

I would say this is a decent policy by USA standards, but most tech companies have better policies. Amazon pays high salaries to engineers, but the other benefits are pretty poor.

The US really is crazy. In Ireland I get 25 days PTO (not particularly high) and 10 public holidays. Sick days don't exist here. If you're sick, you take whatever time off that your doctor signs for, and there are no pay deductions up to a pretty crazy number of days (I've never even come close to it, not even the year I had a bunch of recurring chest infections).

Edit: also, health insurance is optional but most people pay for it. It costs me and my wife about €240 per month, but options range from €45pm to €650pm with my provider. But that is used to cover stuff like queue jumping. I can go to a specialist, get a fast MRI etc, and my private hospital costs are paid. If I didn't have insurance I'd still get that for free, but I'd be waiting for weeks or months to see a specialist. Having said that, some specialists are rare. If you need to see someone who specialises in a particular type of condition you might be waiting a few weeks even if you have the best health insurance imaginable. And when it comes to the big urgent stuff, public health can really work. My sis died from cancer a few years back, and after a 9 month battle, I don't think they paid a cent. She had a lot of life threatening symptoms during the last 5 months and every one of them got immediate care. (That's something I didn't know about cancer - you can wake up one morning with a collapsed lung or a blood clots)

I work in the US and get unlimited PTO that I’ve never been shamed for taking (and I use it a lot). Just depends on the company.

Thank you for taking your time to answer. Apparently you're talented and hard working to be able to work for a compensation like that and companies like Amazon and Microsoft - isn't there any leverage to get better conditions regarding free time? I have to take my time to dig a little deeper into how vacation works in the US since I did not know and thought it'd be comparable everywhere.

> I would say this is a decent policy by USA standards

Going to be terse and just say it's not a decent policy in the slightest. Don't be afraid to negotiate for more.

FWIW I did try to negotiate this with AWS and they said it's 100% non-negotiable. Pretty crazy.

> If it’s 10 days/year, is it normal in the US?

Personally I have never had a white-collar job in the US which started out at 10 days but it does seem to be the average in the US (when starting out) [1]. All of my employers have always started out with 15 days of vacation time with more after a certain amount of tenure. Given the age and experience of OP, I think they are getting shafted with 10 days.

On a side note, the US is truly awful when it comes to vacation and time off from work. The culture here is non-stop work and it's not sustainable.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/heres-how-many-paid-vacation...

Absolutely agree on 10 days being unacceptable. The recruiter said it's a blanket policy for new hires and there is no way for him to request an exception whatsoever. Crazy talk

In all the jobs I've ever had, I was soon working on stuff completely different from whatever I was tasked with when I started, undoubtedly because they were much smaller companies than Amazon/Microsoft/Oracle and so plans and projects were much more dynamic, but it did make for much more interesting work. In any case, it taught me that no matter what I was promised at the beginning, things change, so be careful making the assumption your assignments will remain as originally described to you.

Good point. I also like to think that as an experienced engineer you have some autonomy over what you want to do and where you think you can provide the most value.

At $250k/year, you’ll be paying 24% Federal tax (up to about $325k, at which point it goes to 32%), so AWS would net you about $32k/year more (excluding state tax) for 250 to 500 hours more per year (5-10 hours/week * 50). That works out to between $128 and $64 per hour. If you take into account the 401k difference, these numbers might drop even lower.

The Oracle job seems like a nonstarter since you’ll have to pay the self-employed tax (really just the 7.5% that your current job pays for you) plus benefits (which can be very expensive). It doesn’t seem like a financial step up.

I’ve been a consultant for years because my spouse has a great job with benefits. I’ve been able to save up to $50k/year in a solo-401k and take of lots of time to spend with the kids (coaching, day trips, vacations). This freedom has been the MAJOR benefit of consulting, but again my spouse provided the safety net.

What I haven’t mentioned is the tech stack. If you are in a dead end job, then you should definitely consider a change - if your position is eliminated (and it’s probably more likely than you expect), what could you do next? A sideways move now into a better career path could pay off in terms of safety (as in you could easily get another job). Being comfortable now could make life more difficult later.

You’ll obviously need to weigh these options yourself, but the best opinion I’ve heard so far is to seek out a transfer within Microsoft that might give you the tech challenge/ experience without the uncomfortable changes the other jobs would require.

Good luck!

Hey, thanks for the breakdown. The Oracle gig is W-2, not 1099, that makes a big difference with taxes no?

AWS really does suck unless you luck out on team/manager. No one I respect has lasted longer than a year there - often to the day.

I really wonder why this is. With Microsoft and Amazon sharing so many engineers back and forth, and managers (my manager, skip, and 2skip are all from Amazon!), these companies have drastically different reputations.

Amazons backloaded RSU vesting schedule might have something to do with it.

Neither option sounds all that good (that particular AWS offer sounds scary: if he's "estimating" 45-50 hours, why doesn't he know? It is probably more). Stay at MS for now and keep looking for the right position (including at AWS).

Sigh. These were not the first two interviews I did, I interviewed at several startups offering remote work etc but didn't get hired. I'm really burned out on interviewing.

Take a break then, and try again in six months.

Ya, I tend to agree with webmaven. None of the offers jump out in terms of being worth it. Take a break, work on your interview weaknesses, and try again in a bit. Enjoy the summer and keep things chill at work.

Thanks. I'm nailing the behavioral, cloud and sysadmin stuff, need to work on my coding chops. I'm not even targeting SWE jobs, but to get the best SRE/DevOps type jobs you still need to code pretty well these days.

Honestly, for me, you cant put a price on life/work balance.

More Money != More Happiness.

My 2 pence.

If you were single, I'd say chase the money. Not that you shouldn't chase money with a family, but you seem to have a nice chill job situation. Family and chill is a good combo.

The AWS offer just seems... ewww. At 50 hr/week the money is WORSE per hour than what you currently make. And gives up the chill.

Perhaps try to move to a more unixy area/group/team at MS? Perhaps a research type area? Just an idea.

I'm considering this also. There is Azure Kubernetes Service team that I'm interested in.

I'd just ask for a change at MSFT; they have a really good reputation for finding the right position for solid performers. I'm surprised you didn't mention whether you explored that in your post, so maybe you have already, but it's what I'd put all energy into.

I've never regretted changing jobs. Go to new place, learn and experience new environment, expand your network.

I'd bet if you don't like it you can always go back to MSFT later, likely for higher salary

Thanks. I tend to agree, I've never regretted changing jobs. But I've never had more on the line then now, I've got a wife and daughter and short commute and work life balance. Leaning towards staying and working on my coding skills for a while.

Stay at Microsoft show them that your are loyal and that you want to work on other projects.

if work life balance is important to you and you already have it at msft, why change? if money > work-life balance than go for it.