Ask HN: What is your opinion on Amazon's work culture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your opinion on Amazon's work culture?

2 pointsdonnie1234513 comments

My experience is limited to developers. They login at 7:30 in morning work till 8PM, 10:30PM sometimes or even 3:00 AM. They work on saturdays as full-time. (I know it by the pings, group messages and emails they send, comments on tickets).

I dont see anything bad in it. Just wondering why dont they value personal time like going to Gym, watch some movies, doing stuff they like instead of working more?

I absolutely have no issues about them working overtime.

This is for Amazon USA and employees in other roles can chip in.

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Amazon has 1.6 million employees. Who is "they"? Is that a smaller group in a specific business unit, in a specific region, or a set of people you know?

Edited.

Employees in the US

Amazon is a huge company with over 1,000,000 employees. With such a large org, there will no doubt be entire units, divisions, and teams that are either overworked and have 0 work-life balance, and teams that have amazing work life balance, and everything in between.

Most of those employees aren't working in software, so the # is irrelevant.

All orgs have policies like forced attrition quotas that set the tone for the culture across the company, as well as the constant cutthroat performance review and promotion culture.

Teams with good work-life balance and no backstabbing are rare, and when these teams exist there are other teams paying the price with additional toxicity and high attrition quotas, since the quotas need to be met at the org level.

Many orgs this year have to put 20+% people on "focus" (pre-PIP) with the expectation of 10% forced attrition. And people voluntarily leaving or being laid off do not count towards this forced attrition quota, it still needs to be met.

OP added "My experience is limited to developers." only later to the question.

I've heard that it is a norm

Okay

The folks I know at Amazon (in development and/or AWS client-facing roles) all work "normal" salaried hours - 40-45 hours a week, starting between 0700 and 1000, and ending between 1530 and 2000

Who are these people you know who are working 80+ hour weeks?

Probably they might be lying to you.

Ever think maybe you're the one being lied to?

well, my friends there are not lying to me

and you say you are not being lied to

which means ... you apparently know people who are OK with being taken advantage of as employees (or, they are making beaucoup overtime / comp time :))

Believe Quora. Believe the news articles. Believe the current and former employees that post and comment on HackerNews. Here's some light reading:

"Amazon leaders are worried that a 'Day 2' mindset is seeping in at the company" [1]

"A top Amazon executive recently said he had 'no data' to support the company's return-to-office mandate, prompting criticism from frustrated employees"[2]

"Inside Amazon's little-known Slack channel for performance improvement: Leaked messages reveal anguish, despair, but also community"[3]

"I was a manager at Amazon. My boss encouraged me to quit after I defended a high-performing employee who was about to get the lowest performance rating."[4]

"Amazon employees are internally sharing mock leadership principles that make fun of the company's aggressive RTO policy: 'Disagree and comply'"[5]

"A bunch of Googlers who used to work at Amazon are internally sharing horror stories about their former employer's 'frupid' and aggressive culture"[6]

"'Stress, burnout, churn, and a cut-throat atmosphere': An internal Amazon study slams the company's culture."[7]

"'Frupidity' is a new word making the rounds inside Amazon, a combo of the company's 'frugality' leadership principle and 'stupidity'"[8]

"This leaked document shows exactly how Amazon managers evaluate employee performance and decide pay"[9]

"An Amazon manager told staff to collect donations if they wanted to keep buying cereal for their office"[10]

"The downside of life inside Amazon's cloud growth engine: ProServe employees describe a culture of bullying, derogatory remarks, and retaliation"[11]

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-leaders-aws-day-two-m...

[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-mock-leader...

[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-slack-channel-for-wo...

[4]https://www.businessinsider.com/former-amazon-corporate-mana...

[5]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-mock-leader...

[6]https://www.businessinsider.com/former-amazon-employees-who-...

[7]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-earths-best-employer-...

[8]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi...

[9]https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-document-shows-how-am...

[10]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-manager-told-staff-to...

[11]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-proserve-culture-inve...

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