Comment by omgomgomgomg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by omgomgomgomg | Hacker News Reader

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Former Amazonian here, great company and all that, I enjoyed it.

I felt I can provide data here, FBA is not the end of the road, there are more levels so to say, FBA and prime etc.

Now, FBA has some potential pitfalls.

- VAT, Amazon will often store in a country where its most economical for them, ie, for German sellers, there will be a warehouse just after the Polish border etc. They will do this unless you explicitly disable this. This leads to very complicated VAT fillings and correction

- Lost, stolen, damaged cargo. If your merchandise gets damaged or stolen etc, its not so easy to get new storage space allocated/assigned.

- Recalls, if your ASIN is subject to a recall, god help you, if you use amazon, you will have penalty points on the account health page, affecting many other things. All and and FBA ASINs affected , whether youre selling it or someone else need to be removed. The recall is only finished after that. And youre paying for the storage or recovery or disposal.

- Shipping confirmation. You are supposed to inform about any package and order status very soon after the order is placed. Same for tracking status. Now, sometimes the Amazon api for that is buggy and you get heavy markdowns on account health even though you provide the data, just the feed dont work.

Still, when its all said and done, Amazon offers the best product and logistics if you just want to sell your product.

There is no way any competitor can offer the same quality at a better price.

Keep in mind, whatever the percentage is, the ecommerce business has a margin in the single digits, all of Amazon is subsidised by the money making machine AWS.

Why did you leave? low margins?

Tax on the stock vesting(vesting is generous but taxed at 50%) and a disupte about the location for remote work made me look somewhere else.

I have to say the working hours are very nice if you are l4-l6, so is the compensation and all you have to do is clock in and out on the second(no joke, even too early can lead to penalties) and if you are proactive with feature improvements and not shy to do presentations, your promotion will be activelly pushed. Even if you want to change departments entirelly, there will be no hard feelings, you can announce that without hesitation. You can go to l4 from l3, as l4 is where the vesting starts. And no need to be the superstar as far performance goes, just dont be last. If you are last, youre still safe from a sack and a pip does not really happen, theres always someone to help, aka nesting team or something. If you dont perform, its on them. Pick people for help as early as possible and you will be golden.

Of course there are some rather annoying people there too, some even seem to have an allergy to work, but all in all, its bright folks and a good environment.

Once you habe been there as l3, l4 or higher, due to the rather steep initial learning curve(all paid and well designed, even later on, you can chose upskilling, also all paid), you are always welcome back, believe me that, I best not go into details.

I might go back some day, I think it is the best option if you feel like working in a big corporation for a while.

I have accepted an offer from a startup paying much better for the time being, but I always keep Amazing in the back of my mind.

Keep in mind this only applies for l3 to l6, I cant speak for the rest, but once youve been there, you will see why they always welcome people back, the onboarding cost and training for the first few months are vast. I always felt sorry if someone out of amazon would be hired for something like fba dept manager. But yes, seen many people have a one year break without a promise of going back which just felt like they wanna be a stewardess on planes for a while.

Also, this was in Europe, where many employment laws have to be followed to the t.

I would give them a try anyehere in the world, learned a lot there, including how to create procedures for things which have none, theres some pretty important things you can start from scratch, be the creator. They call it taking ownership, which is always rewarded, even if it takes you a month. You get these accolodates and stars and things.

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