[HN Gopher] I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
___________________________________________________________________
I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
Author : benadam11
Score : 386 points
Date : 2022-01-05 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (benadam.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (benadam.me)
| swyx wrote:
| this actually turned out a lot more evenhanded than i was
| expecting from the title.
|
| i took a job at AWS myself, and left after 8 months. partly it
| was pull factor to a more exciting offer, but i wont deny some
| push factors. Amazon hires generally very smart people, but the
| bureaucracy and legacy is just stifling for someone used to a
| faster pace in tech. After a while I identified the 4 things I
| felt that we had to ship in order to be a competitive product,
| and having determined that we'd take years to do it, left in good
| conscience hoping that whoever stayed would carry on the good
| fight. I didn't know it but my manager would leave 2 months after
| I did, lol.
|
| good times, decent pay but it is clearly no longer Day 1 in many
| parts of AWS. If I were Adam Selipsky this would be job #1 IMO.
| AWS can only coast on past reputation so long.
| benadam11 wrote:
| I actually loved the "Day 1" philosophy but you are 100% right,
| it is no longer Day 1.
| i_dursun wrote:
| Always Day 1 of 90s
| masterof0 wrote:
| Ex-Amazonian here, I agree with almost everything OP say. I have
| a few things to add in case HR is reading this:
|
| - RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% -
| second , then 5% each quarter, i think...)
|
| - Internal tooling is pretty bad (frameworks, pipelines, ....)
| and the documentation is non-existent, and when it exists , is
| not very helpful.
|
| - Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?
|
| - Make it easier to switch teams
| dpark wrote:
| > _RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% -
| second , then 5% each quarter, i think...)_
|
| They don't want to fix that. I'm sure they save a ton of money
| by backloading vesting like that. With their turnover rate,
| they probably pay out a pretty small portion of their awarded
| grants.
|
| As I understand it (having never worked there), they are also
| stingy with granting new stock, and consider unvested grants in
| determining what to award each year. e.g. "You had an amazing
| year, but you're sitting on a bunch of stock already, so take
| this tiny new grant and fuck off." I've heard this from
| multiple former employees so have no particular reason to doubt
| it.
| User23 wrote:
| > You had an amazing year, but you're sitting on a bunch of
| stock already, so take this tiny new grant and fuck off
|
| That's true, but it can go the other way too. One person I
| know got a needs improvement rating and no stock at all, but
| turned around and did rockstar work the next year. Because
| AMZN happened to have crashed about 50% in that time, getting
| the person back to target total compensation for the exceeds
| rating required granting considerably more RSUs than they
| would have received had they also gotten an exceeds in the
| prior year.
| chrsig wrote:
| > - Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?
|
| probably too focused on frugality to consider retention
| klodolph wrote:
| They _do_ consider retention, make no mistake.
| oblio wrote:
| Could you expand on this, please?
| chrsig wrote:
| I believe the commenter was implying that their policy
| takes retention into account, and amazon simply doesn't
| value retaining employees
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I believe the commenter was implying that their policy
| takes retention into account, and amazon simply doesn't
| value retaining employees
|
| I think there's some Bezos quote about people being lazy
| and it being easier to extract labor from fresh hires
| trying to prove themselves.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Bezos believed that workers' desire to perform well
| decreased over time and that an entrenched workforce was
| a "march to mediocrity," Niekerk told The Times.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-
| jeff-be...
| oblio wrote:
| That's a solid degree of irony from someone that worked
| in the same place for 27 years :-D
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > They do consider retention, make no mistake.
|
| As in they consider retention unimportant, and something to
| not prioritize?
|
| Because it sure seems that way.
| dpark wrote:
| I'm sure they do. They just also don't care until it
| becomes a critical issue.
|
| I am contacted by an Amazon recruiter at least once a week.
| I'm sure every engineer I know is. I wonder how much of
| their money they blow on recruiting and how much
| engineering time is spent in interviews replacing all the
| burned out engineers. Plus all the talent that won't even
| entertain a job at Amazon.
| yelling_cat wrote:
| Lately I've seen less recruiter pitches from Amazon and
| more personalized messages from managers there about
| specific roles on their teams, which is a new wrinkle. I
| doubt that those people would add hours of recruiting to
| their weekly workload unless the standard candidate
| pipeline was really running dry.
| waoush wrote:
| I got a message on LinkedIn from a software developer
| manager there less than a month ago. Was quite shocked
| and didn't think such a thing was even possible.
|
| Also got a staff software engineer from Facebook who
| added me on there, and had in their title "hiring". lol.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of
| nearby human beings to be concerned about retention.
|
| https://www.essence.com/news/amazon-burning-through-workers/
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of
| nearby human beings to be concerned about retention.
|
| It seems like they're more than willing to hire imports. I
| get more recruiter spam from them than anyone else, and I
| don't live anywhere near any of their major offices.
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| This is true as well. I got an email offering me
| immigration support to move to Vancouver. I already live
| in Canada, have my entire life, and every job has also
| been in Canada.
| bluedino wrote:
| They have lots of remote jobs now as well.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This article is about warehouse workers, not developers.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Workers are workers to management. Regardless of whether
| you pick up keyboards or press them.
| seebs wrote:
| It may be, but you may rest assured that when a recruiter
| asks me whether I'd like to work for Amazon, how they
| treat warehouse employees is going to be a factor in my
| answer. I've never been confident of the viability of
| "it's fine, they only hate _other_ people " as a social
| strategy.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Not like Amazon exactly has a good reputation for
| treating tech workers well either.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I read a stat that 1 out of ~154 Americans currently works
| for amazon.
| andrewguenther wrote:
| > Internal tooling is pretty bad (frameworks, pipelines, ....)
| and the documentation is non-existent, and when it exists , is
| not very helpful.
|
| Surprised to read this. The tooling is what I miss most from
| Amazon, but I was in AWS the whole time, I've heard the retail
| situation is quite different.
| masterof0 wrote:
| in AWS is ok, in CDO is awful.
| stuaxo wrote:
| - Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?
|
| I find the attitude in a company starts from the top - so I'd
| Blame Bezos for the culture that does this, look at how they
| treat their non software dev workers.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > RSUs vesting schedule sucks
|
| This is a crucial part of PIP culture. It took me awhile too
| realize how common a pattern it is for companies to offer
| promising RSUs as part of total comp and then drive employees
| out after 10 months.
|
| That vesting schedule is just some slight of hand so that you
| think Amazon is paying you XX% more than they have ever planned
| on. In reality you're getting paid likely less than you would
| sticking at a smaller, saner company. If you knew that upfront
| you'd never join.
|
| To be clear, not all companies that offer RSUs are like this
| (of course most of them have better vesting), but this is a
| pattern I've seen a bit too often.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > (5% - first year, 15% - second
|
| This is done on purpose because a vast majority of employees
| leave Amazon within 18 months or so. And those who can
| withstand that environment for 24 months and beyond develop
| thick enough skin and make enough internal connections to
| survive till 5+ years.
|
| (bit of a tangent)
|
| > in case HR is reading this
|
| HR's primary (perhaps only) job is to protect the upper
| management (execs and above) from the nuisance caused by
| workers down below. It took me a while to sink in but when it
| did it brought in lot of clarity to the way I deal with HR.
|
| IMO this could be generalised to a reasonable degree. For
| instance, police force's primary job is to protect the
| government from the internal threat which is the population at
| large. Catching thieves happens to be a small by-product of it.
|
| Employees' allegiance is, first and foremost, to their pay
| master.
| samspenc wrote:
| I heard that their (miserly) first and second year RSU vests
| are made up for with a cash component during those two years,
| or am I mistaken about that?
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Haha what they probably don't mention is second year bonus
| is prorated.
|
| So it's a double fuck you, bc it gets paid out as quickly
| as salary but is in permanent to your TC as a bonus lol
| oblio wrote:
| Yes, you get money. There's some strings attached, you have
| to return the money under certain conditions.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > in case HR is reading this
|
| If they cared, they would have done something about this long
| ago.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| | - Make it easier to switch teams
|
| It's actually much easier to switch teams at Amazon than most
| of tech.
| TideAd wrote:
| Do you still have to go through a full interview loop?
| masterof0 wrote:
| You do, and if for any reason the next manager doesn't want
| you or change his/her/x mind, you are in a really awkward
| situation with your team.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Is not, is easy to switch team if you know people in that
| team, and the manager already wants you, otherwise you have
| to go through interview loops, etc... At Google for example
| is way easier, as it should be.
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Worked there from 2011-2012 at the then LAB126(Cupertino) on the
| kindle Fire and project. Was a total dumpster fire filled with Ex
| Apple folks who liked to throw their egos adound(this was when
| Jobs was still alive). Because I was in the devices teams
| traveled to china 4 times within the year, got burnt out by my
| next level managers and his managers and finally quit after
| taking in my singnon bonus. Took me a decade to get over that
| experience and now I am back to the races this time interviewing
| for Level5 software engineering roles with the MAAGMA(F went
| meta)companies.
| CottonMcKnight wrote:
| I wouldn't wish the byzantine nightmare that is Cognito on my
| worst enemy.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| Cognito is one of the worst. Try the CloudHSM sometime if
| you're not feeling suicidal.
|
| The whole Amplify/AppSync stack is another massive tire fire.
| emptybottle wrote:
| It's really a shame what many of the "FAANG" companies (and the
| companies who admire/adopt their practices) are doing to tech
| work.
|
| My own experiences, the horror stories I've read, the
| broken/horrible interview trivia loops, the nonstop crunches, the
| nonstop on-call escalations, the difficult ethical positions that
| come with working at some companies, etc. have me feeling worse
| than ever about this profession.
|
| It didn't use to be like this. There was a time not long ago when
| individual personality and skills mattered. Workloads could be
| negotiated, interviews were conversational.
|
| But now it seems that a few companies have eliminated all that
| wasteful "toil" of interacting with human beings by instead
| treating them like machines, and thousands of other companies
| follow suit almost blindly.
|
| I'd love to see a job aggregator for anti-FAANGs. Does such a
| thing exist?
| unoti wrote:
| > It's really a shame what many of the "FAANG" companies (and
| the companies who admire/adopt their practices) are doing to
| tech work.
|
| > broken/horrible interview trivia loops, the nonstop crunches,
| the nonstop on-call escalations, the difficult ethical
| positions that come with working at some companies, etc. have
| me feeling worse than ever about this profession.
|
| > a few companies have eliminated all that wasteful "toil" of
| interacting with human beings by instead treating them like
| machines...
|
| I agree that these things are happening, but this is not
| happening everywhere. In particular, Microsoft is not true for
| any of the above over the last 5+ years since Satya came
| onboard. In my experience, every one of the above is not true
| at Microsoft, with one notable exception: the interview loop is
| indeed hard. But other than that, it's a much better situation
| at Microsoft. There are no difficult ethical positions (ethics
| and trust are first class core values there). Individuals
| matter, and allowances are made for different people's
| strengths and weaknesses. Workloads and deadlines can indeed be
| negotiated. It's far more "human" there than other places like
| Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and other places.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >It didn't use to be like this. There was a time not long ago
| when individual personality and skills mattered. Workloads
| could be negotiated, interviews were conversational.
|
| Er, when? Old Microsoft was infamous for the ping pong ball
| interview questions and stack rankings. Is this not just a
| result of companies in the tech market being successful and
| turning from plucky underdog to bureaucratic behemoth?
| pkaye wrote:
| Seems like you just need an job aggregator that skips
| particular companies you dislike.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I'd use it, but only if it excluded fads too. I don't want to
| be near Web 3, cryptocurrencies, or generally any new tech
| stack released within the last five years.
|
| If you don't like this idea, get of my lawn. ;)
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Is this the norm? I thought this was mostly just amazon.
|
| If it is the norm I blame it on the over supply of software
| engineers. The salaries stay high but the churn is now higher
| because with that high of a salary they will burn through as
| many engineers as possible to get the perfect person.
| throwJan22 wrote:
| Are there any good FANG size companies? Amazon sucks, Facebook is
| unethical as most Social Media and ad selling. Crypto is a scam.
| It seems everyone is hiring but I struggle to find a good company
| to work for. Google perhaps?
| 5cott0 wrote:
| I got an email from an Amazon recruiter the other day. I thought
| it was an invite to a phone screen but it was actually a link to
| my dev plan.
| oblio wrote:
| Dev plan?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I got a linkedin ping from an Amazon recruiter which I politely
| declined. He replied: "Great! The next step in our recruiting
| process is a short phone screen. Call me to set it up!"
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I have been told by multiple ex-Amazon people that if you are
| moving for a job there, not to rent a place for the full year as
| there is a decent chance you will not need it.
|
| Everyone I know says it is worth working there, but mostly as a
| grab and go for the resume.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Hey congrats on making it 10 months!
|
| _" Urgent to not block progress, but also ironic that they are
| asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to deliver
| critical work"_
|
| Friend of mine started a role there (this was 4-5 years ago) and
| was fired (sorry... more or less asked to leave, being told he
| could keep his signing bonus if he just left) within about six
| weeks because he wasn't immediately delivering on some insane
| amounts of work. Truly, he recapped it for me, the expectations
| were absolutely incredible and I'd consider him a hard worker who
| has found a ton of success in his current role.
|
| I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with my
| therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS
| experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of
| college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15 years
| later). But living in Seattle, a notable chunk of my social
| circle works there. I'd say a few enjoy the scale of things they
| get to work on or perhaps the brand name, but overall none of
| them ever talk about liking the work environment/balance/culture.
|
| One friend, at a director level, just quit on a whim because he
| came back from parental leave and his direct reports had all been
| put on a PIP while he was out. He told his VP to fuck off, left,
| and is now on sabbatical. I've never seen him so happy.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| What does PIP stand for? I haven't run into that acronym before
| yonig wrote:
| Replies laid out what it means on paper but what is the
| employees actual best move? Sounds intentionally impossible
| to climb out of. Are they given a buyout option to leave or
| just sit in purgatory for 6 months?
| User23 wrote:
| It depends on the employee and the organization. If the
| employee in question really has been under-performing,
| believes meeting the goals is possible, and wants to stay,
| then accepting the PIP and trying to succeed is a risky but
| valid choice.
|
| On the other hand, if the employee in question is fairly
| certain the PIP conditions can't be satisfied, signing the
| PIP is a very bad idea. It amounts to written
| acknowledgement of failing to perform the employee's end of
| the employment contract and gives the employer
| justification to fire the employee with cause. If that's
| the case, declining to sign the PIP and asking about
| alternative next steps is the way to go. In that case,
| there's a good chance that the company will offer an exit
| package in exchange for a general release. One of the
| upsides of this approach is there's no PIP in the employee
| file, on the off chance eligibility for re-hire is a
| concern.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Exactly. Object to the PIP suggestion, and say it is
| being imposed without proper cause for a discriminatory
| reason, e.g. to harass and force out an employee over 40.
| That totally fucks their attempt to gather fake reasons
| to fire you, their only option is to offer you money to
| quit. I ran into this at a company where my good work was
| documented, but I'd accidentally annoyed someone really
| high up and strings were being pulled to ditch me.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| It depends on the manager who constructs the pip and goals.
|
| The manager might lean towards salvaging or maybe
| documentation. Usually, an honest manager would give some
| hints as to the nature. Like, maybe it's best you look at
| other opportunities kinda nods. Some people are also just
| bad as reading the crowd and would ignore a written sign
| that stated "you will be fired."
|
| I've seen bad managers give a junior work that needed a
| whole team to resolve. I stepped in during reviews and
| fixed that train wreck. However, on their second chance
| with simpler work it didn't turn out much better. At that
| point we probably soured the engineer. Later we removed the
| shitty manager. He took off as soon as he received his PIP.
|
| One of my first batch of directs I took over was in the
| latter group. He made no connection that this could lead to
| termination. I would love to have heard the conversation
| with his previous manager. Also, he might have been
| feigning ignorance for more time. He quite simply just
| needed direct coaching on interacting with people. He went
| from the worst engineer to someone I tried to give the
| highest rankings. My manager wouldn't have it, but we did
| compromise.
|
| A lot goes on in the background, but something I never did
| was bend to statistics. I didn't care what HR thought was
| the expected target. Some people are spineless and just
| rollover. Drives me mad. What are they going to do? Fire me
| and send me some place else for more money?
| mbfg wrote:
| As soon as you get a PIP, get out when you can.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Agreed. I can't see any possible upside for staying.
|
| It's like if someone threatens you with a lawsuit. You
| don't communicate with them ever again, you tell them to
| contact you via lawyer and hopefully you never hear from
| them again.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| Worked at a FAANG in one team for 3.5 years (got promoted and
| had good reviews), transferred to a new team and got PIP'd by
| new manager and eventually fired within a year of
| transferring. One of my workmates clearly told me that my
| chances of getting out of the PIP were next to zero but by
| then it was too late.
|
| Best advice I can give someone who gets on a PIP is don't
| wait or work the process, just make an exit plan and act on
| it (interview quickly) and own your destiny. Also if you've
| been a stellar performer and you move to a team where things
| aren't working out within the first 3 months, transfer
| quickly (go to HR and claim mental and emotional wellbeing)
| before your performance reviews get trashed and then it's
| impossible to transfer.
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| Performance improvement plan
| sharkweek wrote:
| This, and it's mostly a death sentence. If you're on a PIP
| the odds you survive it are low, used mostly to manage
| people into quitting.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| "You're fired, but I am just waiting on the paperwork."
| bennysomething wrote:
| I think it's performance improvement plan, but that's a guess
| cjaro wrote:
| Performance Improvement Plan. It's basically the company's
| way of saying "We want to fire you, but don't have a reason
| on the books, so here you go. In six months, pack your bags
| and go."
| dudus wrote:
| I respect your view and while that may be true on a lot of
| cases that's not what the company represents a pip to be.
|
| A PIP is a situation where you are told you are not
| performing at the desired level and needs to improve. In a
| respectable company being on a pip can be good for you. In
| my personal case I was not performing well due to personal
| issues. Getting on a pip saved my job. It gave me the
| resources and attention to turn the situation around. You
| get a clearer plan of what you need to do and closer
| relationship with mentors to help you on the way.
|
| But again if you don't improve you are fired and you have
| that hanging over your head.
| mbfg wrote:
| the key words here are
|
| "what the company represents"
|
| of course they are not going to represent it as, "we are
| going to fire you".
|
| Good for you to keep the job (if that's what you wanted)
| but in general it's a legal process companies do to
| easily fire people.
| _moof wrote:
| I've put people on PIPs. I genuinely wanted them to do
| better. They did. Like you said, they are a tool for
| laser-focusing attention on specific, well-defined
| issues.
|
| There is no actual ass-covering need to put someone on a
| PIP. If a company in the U.S. wants to fire you, they
| generally don't need a reason.
|
| Individual company cultures will, of course, vary. There
| are a lot of shitty managers out there.
| sushisource wrote:
| It's not that they need a reason intrinsically, it's that
| if the person being fired is of a protected class, the
| company wants to protect against that person suing for
| discrimination. Those sort of suits are definitely filed
| without grounds sometimes, and it's expensive to prove
| it's baseless, so the PIP can be a way to establish
| cause.
|
| All that said I agree they can be genuine. They also can
| be ass-covering.
| lovecg wrote:
| Legally yes but large companies generally have rules in
| place that go beyond legal requirements. One of those
| rules could be "you can't fire someone for performance
| reasons without putting them on a PIP first and
| documenting why it failed". Middle managers have very
| little power in bending those rules.
| xtracto wrote:
| Right, that has also been my experience (granted, in
| another country where a company can fire you with no
| reason if they pay you 3 months severance).
|
| For me as a manager, the PIP allowed me to set up an
| environment where the developer would be able to perform
| their job _in isolation_ with specific, measurable and
| concrete tasks that do not depend on any third party.
|
| I've successfully applied this for some devs that were
| doing really bad for more than 6 months, and it allowed
| me to find that the person was in the middle of a lot of
| shit. Once the developer was isolated and given specific
| tasks, they showed why we have hired them in the first
| place.
|
| I also have let go a developer for whom the performance
| plan was more on the people skills side: This person was
| just not a team player, and was dragging the team along
| with him. A PIP allowed us to show him exactly why he
| ended up not being a match for the company.
|
| And then there was another one who was just lazy...
| didn't do stuff, and after the 2nd month of the PIP he
| acknowledged that he was just being lazy, and waited for
| the PIP time to expire so that we fired him (with 3
| months severance).
| garbagecoder wrote:
| > they generally don't need a reason.
|
| This is true as far as it goes, but exceptions to the at-
| will rule include Title VII claims, so if they have an
| illusion of a dream of a identity-based claim, you need
| some documentation.
|
| Since most companies don't want to pay even the minuscule
| amount required to get a valid release, this is the
| alternative.
| ballenf wrote:
| > If a company in the U.S. wants to fire you, they
| generally don't need a reason.
|
| That's only true if they can prove the reason isn't one
| of several prohibited reasons (racism, sexism, ageism,
| etc.). And how do you do that? Have a PIP system in place
| in which the acceptable reason is documented in detail
| and all employees are treated consistently.
|
| That's why PIPs are effectively termination at many
| companies. Even if you survive it will be permanently on
| your record and your opportunities for advancement will
| narrow significantly.
| _moof wrote:
| _> That 's only true if they can prove the reason isn't
| one of several prohibited reasons (racism, sexism,
| ageism, etc.)._
|
| They don't need to prove anything. In employment
| discrimination cases the burden of proof is on the
| plaintiff.
| lostcolony wrote:
| It's still a risk. An assertion of discrimination, even
| without evidence, is going to be a painful court case.
| After all, "Soandso said he didn't like X people, and
| then fired me" is impossible to prove or disprove, but it
| sure can rack up some court time and lawyer fees, with
| the possibility of a loss in the event of an
| unsympathetic jury.
|
| But a documented process, that was followed, that set
| defined goals, and recorded failures, is going to be a
| much faster and more sure trial.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Wrong. Google "Title VII burden shifting framework." It
| will cost you tens of thousands to get a frivolous case
| dismissed. In wage/hour cases, the burden is almost
| entirely shifted to the employer.
|
| Also with respect to the attorney fee provisions, in
| California they are almost entirely one way in practice
| even the ones that are loser pays in reality.
| ghaff wrote:
| The one case I have first hand knowledge of someone put
| on a PIP, they had done some specific things and also
| clearly weren't interested in their primary job any
| longer. I'm pretty sure they could have recovered had
| they found a way to jump into their current (or another)
| role again. They had been quite respected for a lot of
| things.
|
| But it was really a time for a parting of the ways at
| that point.
| [deleted]
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Performance Improvement Plan- it's basically the precursor to
| firing that companies do to cover themselves from a lawsuit
| for wrongful termination
| [deleted]
| kahrl wrote:
| Performance Improvement Plan: "We're trying to fire you but
| need to do it by the books as to mitigate liability."
| UncleMeat wrote:
| If this were true, why are PIPs not universal across
| virtually every industry? It isn't like fired employees in
| software would be uniquely litigious.
| rurp wrote:
| I suspect white collar employees are a lot more likely to
| sue an employer in general, and PIPs are pretty common
| across white collar industries. Filing a lawsuit is a lot
| easier for people who have money in the bank, a flexible
| schedule, familiarity with the law, and personal
| connections to lawyers; all attributes that correlate
| with white collar professionals.
| rland wrote:
| I've worked on employment litigation in several
| industries (white and blue collar), they are everywhere.
|
| Defense usually wins if they have good documentation of
| putting employees on a PIP, even if the reason is
| obviously dubious*.
|
| Maybe I'm cynical because I've only seen it in a lawsuit
| context, but if you're put on a PIP, start applying.
| There's no out.
|
| * like, discrimination, company wants to fire long-term
| employee because of an injury, company wants to fire an
| employee for union organizing, etc.
| prirun wrote:
| I don't understand why people keep saying this. Every state
| except Montana in the US is "at will": the employer can
| fire you at any time with no reason. I suppose you could
| try to prove discrimination because of age or something
| else, but just like you can walk out and never come back,
| the employer can ask you to leave and you're done.
| Companies have no liability if you are fired other than a
| discrimination lawsuit.
|
| https://work.chron.com/fire-state-mean-20994.html
| taurath wrote:
| When management starts arbitrarily firing people without
| the perception that it's a fair process, absolutely
| nobody sticks around. The process is for the benefit of
| retention because of employees perceive they can be
| dropped on a whim they start to act like it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Legal departments are often fairly conservative. Do you
| know for a fact that the person you are firing is _not_ a
| member of a protected class? If they are then they can
| potentially convince a judge that "fired with no reason"
| could be code for "fired for being the member of a
| protected class," at least to the degree that the trial
| cannot be dismissed.
|
| Once you have reached that point, it's almost moot
| whether or not the plaintiff will win, as lawsuits are
| sufficiently headache inducing and expensive that a
| settlement is likely.
|
| The odds of the above happening might be low, but being
| made aware of the possibility causes employers to CYA
| more than you might think in an at-will state.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, it's a check against management.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Everyone is in a protected class. It's a common
| misconception that white men etc aren't. Under employment
| laws, if you suffer adverse employment actions on the
| basis of a protected class, even if you are a white
| cishet thin Protestant male with money and an Ivy League
| degree you are in protected classes.
|
| Lawyers tell management this and get blamed for the law
| and courts being the way hey are. "Buy them out with a
| severance and a release" gets "why should I pay for
| something I'm allowed to do." A few months later in house
| counsel gets screamed at "why is outside counsel charging
| us $50,000 for this summary judgment case?!"
|
| "Well, I told you that-----"
|
| "This is your fault! Why doesn't EPLI cover it"
|
| "You said it was too expensive, so we got the one with
| the high deductible."
|
| Since the defense bar also lines their pockets with these
| cases, and scare pieces on their blogs "review your
| employee handbook now or else!" No one fixes anything.
| ballenf wrote:
| Because some of their employees are in one or more
| protected classes and if you don't have a legit reason
| documented it's much harder to defend against a claim of
| illegal discrimination.
|
| And you can't just gather those reasons for employees in
| protected classes or that itself is discriminatory
| treatment of employees.
|
| So you have to make a choice as a large company: PIP
| systems or set aside more money for legal fees and
| settlements. Most opt for the former.
| mikestew wrote:
| _the employer can fire you at any time with no reason_
|
| And in the U. S., anyone can sue anyone at any time with
| no reason (though there should be _some_ semblance of a
| reason, or good luck finding counsel to take the case).
| Maybe you fired me because I 'm black, maybe you didn't,
| but without any documentation of what the real reason
| was, the company stands a good chance of settling to
| avoid the time in court.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| The internet is bigger than america, it's a shame I need
| to remind you.
| mikestew wrote:
| Remind me again of the location of the corporate
| headquarters of the company that this portion of the
| thread is _specifically_ talking about? Need I remind you
| of context?
| jrs235 wrote:
| It's also about making it firing "for/with cause" so the
| employee can't make a successful unemployment claim. The
| more unemployment claims against a company, the higher
| unemployment insurance rates/amounts the company has to
| pay.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Because that's true. You think it's free to get even a
| frivolous case dismissed under discrimination or
| wage/hour laws? Lol. Google "title VII burden shifting
| framework." For companies in SV, i.e. under CA law, it's
| easily tens of thousands to dismiss even a frivolous
| case.
|
| Better documentation means only increasingly bottom
| feeding plaintiffs lawyers will take the case.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| Performance Improvement Plan. On paper, it's a program where
| management works with you to improve your weak points so you
| don't get fired. In practice, it's HR protecting the company
| by documenting reasons to fire you before they fire you.
|
| It's rare (not unheard of, but rare) to work your way out of
| a PIP. In general, if you get put on a PIP, I would
| immediately start doing some soul-searching as to why I might
| be on the PIP and how I can improve AND I would start looking
| immediately for a new job.
| mc32 wrote:
| Good advice.
|
| No matter how much you might try to "ace" it and put in
| your best effort, more than 9 out of 10 times, the person
| will not come out of it. Anything and everything no matter
| how minor is likely to be used as supporting evidence. So
| interpret it as a notice of eviction of sorts where they
| pay you some months to find a new job.
|
| Yes, there are exceptions. Thing is do you want to try your
| luck with HR?
| taurath wrote:
| It is the full force of the company saying "we don't
| perceive you as being performant anymore". Even on the
| individual level changing someone's perceptions takes
| double or triple the effort to establish them in the
| first place.
| spaceisballer wrote:
| I've only worked in the public sector and have only had to
| PIP people a few times. It's almost always a sign that you
| need to get out. I've only done it when I'm at wits end
| with a person. They all ended up quitting before we got to
| the 90 days but yeah as said it's basically a CYA move.
| Likely the people are low performing enough by some measure
| you can fire them but it's sort of a last chance thing. And
| it documents where they need to improve and what they need
| to do, so all that is good for the employee if they want to
| improve (and I do believe nobody wants to do a bad job).
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a good friend who manages a fairly large group at
| a (mostly) government subcontractor. Their description is
| similar. A PIP comes after someone has been completely
| unresponsive to requests of various kinds, isn't doing
| good (if any) work, etc. My sense is that a PIP, in this
| case, is a reluctant last resort after months of this--
| and hardly ever works.
| antihero wrote:
| I got on a (non-Amazon) PIP once for not turning up on many
| Mondays to many times, and would have passed it (all I had
| to do was turn up every day I was scheduled to work for a
| month) but failed because I didn't turn up on NYE (mate
| convinced me to "stay for one" at Scala) one day before my
| PIP was supposedly over in the new year (totally my fault).
|
| I feel it would have been possible to work my way out of
| it, I think different companies use them in different ways.
|
| Ah well, most of the team got poached by Revolut anyway. I
| find WFH suits me a lot better because as long as I can go
| to stand up after a heavy weekend (which is a lot easier if
| you can do it from home) and then achieve above and beyond
| the rest of the week, there's a lot less anxiety.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I had a friend who was put on a PIP at a smallish company.
| Company had 200+ people, but this satellite office in a
| different state had about... 8-10, and was run more or less
| by a single guy. He put my friend on a PIP - which was
| just... strange, because they'd sort of built up that
| office on their own initially just the 2 of them, then it
| grew a bit more. He PIPs he, then _leaves_ a couple weeks
| later, and no one had any idea how to handle this dangling
| PIP. IIRC the company just erased it, and she was there for
| another couple of years after that, with no issues (other
| than bad pay and shrinking office size).
| peakaboo wrote:
| Soul searching is easy. The only people who put up with
| that shit are people who don't feel good enough, so they
| are begging their master like a dog to please, please like
| them!!
|
| The cure? Don't allow corporations to set your value,
| specially not mad and crazy corporations like amazon and
| space penis.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Some people are genuinely hired above their level or have
| been coasting so long the don't realize they are
| coasting, and so there are legitimate uses for PIPs. That
| being said, I hear it's a perverse shadow of that at
| companies like Amazon that use _quotas_ to go looking for
| reasons to fire people.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience, some people can be really oblivious.
| I've seen past situations where a company didn't have a
| formal PIP process, but it was blatantly obvious to
| everyone concerned--except apparently the person
| themselves--that they just couldn't do the job and were a
| massive time suck on others and weren't improving in
| spite of all sorts of attempts to help them. And they
| were totally shocked when they were fired "out of the
| blue."
| hvs wrote:
| Performance Improvement Plan. Basically, a fancy way for a
| company to say they tried to help you improve before firing
| you.
| [deleted]
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Paid interview preparation (time). Only slightly joking
| stuaxo wrote:
| This explains a lot about why Amazon services are like they
| are.
| costcofries wrote:
| You and me both! I made it to the round of in-person interviews
| when I was pursuing a principal pm role. 5 hours of back to
| back interviews, expressionless faces, repeated questions and
| almost zero eye-contact.
|
| I am not certain what they were going for, though I can tell
| you I left knowing that even if I had gotten an offer, there
| was no way in hell I'd be accepting. It's obvious there are
| some very successful (happy?) amazon people (amazonians?) but
| no thank you, I enjoy living.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > asking a person who has no clue what they are doing to
| deliver critical work
|
| ... as fast as possible, whether it actually works in all cases
| or not. As Dilbert says "our boss can't judge the quality of
| our work, but he knows when it's late".
| pjbeam wrote:
| 10 months in the pit is no joke. I'm on 13 and often wonder how
| I made it this far.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| I have a friend who lasted more than 2 years which amazed me
| but then his compensation _went_down_ because of Amazon's
| crazy comp structure works.
|
| I have another friend who was offered a job there and turned
| them down, then the hiring manager fired back with "Oh c'mon,
| you just have to last a year here and then you can put Amazon
| on your resume" which is hilarious and totally fucked up.
|
| "We aren't going to pretend that you will actually like
| working here but if you suffer for about a year, it's gonna
| do wonders for attracting future employers"
|
| I often wonder if Amazon wouldn't actually be more successful
| if they treated their people better. I think there's a strong
| sentiment of Emperor Bezos' New Clothes and survivorship bias
| that has Amazon leadership convinced that being evil bastards
| is the only reason/way the company can be successful.
| pjbeam wrote:
| There's a built in assumption of stock growth in the grant
| they give you, and after year 2 the bonus dries up so it's
| your base of 160 + whatever the equity is. Year 2 -> 3 comp
| drop is not uncommon.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| >he came back from parental leave and his direct reports had
| all been put on a PIP while he was out
|
| Wow. It's really difficult to imagine a likely scenario where
| that's justified.
| pyrale wrote:
| Imagine getting fired because your manager is on a leave and
| their manager sees you as free real estate.
| paganel wrote:
| Tells a lot about company politics. Often times I'm left
| wondering how come capitalism still survives.
|
| Actually, writing this down made me think that big
| companies (like the FAANG mostly are) are quite anti-
| capitalistic. I'm not sure how to call them, because sure
| as hell they're not socialist or anything of the sorts, but
| it's reasonably clear that many of the theoretical
| capitalistic principles that many of us know in one way or
| another do not apply to these economic entities.
| kfarr wrote:
| Maybe more medieval: building up fiefdoms, power,
| resources, etc
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Oligarchic. (Internal) Leaders who run successful
| businesses call the shots for everyone.
| pc86 wrote:
| They had a quota to fill, and they didn't know or didn't like
| anyone on that team.
|
| Not that that is a justification, but it's almost certainly
| the _reason_.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| A quota of people who needed to be on PIPs? That's insane.
| pas wrote:
| Keep the blood fresh. The slowest/oldest/worst 10% has to
| go! Stack ranking is the best!
| monetus wrote:
| Almost all casual retail jobs in my area operate like
| this. It is somewhat stunning when you compare them to
| national chains not using localized labor practices.
| twiddling wrote:
| and if a mgr is not there to defend his team...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| From what I hear, Amazon is incredibly uneven in org quality,
| so it is really possible your friend got unlucky. My wife works
| at Amazon and seems to have a pretty good balance and has good
| things to say about her work environment, but she is not a SWE
| (rather a designer). Still, I don't think I would ever work
| there without a lot of careful research about the group I was
| going into.
| taurath wrote:
| This is what they always say but they never say which orgs
| are good or bad. When you're a candidate you are rolling the
| dice
| Xeronate wrote:
| You can just search Blind to figure out which orgs are good
| or bad. I work at Music and it's great.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > When you're a candidate you are rolling the dice
|
| Ya, and the recruiters always try to get you into what
| sound like would be the worst orgs (I would guess positions
| in good orgs are "known" about outside of what the
| recruiters are trying to fill).
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Perhaps every other org is a good one.
|
| ---
|
| "I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said.
| "Two pence a week, and jam every other day."
|
| Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want
| you to hire me - and I don't care for jam."
|
| "It's very good jam," said the Queen.
|
| "Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
|
| "You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said.
| "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never
| jam to-day."
|
| "It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," Alice objected.
|
| "No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day:
| to-day isn't any other day, you know."
|
| "I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully
| confusing!"
| xtracto wrote:
| This is perfect :) . I am as illiterate as one can be,
| but loved this reference.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| It's even cleverer than that - it's also a reference on
| latin conjugations builtin to the Queen's joke. Carroll
| was a smart cookie.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It's wild. I did more than 4 years across three teams, left,
| boomeranged, and quit after three months.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I 've never seen him so happy._
|
| I've shared about how I was forced into early retirement, in
| 2017. I had tried getting another job, after leaving my
| company, but no one would even talk to me (I won't go into
| why).
|
| It absolutely _infuriated_ me. It was humiliating and scary. I
| decided that I didn 't really need to be patronized and
| insulted anymore, and just gave up.
|
| But I was quite able to stand on my own. I didn't need the
| money; just the work.
|
| After over four years of working (harder than I ever did, as a
| corporate shill) for a nonprofit (and learning new stuff), I
| can't see myself ever going back to the rat race.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| > I bag on Amazon a lot on here (which if I were to review with
| my therapist is likely because I had an absolutely HORRENDOUS
| experience in an interview loop with them my first step out of
| college that still makes me nervous in interviews, even 15
| years later).
|
| Hey, I had a similar experience with Google! It was my first
| technical interview for my first job out of college. The
| interviewer laughed at my code, and then after going through
| the logic said "Wow I can't believe this actually works."
|
| Personal grievances aside, I've come to think that the Leetcode
| interview style has morphed from a "let's see how you handle
| problems at scale" test into an ego-driven hazing ritual. My
| biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring
| candidates who have months of free time to memorize arbitrary
| logic puzzles. It makes me sad for the less privileged
| candidates who might be working a job while also trying to
| break into the IT field.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| There is nothing worse than being laughed at in an interview.
| stayfrosty420 wrote:
| > Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have
| months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles
|
| I agree to some extent but moreso, I think it heavily favours
| those with a theoretical CS background, which means
| effectively you are favouring candidates from top colleges in
| a round about way.
| mk89 wrote:
| I honestly don't believe it has anything to do with the
| college level.
|
| No offense, but you study python, learn its basic syntax +
| "algorithm design" book + 1 practical book about algorithms
| and data structures and you're good enough for performing
| good/optimal leetcodes.
|
| Some things you might miss, for example some exercises you
| can optimize better if you know some algebra/maths, but 90%
| of that stuff is more or less repetitive. Once you learn
| the tricks etc, it really becomes repetitive because
| finally it's just if/else and for loops. (I don't mean to
| minimize in any way the effort it takes to make such
| exercises, it's just the feeling I had while doing some and
| _failing a lot of them_ ).
|
| It's always about specializing one or two specific
| algorithms you have found in the book[s]. Sometimes it
| requires coming up with very creative ideas - better for
| loops. :)
|
| For me Leetcodes are not per se bad. I still learnt
| something from "being forced" to do them which I probably
| wouldn't have done if i hadn't been forced. What I despise
| is the fact that companies have lost accountability in
| hiring. It's hard to interview, so it's better to rely on
| an "industry standard" - after all Amazon and Google do the
| same, so why shouldn't we?
| lumost wrote:
| Anecdotally, LC interviews are hardest when you're mid-career
| and get easier over time. As the main difference between a
| junior engineer and a mid/senior engineer is whether they can
| work autonomously, and an engineer with 3 years of experience
| rarely has good datapoints for invention/difficult projects.
| The only way companies have found to differentiate a strong
| hire from a no hire is by asking harder leetcode questions
| and expecting perfection.
|
| As you get to more senior levels it seems like companies
| still expect you to do passably well on those questions - but
| make their decision based on other data-points such as
| impact/past projects etc.
| majormajor wrote:
| I would love to know how long the average FANG dev spent on
| leetcode practice before their interviews. From my small
| sample of friends who've done stints there, it's far less
| than "months". I similarly have had - but declined - an offer
| from one of them with prep measured in "hours" not "days."
| [deleted]
| smilekzs wrote:
| Survivor bias alert: These people have all passed the
| interviews.
|
| I wonder if this is an intended side-effect, namely also
| filtering out people who would have passed if only they did
| rote memorization instead of actually mastering the CS
| fundamentals.
| Clubber wrote:
| >an ego-driven hazing ritual
|
| Last time I did an interview where this wasn't the case was
| 1998. Granted I don't really interview anymore.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I've never had an interview like this. Get out of SV if you
| don't want to play those games.
| Clubber wrote:
| This was in a mid-sized town. The main guy who was hazing
| was only mid-level talented, and was very insecure about
| it. On the other side of the table, I've never seen
| someone who I considered a high-level talent act that
| way. They may have tough questions but they certainly
| aren't pricks about it.
|
| This was a long time ago, I get work through my network
| now, interviews consist of going to lunch and shooting
| the shit.
| eecc wrote:
| Except, plenty of wannabe IT departments that want to
| "hire then best of breed" and start copycatting/aping
| these gestures. It's a global Cargo Cult
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > The interviewer laughed at my code, and then after going
| through the logic said "Wow I can't believe this actually
| works."
|
| OK, not professional, and fair grounds for deciding you don't
| want to work there (interviews are as much for you to
| evaluate the employer as they are for the employer to
| evaluate you) but.... have a bit of a thicker skin. Carrying
| something like that for 15 years instead of immediately
| dismissing it as the commentary of an asshole is just no way
| to go through life.
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| One interview is not a large sample size, but considering
| the profile of some people that work for big tech as a red
| flag, I totally understand why OP would part away.
| geodel wrote:
| > It makes me sad for the less privileged candidates who
| might be working a job while also trying to break into the IT
| field.
|
| Very good point. I didn't really think about it much before.
| It is even difficult for candidates who are in IT field but
| not in FAANG type companies.
| majormajor wrote:
| Now imagine if instead of coding exercises we had the
| interview process from other industries that weighs degree
| and past experience more heavily in the absence of any
| other sort of testing. What would it look like to break in
| then? Completing a BS in your spare time?
|
| EDIT: Most ideas I've seen about replacement for live
| coding - like take home projects or contract-to-hire - are
| not really any more friendly to people with busy schedules
| anyway.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| The craziest part of tech interviews for me is the way
| its just accepted that you do it this way regardless of
| how long someone has been in the industry.
|
| If companies were grilling people new to the career
| trying to figure out if they could FizzBuzz their way out
| of wet paper bag (I realize some can't) it would be one
| thing. Without a track record you don't have much to go
| on, but the fact that you can work in the industry for
| decades, ship well-received products people have heard
| of, have a long list of references willing to verify that
| you were instrumental in shipping those products, and a
| lot of companies still expect you to jump through
| "reverse this string in place" type code puzzles seems
| kinda bonkers to me... but a lot of the industry just
| accepts that This Is The Way.
|
| You _can_ bypass this with direct personal connections of
| course, but its weird to me that so many companies put
| effectively 0 weight into prior easy to verify
| accomplishments if the people looking to hire don 't know
| the person on a personal level.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or how impressive their GitHub is.
|
| Or another mostly (rightfully so IMO) choice you see
| here. Set a low bar to hiring but have a probationary
| period after which you fire a notable percentage.
| asiachick wrote:
| You still have to decide who gets the probationary period
| and who doesn't. To figure that out you still have to do
| interviews and filter. Probationary periods don't solve
| anything except it makes it easier to fire people before
| the end is over.
| majormajor wrote:
| Yeah probationary period would be great for companies,
| _maybe_ better for people trying to break into industry
| (unless they can 't fired and can't get their old job
| back), and not so good for most people already in the
| industry.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Depends on how motivated you are to to your current job. On
| _two_ occasions I 've witnessed a fellow developer mentally
| check themselves out after a round of layoffs, start doing
| the minimal amount of work necessary, and then spending the
| rest of their time cracking coding problems. When the next
| round of layoffs came, they were gone to Amazon and Google.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Where are they now?
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Sorry if I was a bit ambiguous. They are at Amazon and
| Google now. The point is treat your staff well or they
| might spend their time between tasks prepping for a FAANG
| interview.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > I've come to think that the Leetcode interview style has
| morphed from a "let's see how you handle problems at scale"
| test into an ego-driven hazing ritual.
|
| I'm 48 and I've been a software developer a long time. The
| technical interview at many companies has been an ego-driven
| hazing ritual my entire career, well before Leetcode even
| existed.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Interestingly, my partner just went through the interview
| process at both Amazon and Google. The Amazon process was
| horrendous, with an insulting "good cop/bad cop" series of
| interviews. It was a relief when they decided not to move
| forward as the process was enough to know they'd be horrible
| to work for. The Google process was great, productive, and
| generated excitement about working for them. In the end they
| offered the job but couldn't make the compensation quite
| work. But they walked away on good terms.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have
| months of free time to memorize arbitrary logic puzzles
|
| Finding people who are willing to spend months in order to
| get the job is one of the biggest reasons companies use
| leetcode.
| Salgat wrote:
| I just wish companies that didn't have the applicant pool
| of a FAANG company understood this. Leetcode for your
| average dev company is a great way to lose a massive
| portion of the qualified talent pool. I can guarantee
| almost every SaaS developer never touches dynamic
| programming beyond simple memoization, yet its tested so
| much. You might as well test a French Cuisine Chef on how
| well his Chinese cooking is.
| endymi0n wrote:
| > You might as well test a French Cuisine Chef on how
| well his Chinese cooking is.
|
| A way more apt comparison would be evaluating him on his
| knive sharpening skills.
| djrogers wrote:
| Err, no. Being able to sharpen one's own knives is a
| basic skill that every professional chef learns early.
| Having a sharp knife isn't an ego-driven showoff move,
| it's critically important.
| ksdale wrote:
| As someone who knows nothing about being a professional
| chef, it surprises me to discover that a professional
| chef wouldn't be very comfortable sharpening knives!
| jonny_eh wrote:
| And if they couldn't sharpen a knife? Would you still
| trust them to cook a 5 course dinner?
| jedberg wrote:
| Sure. Just like I trust race car drivers to drive even
| though they don't know how to fix the car. As long as
| they understand the basics of how the car parts interact,
| they'll be just fine driving it.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Good race car drivers actually know how car works and I
| bet can fix many things. Race car drivers take the car to
| the limit and understanding how car works is competitive
| advantage - they can help mechanics tune the car, can
| diagnose problems that show up only at high speed,
| understand pro/cons of different suspesions and how they
| work, etc.
|
| On the other hand typical Uber driver does not need to
| know anything about the car other than what pedals are
| for and you turn the wheel to steer. If he tries to take
| the car to the limit, he probably gets 1 star rating from
| scared passenger. No need to know how car works.
|
| You decide whether Google engineers are more like race
| car drivers or Uber drivers.
| OJFord wrote:
| But in practice, a good one probably won't _let_ anyone
| else sharpen their knives, nevermind be unable to do it.
|
| It'd be a bit like 'someone else has set up a software
| development environment for you, now write some code' I
| suppose.
| [deleted]
| Elof wrote:
| As someone who has worked in professional kitchens, I can
| say that any professional chef that isn't comfortable
| sharpening their own knives isn't there because they love
| cooking. All of the ones I know take great pride in their
| knives.
| baremetal wrote:
| Im not a professional cook, but i do cook most all my
| meals.
|
| I make my own knives.
| Elof wrote:
| I think a more apt comparison would be to tell a
| classically trained English speaking chef to write out
| obscure recipes in French
| ljm wrote:
| The HN Law of Analogical Accuracy: for each attempt at an
| analogy, an attempt at a more accurate yet more abstract
| analogy exists in a reply.
| [deleted]
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I've never used Leetcode, but it keeps coming up here. I've
| been interviewer a lot lately and I keep trying to find
| ways to filter _out_ the candidates that care more about
| interview prep than solving real problems.
|
| Is this a nonstandard perspective?
| aspaceman wrote:
| I think it's pretty common at small to mid sized
| companies + startups. Your more "trendy" companies and
| your F500 companies do the type of Leetcode interview you
| hear everyone on HN complain about.
|
| It typically looks like a 15 minute phone interview with
| HR, followed by a lengthy Leetcode/ take home exam
| (that's auto graded, no humans), a computer form where
| you input your school, GPA, and courses taken
| (seriously). All of this info gets turned into a number
| and then HR takes a sample of the top X and hands it to
| the hiring manager: "Here are the 'viable' candidates".
|
| The hiring manager then has to (basically) interview the
| candidate themselves. Ensure they actually have the
| skills for the position, determine their interest in the
| role, etc. So this is probably what you're doing right
| now. Just imagine someone filtered a bunch of your
| resumes first.
|
| Take with a grain of salt, but I have heard of some folks
| explicitly getting permission to do hiring outside of HR
| at said large companies. The kids they get out of
| undergrad and through HR's Leetcode process are
| apparently complete garbage. Don't understand C,
| pointers, memory, or Linux at all. Don't even know what
| files are.
| autokad wrote:
| to get around to the algorithmic portion of the interview
| process (filling out your GPA and hoping for a recruiter
| call), try reaching out to the recruiters directly. they
| only go to that pool when their existing leads runs dry,
| and they'd often love the opportunity to add some self
| motivated candidates.
|
| How I got my job is I searched linkedIn for <company
| name> + recruiter and just added all of them. That alone
| generated lots of recruiter calls. This was 2018, not
| sure if things have changed
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think Leetcode is a pretty decent way to filter for
| people who work hard and have at least decent critical
| thinking skills. I guess FAANGs have concluded 1. it's
| easier to test for those qualities than it is to test for
| engineering skills 2. those are the qualities that make a
| good developer.
| rzz3 wrote:
| I don't think it's problems represent the problems we
| solve in the real world at all.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| That's not the point though. Leetcode can't figure out if
| you're able to do the work today. I think FAANG believes
| it can figure out whether they'll be able to train you to
| do the work.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Candidates are taught by peers and previous experience
| what to expect in interviews. It wouldn't take more than
| 1 or 2 failed leetcode interviews for me to start
| spending significant time on 'em.
|
| I don't know if it's fair to say the candidates care more
| about prep than solving real problems if they're just
| reacting to what at least some employers are expecting.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I've been doing technical interviews for decades and have
| gotten good feedback from candidates about my technique.
| I have a small number of questions that are nearly
| impossible to have prepared for - one for instance is
| finding the median in a large dataset using map reduce.
| The question is open enough there's a lot of solutions
| that are expensive, a lot that are dead ends, and one
| that's pretty clever. The key is I let them investigate
| different possible solutions and give them guidance as
| they butt against expensive or impractical solutions and
| guide them to the answers I've heard over the years that
| work best. Because I ask the same questions over and over
| again I can tell how people treat the problem and try to
| solve it. But since it's not a typical interview question
| no one is prepared to answer it off the cuff. Ultimately
| my goal is to assess whether the candidate can understand
| the problem, understand dead ends when I point it out,
| understand how to pivot to another approach, and
| understand how to interpret hints in a positive
| direction. IMO these are the important skills for a
| professional problem solver working in a team.
|
| I wouldn't use automated screening tools. These tools
| select for irrelevant criteria in my opinion, and are
| mostly useful if as an interviewer you're too lazy or too
| incompetent to formulate your own questions that tell you
| whether a person can solve problems and interact well in
| a group problem solving situation. But I'm an oldster so
| YMMV.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It depends on what kind of people you're trying to hire.
|
| If you want button-pushers who will keep their heads down
| and do exactly what they're told, even if it doesn't make
| sense or is detrimental to the company, then leetcode is
| a good way to find those people.
|
| If you want actual human beings who are able to think
| abstractly, critically, and contribute to the team and
| help the company grow, then look for people who have been
| working long enough to know that leetcode is a dead end.
| cjsplat wrote:
| The stuff tested by a coding interview won't get to staff
| level or beyond. Cross functional understanding, product
| or technology insights, strategic thinking, etc. are
| necessary.
|
| Lots of people who come up through the ranks only know
| how to do coding interviews - coding is what they do in
| their job, it was the interview they passed and it is
| what they know in depth. These are also the people
| confused about why their careers stall.
|
| I never used coding for interviews at Google - even for
| junior engineers I wanted to see if they understood
| issues beyond their fingertips. Of course there was
| always a coding interview or two, so that base was
| covered.
| asiachick wrote:
| > I never used coding for interviews at Google
|
| Can you explain? AFAIK Google has a set criteria for
| engineering interviews. 2-3 coding, 1 design, 1 something
| else. AFAIK if you get asked to do a coding interview you
| have to ask coding questions. The people who review your
| interview would not find it acceptable to not do it.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, he did say:
|
| > ego-driven hazing ritual
|
| :-)
| samstave wrote:
| The worst "Biggest Swingin' Dick on Campus" ego-fest I
| have ever experienced was working at the F in FAANG...
|
| --
|
| Such a den of.... you can fill in the rest...
|
| I know someone who was literally fired for being "too
| social" -- and all they did was participate in the stupid
| parties that were had like "Build you're departments
| happy hour bar, here is $400 for alcohol to stock it
| up!!"
| garbagecoder wrote:
| I had a few FAANG+M people join my (reserve) unit in the
| army doing cyber and 6-shop stuff who thought they were
| hot shit. Some actually were, but the mentality was
| universal regardless of ability.
| tiredofU2 wrote:
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Finding hard workers isn't easy. Leetcode is not a bad
| way to do it. It's not a great way, but it works and more
| importantly it scales well to the organization level.
| wallscratch wrote:
| > My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically
| favoring candidates who have months of free time to [...]
|
| Wouldn't this be true of almost any other selective interview
| process?
| ghaff wrote:
| No. An interview process can be very selective without
| really requiring prep beyond studying up on the company
| somewhat--and maybe not really even that to the degree
| you're already familiar with the company.
|
| Not a developer (though was an engineer) but I've never
| studied for an interview beyond maybe spending an evening
| reading up on a company. But, to be honest, the (few) jobs
| I've had over the past 20 years or so have always come
| through knowing people.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Some people use algorithms daily, or went to school for
| them, and don't need to study for leetcode. Likewise,
| some people do architecture or frontend apps all day and
| don't need to study for _those_. No matter what a company
| asks, some people will find it unreasonable, at the end
| of the day the charitable interpretation is that the
| company is choosing interview challenges that they feel
| are a proxy for the skills needed to succeed.
| eecc wrote:
| Well, as a contractor/consultant it's such a waste of time
| when a company flips the Codility card. I simply walk away,
| it's not worth the effort for a 6mo-1yr gig.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically
| favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize
| arbitrary logic puzzles.
|
| For me, leetcode is basically just what is taught at
| university level. So they're hiring people based on if they
| know stuff they would learn and forget from university.
|
| The thing is, it's not about having free time, it's about
| being so dedicated to getting the job that you'll spend ages
| learning things you would never do during your day job and if
| you did do them during your day job you would be considered a
| cowboy because there are predefined libraries that are
| optimised to do those things.
|
| For me, the main reason I don't want to work for FAANG is
| they have a reputation for long hours and that the hardest
| thing at the companies is the interview process.
| ss108 wrote:
| > For me, the main reason I don't want to work for FAANG is
| they have a reputation for long hours
|
| I thought working at Google or Facebook was supposed to be
| a pretty chill "rest and vest" situation, esp at the former
| (?)
| Xeronate wrote:
| You are misinformed if you think Facebook is a rest and
| vest company. Google and Microsoft maybe.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| My experience is that it can be pretty chill if you're
| happy with your level, but if you're going for a promo
| you need to work super hard
| rhizome wrote:
| My understanding (at least where Google is concerned) is
| that it's a jungle situation and there's a lot of team-
| hopping and connection-making until you find a place to
| land for awhile. That may be where R&V comes into the
| picture, maybe some people are able to negotiate a less
| stressful First Act, and possibly most likely, maybe my
| understanding is out of date.
|
| Remember, with the kinds of education people have at
| these companies coupled with the amounts of money they
| are receiving, "the bullied become the bullies" is a
| serious occupational hazard.
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| YMMV. From what I hear from my Googler friends, It's all
| about the team/manager/project you land.
|
| Usually a good manager can spot pitfall projects from a
| mile away and put you on a good path to a promotion. But
| only being good is not enough, you have to work on the
| right projects, have the right results and the right
| visibility. If those variables are not there you _may_ go
| through a downward spiral that ends up in a PIP.
| autokad wrote:
| > "My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically
| favoring candidates who have months of free time to memorize
| arbitrary logic puzzles. It makes me sad for the less
| privileged candidates who might be working a job while also
| trying to break into the IT field."
|
| I told google that this style of interviewing is
| discriminatory, especially towards people with families, or
| other commitments. Never got another call for an interview
| since ^_^
| rjzzleep wrote:
| When Amazon reached out to me I told them happy to talk to
| them, but I don't do coding tests. No response since then.
| I think it was a friends recommendation though, so in
| hindsight, maybe I should have at least listened.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I told one that I am a human being, not a circus animal
| here to do tricks, and if they want me to do live coding,
| they'd have to pay me for my time.
|
| Same result as you: The recruiters stopped bothering me.
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| the best part is that when you're done with the on-site you
| get a survey with a question like "do you think google's
| making the world a better place?" hah
|
| personally I think they do make some pretty cool things
| here and there but they do have very pretentious vibe all
| throughout
|
| the phase of technology that they own/owned is nearing end
| soon anyway
| sharkweek wrote:
| Yeah my entire experience could be summed up by saying
| everyone who sat across the table from me that day (with one
| exception, one person was super nice), was trying to prove
| that I was too dumb to work among the likes of them.
|
| This was in 2004 though so maybe that has changed but it
| certainly stuck with me.
| pram wrote:
| A couple years ago I turned down an offer at AWS as a Solutions
| Architect. The same day I did that, the hiring managers director
| requested that I speak with him. He was basically selling the job
| and saying what a mistake it was to turn it down. It felt really
| high pressure!
|
| I've literally never had that happen in my life. Most companies
| just immediately ghost me if I turn down an offer. This isn't
| covert bragging about being some kind of superstar either, it
| just felt like they were desperate. I know all the horror stories
| about people getting PIPs, it kinda started feeling like some
| kind of trap lol
| alexitosrv wrote:
| I just started an application with them also for a Solutions
| Architect role, I even have a scheduled technical interview in
| a couple of weeks. Wondering if I should go through. Really
| don't like what I am finding here, but not sure if it's just a
| biased thread where people which love their jobs are not here
| defending AWS or if it's truly a dysfunctional org in that
| area, or too team dependent (which is a lottery then).
|
| Is it anything good of working at AWS?
| pinewurst wrote:
| I had that happen once - not at Amazon - where the startup CEO
| kept calling me leaving increasingly angry messages for not
| talking with him post my rejection. Shudder...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > it just felt like they were desperate
|
| That's what it sounds like. I had a guy from my past (somebody
| I had worked for years ago, but didn't know that well) call me
| up out of the blue once, basically begging me to come work for
| him. I was flattered, and looking forward to (finally) being
| treated like a human being instead of a replaceable cog for
| once in my programming career, so I took the job. Good lord,
| what a mistake. The reason he was begging was because he was a
| totally abusive asshole and couldn't keep anybody for any
| amount of money. You would think that watching people come and
| go would make these people re-evaluate their approach, but in
| their minds, it's always the "peons" that are wrong.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Should have seen how much they'd be willing to increase the
| offer.
| ajkjk wrote:
| > I can't think of a single internal tool at Amazon that is
| better than a commercial counterpart.
|
| I haven't worked at Amazon in 6 years, but when I was last there,
| these tools were leaps-and-bounds above publicly-available
| equivalents:
|
| * Pipelines (CI/CD tool. Still better than all alternatives IMO,
| including the AWS offering for some reason)
|
| * Igraph (Amazingly good, wipes the floor with Grafana which I
| have used since)
|
| * TT (ticket tracker)
|
| * SIM? the new issue-management system they added to replace
| Jira. Soooo much better than Jira. But it was pretty new when I
| left so I don't know what it has become.
| cmckn wrote:
| The first time I did a CR on multiple packages at once...that's
| good shit.
| andrewguenther wrote:
| Yeah, I was pretty surprised to read this complaint, but I
| would say iGraph is actually the weakest of the bunch. Logging
| and metrics tools at Amazon leave a lot to be desired. They get
| the job done, but definitely not best in class.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well, the author sounds like they were mostly a designer, so
| maybe they didn't work with most of these.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| Agreed with everything above, with the addition of brazil. It
| was pretty fantastic to work with
| Xeronate wrote:
| Cool was hoping I wasn't the only one that thought brazil was
| awesome. I was very surprised the article mentioned internal
| tooling was bad, because I think some things are really
| great.
| EGreg wrote:
| I thought you said 10 minutes!
|
| Given today's turnover rates, this isn't even a sensation.
| [deleted]
| llimos wrote:
| Is Ben Adam your real name? Or are you referencing the Hebrew for
| "human being"?
| benadam11 wrote:
| It's my real name :)
|
| (I had thought it translated to "Son of man" which is kind of a
| beautiful way to say human being)
| donretag wrote:
| Cases like these happen at companies at all levels. Massive
| companies such as Amazon and especially at startups, where roles
| are not as defined.
|
| After only two months at my current role, I was ready to leave.
| Was catfished into a role which was not what I interviewed for.
| Management agrees that I am getting short-changed, but is
| unwilling to let me change organizations. Sadly, I continue to
| stay here, after over a year, due to the COVID closures affecting
| my plans.
| behohippy wrote:
| > Was catfished into a role which was not what I interviewed
| for
|
| Why does Amazon do this? I've bailed out 3 times on interviews
| with them now because somehow the role they sold me on end up
| being completely different by the time you talk to the team
| members doing the actual job. It's a huge time waster for
| everyone involved.
| spike021 wrote:
| Heh something similar happened to me. Recruiter reached out,
| insisted role was on a special new team in SFO. I did the
| full interview cycle (on-site in Seattle, which I later
| learned is what they do if the role is in SEA..).
|
| It was for an awesome team and org, really up and coming.
|
| I get the congrats message that I'll be getting an offer.
| Then find out it's only for SEA. This is after the recruiter
| insisted it would be SFO because I didn't want to relocate
| for various reasons.
|
| Ah so that's why they flew me to Seattle.. lol.
|
| Ended up being passed around a few orgs recruiters and took a
| role in sfo that I finally left after 20 months. Sigh.
| behohippy wrote:
| One of mine was similar. I got sold on a 100% remote role
| that turned into 9-5, 5 days a week in an office 350km away
| from where I live. I was really clear up front that
| relocation was not an option. I'm not sure if they ignored
| me, or just felt I'd be compelled to move.
| optymizer wrote:
| I was hired as an Android developer. After 1 year, my manager
| called me on a Sunday afternoon, and asked me: "do you know
| HTML?". I said: "yes, who doesn't?". On Monday I was
| transferred to the web team to work on customer retention.
|
| From the business's point of view, they were trying to plug
| an urgent hole, from my career's point of view, I wanted to
| work on mobile Android apps. I moved back to an Android team
| in a month, which required VP-level approval.
| Hadriel wrote:
| Yeah it's the same exact thing at Meta/FB lol
| oblio wrote:
| The funky thing is the different stigma attached to equivalent
| situations.
|
| You embellish your CV as an individual and you overdo it =
| possible catastrophe.
|
| Companies constantly embellishing job postings = just a regular
| Tuesday.
|
| I'm having a really hard time remembering a job where the job
| descriptions really matched the day to day activities, and I've
| worked for ~10 companies, big and small, from Asia, Europe,
| America.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I finally started just marking their recruiter emails as spam. I
| still get a couple a month despite asking them to stop. I
| interviewed for them a few years back and it was clear then that
| they are looking for people that are technically smart but total
| pushovers. If you are the type of person that are susceptible to
| abusive relationships then you'd fit right in. The sad part is
| many of their employees prob feel lucky to be in that situation.
| If you know your own worth you would not work for them and if you
| believe in treating humans with respect and dignity you'd
| definitely not work for them. I got a sense of a complete lack of
| ethics.
| delecti wrote:
| What filter rules do you use for that? As a frequent Amazon
| customer I wouldn't want to accidentally filter things I want
| to receive.
|
| My recruiter strategy has just been to reply with a direct "Hi
| <name>, No thank you." that doesn't leave room for foot-in-the-
| door.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I just routinely do a cursory glance of my spam folder, but
| so far no issues. I am guessing it doesn't do much but I like
| to think if enough people flag them as spam that they then
| get marked as spam throughout Gmail.
| nostrebored wrote:
| This is explicitly the opposite of what the interviews look
| for. If you are a pushover you will not have the disagree and
| commit, dive deep, and ownership lp stories you need.
|
| I've done quite a few interviews for Amazon and the debrief was
| never 'this person has strong opinions, not inclined'. If
| you're not interested in getting the data to prove or disprove
| your opinions then that will count against you.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I glanced through the leadership principles and laughed a bit. I
| feel sorry for the people who think they have to put up with that
| bullshit.
|
| It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as
| possible, that's the single reason those principles exist. To
| make specially young and clueless employees forget it's just a
| job, because hey, it must be an obsession!
|
| If you are young, this may seem normal i guess but I would never
| ever touch amazon.
| NotVerstappen wrote:
| Leadership principles feature in normal employee life in
| exactly two circumstances: when you are doing interview loops,
| and when you need to win an argument, eg with some jobsworth
| sales person who wants you to over-promise to a customer.
| munchler wrote:
| As another old guy: Amen. I love being productive, but hate
| being pressured. All these FAANG jobs sound like the opposite.
| No thanks.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| Current Amazon employee here.
|
| > It all boils down to making the employees working as hard as
| possible
|
| This has not been my experience. The way I've looked at it as,
| these are more explicit ground rules for how decisions are
| made. At most other places I've worked, the mechanisms for
| making decisions was often quite arbitrary, and boiling down to
| whatever the most senior person in the room wants. When the
| Leadership Principles are done well, you'll see there are
| checks and balances built in. For example: yes, we have
| "customer obsession," and we try to work hard for customers,
| but if my boss told me to work unreasonable hours, he would
| fail in the "Earn Trust" area, and he would be in danger of
| losing his team.
|
| I've found my work-life balance at Amazon to be pretty
| reasonable, and much better than pretty much any where else
| I've worked.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| There's actually a more specific leadership principle right
| now for bad managers "strive to be the world's best employer"
| batmaniam wrote:
| The article mentions aggressive delivery dates, conflicting goals
| between different departments that get in the way of career
| progression, and massive amounts of stress as being 'normal' at
| Amazon.
|
| And we already know that Amazon exploits and over-exerts their
| employees in other divisions, like warehouse.
|
| At what point do we say enough is enough? Amazon warehouse
| employees are already pushing for better working conditions
| through Unions. When will we finally realize that Amazon is
| equally over-working everyone and join that solidarity effort so
| that everyone's working environment becomes better? Quitting
| doesn't change anything, we can see they just rehire and
| perpetuate bad culture. Even the author of the article says just
| that; he was hired to replace someone.
|
| If nothing changes, your friends and colleagues (and your future
| children if they do engineering) will all still suffer at the
| hands of Amazon. And believe me, their work culture will bleed
| out to other companies. I've seen it.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| By that logic won't the company just destroy itself from the
| inside out eventually? How many people who read this article
| and the likely scores more or bothered to look at glassdoor
| will bother to apply or accept a recruiter call? Eventually
| something breaks internally and the company is destroyed
| (albeit likely a very slow death) or it gets fixed. I don't
| worry a ton about HQ people, most of those can get other jobs
| but the warehouse workers in small towns without other
| opportunities, that's a tougher one and I hope that they are
| able to unionize or get some sort of strengthened protections
| themselves or through the gov.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> If nothing changes, your friends and colleagues (and your
| future children if they do engineering) will all still suffer
| at the hands of Amazon. And believe me, their work culture
| will bleed out to other companies. I've seen it.
|
| > By that logic won't the company just destroy itself from
| the inside out eventually?
|
| Yes, but it usually takes an unacceptably long time for
| something like that to happen, and in the mean time a lot of
| people get hurt. As they say "in the long run, we're all
| dead": it doesn't do us much good if letting the problems
| work themselves out means we'll never live to see the
| solution.
| exolymph wrote:
| > If nothing changes, your friends and colleagues (and your
| future children if they do engineering) will all still suffer
| at the hands of Amazon.
|
| ????? it's super possible to simply not work there
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Why do we have to have "solidarity" on this issue? What does
| that even mean in practice? Everyone knows the deal with Amazon
| or learns very quickly, and either deals with it or quits.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I also left Amazon after ~10mo. I've written about this
| elsewhere, but the short version is:
|
| * New manager who was a nice guy but didn't help me or other
| folks onboard
|
| * A skip-level (who I expected would be my direct) manager who
| was about as hands-off as could be and seemed interested in
| building his own empire.
|
| * SDE3 who was nominally my mentor but was less than useless. I
| asked him to whiteboard our services, and he said he "didn't
| know" what we owned. I asked him for help configuring a monitor
| for a service, and he said he couldn't figure it out while
| _literally_ backing away from my desk slowly.
|
| * A culture within our team in which no one was willing or able
| to help others out. It was very much every man for himself.
|
| I GTFO of there and have been happy across the lake since. Paying
| back my signing bonus was well worth the significant reduction in
| stress and quality of life.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Friend is a recruiter at that company across the lake and says
| she reaches out to Amazon folks when they hit the 1 and 2 year
| marks a lot - says she gets relatively higher response rates
| than industry standards when she does that.
| telotortium wrote:
| What's the company across the lake - Microsoft?
| easton wrote:
| Assuming the lake is Lake Washington, it looks like it.
| davidsawyer wrote:
| Almost surely
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| was the sde3 just faking ignorance so he didn't have to help
| you out?
| rjbwork wrote:
| Possibly making sure that GP was at the bottom of the stack
| rank and looking out for his own neck.
| mynameisash wrote:
| That's what I assume his motives were.
| analognoise wrote:
| Oof that sounds super devious.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Not really. It's just a human responding to the
| incentives they're given. When management creates poor
| incentive structures, they get poor behavior, which
| drives poor outcomes.
|
| As they say - the problem with incentives is that they
| work.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Or to say a different way - don't hate the player, hate
| the game.
| franczesko wrote:
| Ex-Amazon. Lasted 2 years. I'll just repeat the comment I posted
| the other day:
|
| There are only two instances when you're happy at Amazon - when
| you start and when you quit. Doing the latter was the best
| decision I made, perhaps, in my entire career. I can honestly
| tell that those RSUs and bonuses weren't worth it.
|
| Avoid at all costs. You've been warned.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that a few of the people I know how
| were AWS "long haulers" are massive assholes. It's almost like
| the kind of person who makes it there is not the kind of person
| I want as a colleague.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| Always interesting to see comments from people who worked at
| Amazon. I did a stint, and I hated it, but I am always trying to
| get a read on if I was just unlucky, or if I can fairly draw a
| broader conclusion about Amazon overall.
|
| I was actually working for a company that had been acquired by
| Amazon several years earlier, and I was working on a non-feature
| team. So on the one hand, maybe my bad experience was that it
| wasn't "Amazon proper," or maybe the lesson is "be sure to work
| on software the visibly provides profit and avoid working on
| software that merely keeps the company going as a viable
| venture."
|
| OTOH, we were pretty well integrated with Amazon at this point. A
| lot of people from Amazon proper had transferred here, because it
| had a reputation as having a much better culture. The vesting
| schedule was much better, for instance. So maybe I just picked
| the wrong team -- there's probably something to the "avoid
| working in a cost-center" lesson.
|
| Then again, there's so many stories of people who have had a bad
| experience, that being "unlucky" seems to happen more often than
| seems optimal.
|
| I did learn a ton. A lot of the most valuable lessons in life
| generally come from hard experience, and work life is no
| exception. Still, I can't say I'd recommend actively _seeking
| out_ such experiences.
| uncomputation wrote:
| > It blew my mind how many business critical processes were
| managed with excel spreadsheets being shared via email chains.
|
| Enterprise work summed up in one sentence. Impressive. While I
| agree with Andreessen's "software is eating the world," it might
| be more apt to say "Excel is eating the world."
| mchaynes wrote:
| I left amazon after just under 2 years and I agree with
| everything you wrote here.
|
| You're asked to move fast but constantly delayed by every team or
| system you have to interact with. Duct tape abounds and that duct
| tape is usually "go file a ticket and wait 3 days". This made
| scoping your project really difficult. Add 2 weeks of back and
| forth for each team you had to talk with.
|
| On a more positive note, the reason I stayed was because of my
| incredible manager and team. My manager was of the best people
| I've ever worked with
| spike021 wrote:
| Huge plus one here, same situation. Except opposite situation
| with my team/manager unfortunately.
| wiremine wrote:
| This is really insightful. Makes me wonder how this compares to
| other FAANG companies. Are there other essays that capture the
| on-the-ground experiences so well?
| nostrebored wrote:
| I would tell you you're going to get the same problem
| regardless: this isn't representative and due to scale can
| never capture the on the ground experience.
|
| Amazon is the best and worst place I've worked.
| matt_s wrote:
| I worked at a large, brand name, older company and there are
| parallels. I think past some size of an organization, it turns
| into a bureaucracy to get anything done.
|
| - Internal tooling was poor and most teams DIY. Any centrally
| managed thing was horrible and either home-grown and poorly
| documented or some VP picked it and poorly documented
|
| - The companies needs superseded your career goals to the point
| that very specific trainings were basically forced even if it had
| nothing to do with what you do (six sigma)
|
| - To get anything done required 3-5 other teams to do anything
| and took forever. Turn around time to get a server spun up was
| ~6-8 weeks.
|
| One thing that was different was attrition. This was before
| remote working and when the nobody in town was hiring you really
| were stuck.
|
| I like working in smaller organizations where you can have an
| impact. I only think one of the FAANG would be worthy of me
| putting up with working in a large bureaucracy again - the other
| A - and only because I haven't heard horror stories - if you have
| them, share them.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > the other A - and only because I haven't heard horror stories
|
| Not even the horror stories leak ...
| raiflip wrote:
| "Turn around time to get a server spun up was ~6-8 weeks." ->
| ok this one threw me for a loop. I can literally get an EC2
| server spun up within minutes inside Amazon. But as others have
| stated org quality varies a lot. If you are dealing with an org
| that requires you to say at the beginning of the year exactly
| what budget you need, I could see that.
| matt_s wrote:
| This was years ago with their own data centers and yes
| budgets with server allocations at the beginning of the year
| or twice a year.
| erehweb wrote:
| "It blew my mind how many business critical processes were
| managed with excel spreadsheets being shared via email chains." -
| this also blows my mind, given how many problems there are with
| Excel (e.g. formatting).
| [deleted]
| _jal wrote:
| This is everywhere, and there is no escape.
|
| I do occasionally blow things in to Postgres for my own sanity,
| but it usually isn't worth it, and even when it is, data goes
| back out to other people in CSV.
|
| As just one example, if your secops department uses Qualys (and
| they probably do), that forces your secops department to use
| it, which means everyone who has to interact with them does.
|
| Everything about internal budgeting is a pile of spreadsheets
| that gets thrown around.
|
| Hell, when I moved one of our data centers recently, that
| process with the new DC was all all Excel sheets, despite the
| fact that we have DCIMs on both ends.
|
| There is just no escape.
| timdellinger wrote:
| The alternative is to have these business processes managed
| using internally developed software that may or may not be
| supported as time passes...
|
| excel via email might (unfortunately) very well be the more
| robust and reliable way to go here
| throwawayboise wrote:
| And with shared updatable spreadsheets (i.e. Google Sheets or
| Office 360) it's even better.
|
| SMEs are going to be way more likely to throw together a
| spreadsheet to accomplish some immediate goal than they are
| to sit down with an internal software project manager and
| spend hours educating them on the problem to be solved and
| writing "user stories"
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Business moves at the speed of now.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| This sounds like a '90s marketing meme -- do I have that
| right? I didn't enter the industry until after.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It sounded like I had heard that in a commercial when I was
| a kid, but all I could find was "move at the speed of
| business".
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ijaz9OaCo7Y
| hhpindia wrote:
| Tips to Find Best Packers and Movers in Hauz Khas Delhi for
| Local Shifting by householdpackers
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| It probably is but I mean that excel and email solve
| problems right now, despite having flaws
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| And also considering how much in house software development
| there is...
| laluser wrote:
| Yes, but you can't realistically create a web app for every
| spreadsheet that is out there. Only when it would truly add
| value to the team over the long-term, does it make sense. In
| my experience, this is done when the spreadsheet stops
| scaling to the number of people that need access to the data
| or systems that need said data.
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting, since they have Honeycode... _" Looks like a
| spreadsheet, works like a database"_
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Formatting is a very very distant minor gripe compared to what
| I think is the main reason this is a problem: versioning.
|
| That being said, if it works, it works.
|
| If it doesn't work, make a case for why and develop a
| _holistic_ understanding of the costs and benefits of changing
| the current process. Maybe you can change it, or maybe you
| learn why it doesn't change.
|
| If it works, but it offends your sensibilities, perhaps this is
| an opportunity for self-growth.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Just a note that many folks on platforms like dropbox / S3
| etc turn on versioning of excel sheets if they are in paid
| status for this exact reason. It's not perfect, but it get's
| you a lot very very easily.
|
| Version - date changed - who edited.
|
| Add in the universal flexibility (both function and who can
| use it).
|
| You can hand an excel file off to admin temp staff all the
| way to the top 3 folks in the org in one file and they can
| all interact with it successfully in most cases.
|
| This makes this very powerful.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. It's like git is baked into the file.
|
| I don't work with spreadsheets much but I completely
| understand why they're loved so much. They're data, code,
| presentation, versioning, etc. all in one file that has
| _very_ good support.
|
| Excel is for the people who want to actually get stuff done
| and find all tooling a distraction from what actually adds
| value to the company.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Excel has versioning now! But it doesn't work when people
| email around hard copies instead of links to the shared file,
| which they still constantly do. >:-O
| gopher_space wrote:
| One of the problems with Excel at scale is that different
| departments within the same organization might use
| completely different approaches. Different people in the
| same department night. When you add versioning what you may
| end up with is an out-of-date "master" that's occasionally
| updated from the spreadsheets everyone is still passing
| around via email.
|
| The email thing happens because that's how people who use
| Excel handle versioning. They'll end up with nested folders
| of emailed spreadsheets they can refer to or import into
| their personal approach. This works well for them,
| especially since they might work offline frequently.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > email around hard copies
|
| I get what you mean but...
| aerovistae wrote:
| > If it works, but it offends your sensibilities, perhaps
| this is an opportunity for self-growth.
|
| I've had to learn this lesson. We have an internal
| microservice whose name is obsolete and no longer makes any
| sense whatsoever. Everyone is confused by the name until the
| original reasoning is explained, and they come to understand
| the original purpose of the service, now long since changed.
| It drives me up the wall.
|
| I have time and time again made a case for renaming it to
| accurately represent its modern purpose, which would take an
| engineer about a week of work - there's a lot of code and
| config that has to be switched over.
|
| The person running my division has shut me down on this over
| and over. It goes like this:
|
| Manager: Why do you feel this is a priority?
|
| Me: It confuses people and makes the code less self-
| explanatory.
|
| Manager: How much time is this costing engineers?
|
| Me: Well, about a minute every time I have to explain it to
| someone once a week.
|
| Manager: And it would take a week to update? This doesn't
| seem like a good trade.
|
| Me, mentally spluttering: But the name makes no sense!! It's
| the wrong name!! It's completely unrelated and has no
| meaning!
|
| Manager: Do you think you can work with it anyway?
|
| Me: _sadly sighs_.
|
| I think the manager is right, as much as it offends my
| sensibilities.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I've been doing this stuff for almost 10 years and I
| _still_ struggle with this lesson. I think it's a good
| sign. We have a deep desire for correctness. But I think
| while it's perfectly healthy to desire correctness, we all
| need to be able to do what you've demonstrated: accept that
| sometimes correctness is not a logical endeavour.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I actually don't have this problem. A lot of things
| programmers get hung up on is just OCD stuff that don't
| actually improve anything.
|
| I once named a function
| findGreatestCommonDenominatorGCDOfFraction(numerator:
| int, denominator: int) -> int
|
| and one programmer wanted me to rename it into GCD(x, y)
| because it was more elegant. While GCD feels more elegant
| it's actually less clear and less practical. The length
| and verbosity of the function name above typically has a
| zero cost because of auto complete and other features you
| should be using in your editor.
| pkaye wrote:
| Why do you have GreatestCommonDenominator and GCD in that
| function name?
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Search. But even without search does having GCD in the
| name matter? No. It literally does not harm the program
| or understanding of the program in any way.
|
| Even so, the majority of programmers will have a tendency
| to react to this as emotionally wrong. Then they attempt
| to rationalize this explanation with some form of
| reasoning. Try to catch this in yourself as it could be
| happening Right now as you read this.
|
| You feel it's wrong but not from the composition of
| logical explanations. The feeling of wrongness forms
| first than you try to search for facts to rationalize
| your feeling.
|
| Let me be clear. There is nothing logically harmful with
| that name but most programmers feel there is. This type
| of OCD tendency accounts for about 50% requests in code
| reviews. Ultimately useless changes to satisfy some OCD
| tendency.
| monster_group wrote:
| FTA - "I was assigned to had an engineer who had never done web
| development (didn't know HTTP, HTML, CSS or Javascript)"
|
| But hey, you bet he knows topological sort and dynamic
| programming.
| [deleted]
| matt_s wrote:
| The article writer said he was in the Devices org so I would
| bet there are a huge number of hardware engineers there. That
| engineer could be very proficient with C and firmware and might
| have not touched web stuff since college, even if that was
| covered then.
|
| Really telling of an organization that your personal skills
| don't matter when they just need bodies.
| benadam11 wrote:
| Nailed it ... they were experts in firmware and systems
| programming and had never really done web development before
| (that said, they were working very hard to do a good job,
| just unfortunate that they were set up for failure in a lot
| of ways).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> (It is incredible how flexible and effective Excel is for such
| a wide variety of use-cases)_
|
| I worked for a Japanese company, and they used Excel for
| _everything_. GANTT Charts were done in Excel (not Project),
| documentation was written in Excel (not Word), etc.
|
| They had these monster 3,000-row excel punchlists for QC. If even
| one test failed, the whole shooting match was scrapped.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Oh, I forgot to mention.
|
| Slideshows were done in Excel (not PP).
| strgcmc wrote:
| I see a lot of these comments have taken to a kind of Amazon-
| bashing and venting their own experiences, where the author
| actually... didn't?
|
| I thought the author was incredibly fair/objective, and at least
| the way I read it, it wasn't so much that he had such a miserable
| experience or could only stomach 10 months of pain/abuse (in fact
| if you actually read to the end, he praises his manager, his
| teammates, etc.), and more so that it only took him 10 months to
| realize that the company culture and way-of-working was not
| aligned with his personal preferences. He does have legitimate
| complaints about parts of his experience, and makes some keen
| observations about the consequences and tradeoffs of Amazon
| choosing to adopt the culture that it does (though I also think
| he's wrong about a few things too), but overall it's less of a
| "Amazon == bad" piece and more of a "this is why it wasn't to my
| taste" reflection.
|
| Frankly, I would congratulate the author, and think of this as a
| success-story. Paraphrasing his own words, he learned a lot, met
| some good people, found some good practices that he's going to
| carry forward with him... isn't that a successful outcome (minus
| the annoyance of another round of job hunting, but hey in this
| market, another job hop is probably just an opportunity to level
| up comp, rather than an existential threat that you might be
| unemployed and starve)? Obviously the team/org he was in is
| suffering major attribution problems, and that's obviously a bad
| thing, but that's not his problem either.
|
| Note: in case it wasn't clear, I do work within Amazon, but these
| opinions are my own, not representing my employer, blah blah
| benadam11 wrote:
| Really glad it came across that way (that was definitely my
| intent).
| tucaz wrote:
| People on this forum are usually too good to find problems
| within. With folks here, usually the other party is always at
| fault.
| draw_down wrote:
| tech_tuna wrote:
| analognoise wrote:
| The company who ordered people back to the floor when a
| hurricane was coming causing their death when the building
| partially collapsed, has people pissing in bottles to meet
| insane work quotas, stack ranks employees, flys drones over
| delivery trucks to surveil drivers to ensure efficiency,
| repeatedly busts union efforts, might run through literally
| every available American because the churn at it's
| distribution centers is so high, uses its platform data to
| compete with it's suppliers, and whose founder Bezos is one
| of the richest men to ever live who built himself a literal
| space craft while income inequality is higher than during the
| French Revolution?
|
| Are you absolutely sure that there are no legitimate problems
| with Amazon, or that maybe we're a little itchy with Amazon
| for a reason?
| testudovictoria wrote:
| > The company who ordered people back to the floor when a
| hurricane was coming causing their death when the building
| partially collapsed
|
| Question about this specifically. Was it ever revealed if
| that order was to get people indoors to a reinforced
| building that happened to collapse? I remember SMS
| screenshots of a delivery driver who was killed, and to
| have sent him on the road would have been a death sentence.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| The irony-meter just exploded
| hackerlytest wrote:
| As someone who's preparing for a job interview, this post was
| revealing.
| antihero wrote:
| Ah, at least there wasn't a CCTV camera by your desk that docked
| your pay for scratching your arse :)
| matsemann wrote:
| > _When I read through they offer they were pushing aggressively
| for a start date (2 weeks from the offer)._
|
| Huh, in Norway the normal resignation period is 3 months. Maybe
| long, but goes both ways, so you always know your job isn't swept
| away from under your feet one day.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| 3 months? So if you accept an offer today, it would be
| customary to stay until April?
|
| That's incredible. How are job tenures in Norway? Where I am,
| lots of people stay 14 + or - 4 months typically.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yeah, you would start your new job at May 1st if you sent in
| your resignation during January. It's a bit long I feel, when
| I first resigned last year (in January, even), I mentally
| started to check out towards the end. A month or two is fine
| to wrap things up. But 3 months + what's left of the current
| month was a bit much. But as I said, it goes both ways, and
| it's almost impossible to get fired here, so it's worth it
| for the peace of mind knowing you'll always get paid next
| week, month etc.
|
| Where I worked before the avg employee had worked there for
| about 3-4 years, and that number was heavily influenced by
| the new hires not having had the opportunity to work that
| long yet, even. I feel that's true for many of my friends as
| well, those having switched a few jobs since graduating have
| stayed avg ~3 years.
| oblio wrote:
| In many places in Europe it's 1 month for regular roles and 2
| months for leadership.
|
| And it's 3 or 6 months for being fired.
| ithinkso wrote:
| Poland also has 3 months (on the most popular type of job
| contract). If you just joined you are on a 'test period' of
| sorts where the notice is 2 weeks and after that ends (3
| months as well I think, but maybe this may vary) you have the
| 3 months notice.
|
| Note that if both parties agree it can end sooner, they can
| also fire you straight up and forbid you working if they
| don't want you to but they still need to pay your salary for
| the entire notice period.
| exlurker wrote:
| Only if you worked for 10 years in the same company. 1 month is
| the regular for <5 years tenure. However, the employee may
| actually demand 3 months.
| clpm4j wrote:
| I've had this realization at every company I've worked for, big
| or small. Not sure why I'm still surprised by it:
|
| _" The most surprising thing I encountered when joining was how
| manual the vast majority of processes are. It blew my mind how
| many business critical processes were managed with excel
| spreadsheets being shared via email chains. It is incredible how
| flexible and effective Excel is for such a wide variety of use-
| cases."_
| tyronehed wrote:
| ryanianian wrote:
| > The churn I experienced was significant
|
| One thing I don't see mentioned enough is the forced PIP policy.
|
| Basically every manager is forced to stack-rank their entire
| team, and the bottom N percent is put on a PIP. So even if your
| entire team is comprised of very top-notch engineers you will see
| forced attrition. It also disincentivizes helping team-members in
| deep ways and incentivizes back-stabbing politics.
|
| Of course every org/VP has some latitude, but this is a common
| principle adopted by many VPs to appease the "bar raiser"
| standards as well as giving enough motivation to axe employees
| with considerable equity despite how good they may be on an
| absolute scale.
|
| This was the policy at a number of orgs when I was there 5 years
| ago, and I have heard similar stories as recently as 2019 pre-
| covid.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >Basically every manager is forced to stack-rank their entire
| team, and the bottom N percent is put on a PIP. So even if your
| entire team is comprised of very top-notch engineers you will
| see forced attrition.
|
| That sounds like a huge disincentive to mentoring and
| developing your team.
| qqtt wrote:
| > That sounds like a huge disincentive to mentoring and
| developing your team.
|
| I've heard there are huge communication issues within teams,
| thanks to policies like this. You have to look out for
| yourself first and foremost, otherwise you are up next for
| the stack ranking. Better to sabotage your team mate's
| onboarding than risk being next in line for the firing squad.
|
| It's actually worse, because it's actually a "unregretted
| attrition" (URA) quota - which Amazon HR has spent decades
| developing into a sinister fear-based culture. They have a
| secret "FOCUS list" (used to be called devlist) which
| managers don't even tell their directs they are on. A secret
| list which if employees leave while they are on it (and
| remember, they don't even know they are on it), they are
| marked as URA and cannot be re-hired. HR directs managers
| explicitly not to tell employees they are on this list. Many
| employees only find out once they try to switch teams and are
| blocked due to being on these secret lists.
|
| It fosters a culture of fear, uncertainty, and doubt -
| combine that with overly political managers fighting for
| their own lives, and Amazon can be a brutal place to work.
| The best teams are those that shield you from all these
| politics, but when push comes to shove managers are forced to
| make these URA decisions constantly.
|
| Bezos believed his employees were inherently lazy and needed
| these types of mechanisms to scare them into doing their best
| work. Now that Amazon is the size it is, you can find crazy
| and absurd anecdotes of these policies being twisted into
| some truly bizarre Kafkaesque situations - like managers
| hiring individuals solely to fill the URA quota, and team
| members sabotaging onboarding on new members to try to avoid
| the firing squads themselves.
| pb7 wrote:
| Blows my mind that there are so many people that
| voluntarily choose to join a company like this. Sounds
| completely dystopian.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| And all these sounds to me that devs at Amazon needs
| unionization rather faster than the poor workers in their
| warehouses.
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Basically every manager is forced to stack-rank their entire
| team, and the bottom N percent is put on a PIP. So even if your
| entire team is comprised of very top-notch engineers you will
| see forced attrition.
|
| I've heard this leads to a "hire to fire" strategy: managers
| hire some schmuck that's not expected to succeed in order to
| protect the rest of the team from the policy.
|
| Which is another reason I'd never touch Amazon with a ten-foot
| pole: it's not worth the risk of getting used and abused like
| that (on top of all the other issues).
| thebean11 wrote:
| Can I volunteer? I'll make it super easy to fire me and not
| even show up, just collect a paycheck for a couple weeks.
| User23 wrote:
| Six months of a six figure salary to take an on-the-job
| sabbatical sounds like a pretty good deal, from a certain
| point of view. It's a shame the hiring managers in question
| are unlikely to be transparent about the role's actual
| requirements.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Six months of a six figure salary to take an on-the-job
| sabbatical sounds like a pretty good deal, from a certain
| point of view. It's a shame the hiring managers in question
| are unlikely to be transparent about the role's actual
| requirements.
|
| I agree, but the managers are gaming the system so there's
| no way they could be transparent about it. As a new hire,
| it would be a huge punch in the gut to be setup for failure
| like this and not know it from the start.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Wow, I thought the horror stories out of MSFT had put an end to
| stack-ranking forced-PIP evaluations. It seems incredibly
| counter productive, and leads to things like hire-to-fire that
| are just indefensible.
|
| Having a team where everyone is excelling is a GOOD thing in
| most orgs, right?
| darkwater wrote:
| What would be the rationale behind this? In their ideal
| world, why do they need it?
| [deleted]
| dubeye wrote:
| According to a half remembered article , average retention is
| about 10 months, so when I saw the headline I assumed this was
| the topic. Amazon turn over more than their total workforce,
| every year.
|
| This includes all staff yes, but still shocking. If true.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| This is crazy. At some point they will have hired / let go
| virtually every employable person. What then?
| kentonv wrote:
| Please consider increasing the contrast on your text. As is
| (light-gray-on-lighter-gray) I cannot read it as it literally
| hurts my eyes trying to focus on it.
|
| EDIT: It seems this is not intentional, some of the stylesheets
| are returning 404 for me but not other people... weird.
|
| EDIT: Amazingly, it turns out this site is hosted on the platform
| of which I'm the lead engineer (Cloudflare Workers / Pages) and
| the problem is in fact our own fault, not Ben's. Wow. We'll...
| get on that. Sorry.
|
| FINAL EDIT (hopefully): Not necessarily a bug so much as classic
| cache skew... explanation here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29814868
| tyingq wrote:
| The weight was the problem for me.
| document.body.style.fontWeight=600 in the console made it
| readable.
|
| It also has <p> styled with a zero margin, which makes things
| hard to read as well.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| This kind of thing is why I love to be on HN. It's so
| interesting to be able to discuss technologies with the people
| that created them.
| benadam11 wrote:
| - it has an 8+ contrast ratio so I thought it would be ok (also
| been mostly working in dark mode) - will update. Thanks for
| your feedback.
| kentonv wrote:
| I think some of the stylesheets are not loading correctly, I
| get 404 on these:
|
| https://benadam.me/assets/prisma-dark.19c66771.css
|
| https://benadam.me/assets/work.b7de8a03.css
| coldpie wrote:
| A browsing tip: In Firefox, you can right-click on low-contrast
| text, select 'Inspect (Q)', and a thing will pop up showing all
| of the attributes of the text. You can uncheck the 'color'
| styles to restore a good text color, the filter at the top of
| the list helps find the 'color' entries. For some reason
| everyone loves grey-on-grey these days, so I find I'm doing
| this a lot.
|
| I've been thinking of writing a Firefox extension to auto-
| detect the page background color and set the text color to the
| polar opposite of that. Haven't done it yet, but I'm getting
| close.
| 6DM wrote:
| I'll do you one better, just use reader mode. It's the
| document looking icon in the url bar to the left of the
| bookmark button.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| reader mode often gets past many 'subscribe to continue
| reading' overlays.
| benadam11 wrote:
| Just pushed an update - btw Cloudflare pages are fantastic its
| been perfection for a personal site.
| kentonv wrote:
| Hmm I don't see any change yet but LOL if the 404s turn out
| to be my own fault due to a Workers bug. :)
| benadam11 wrote:
| https://3be909f6.personal-site-v4.pages.dev/ has the
| updated styles but the change doesnt seem to have
| propagated to domain yet (made the background pure white
| instead of grey)
| kentonv wrote:
| Yeah that page looks _much_ better, not just the colors
| but also the headings and paragraphs are now formatted
| correctly.
|
| Crazily enough, it looks like the missing files are
| actually a problem on our (Cloudflare's) end. We're
| looking into it. But a re-deploy should fix it for now, I
| think.
| kentonv wrote:
| Hey Ben, we think your re-deploy solved the problem, but
| the old content is still being served from Cloudflare's
| cache for many people. Can you do a cache purge in the
| Cloudflare dashboard?
|
| (It just updated for me, looks much better. But the old
| version might still be cached in some locations.)
|
| The root cause was actually something we fixed last
| month, but it seems problems can stick around if the site
| was originally deployed before that fix... we're working
| on that.
| kentonv wrote:
| On further investigation we think this might have been
| purely a caching issue, not the backend problem we
| originally suspected.
|
| The problem is that your site generator produces
| different file names for each version, but doesn't
| preserve the old files. So when you upload a new version,
| then the old version of the assets become 404, unless
| they happened to be cached. But it's possible the HTML is
| cached and the CSS not cached, in which case people will
| get the old HTML which refers to a CSS file that is now
| 404.
|
| This is a classic problem and we need to find a better
| way to solve it. In principle, though, you could manually
| avoid it by preserving older versions of the CSS such
| that they continue to be served under new versions of the
| site.
|
| Alternatively, if you change the config on your domain so
| that it doesn't cache at all (or at least turn off the
| "cache everything" option), and instead rely on
| Cloudflare Pages itself to manage caching, that also
| should mostly* avoid the problem. Pages does do its own
| caching, so adding a second layer of caching on top of
| that shouldn't be necessary.
|
| * There's still a problem if someone is unlucky enough to
| load the site exactly when it's being updated, but at
| least a refresh fixes that. We need a better answer,
| though...
| benadam11 wrote:
| Thanks for following up! Looks like that setting was on
| from an old version of the site. Probably not a super
| common thing for people who are onboarding to CF Pages
| (previously my origin was on AWS) and I migrated to
| Pages.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Wow. Thanks for the explanation and for being humble in
| considering it (partially) your mistake.
|
| I have to admit it was quite a plot twist, but this is
| why I love HN: we're both users and developers at the
| same time!
| souldeux wrote:
| interesting read, thanks for sharing this
| zzleeper wrote:
| I'm curious, how do they compare against S3? (cheaper, easier
| to use, ...?)
| benadam11 wrote:
| I had my site fronted with CF previously w/ an origin on S3
| and it cost about $0.53/mo (super cheap). CF Pages current
| pricing is free for unlimited bandwidth which is pretty
| incredible - https://pages.cloudflare.com/#pricing
| joegahona wrote:
| This page is almost unreadable for me too -- a giant oil-spill
| of light gray text on a white background with no discernible
| headers, no spaces between paragraphs, etc. Brave, desktop,
| Version 1.33.106 Chromium: 96.0.4664.110 (Official Build)
| (arm64)
| dymk wrote:
| The page presents as an almost pure black background, and
| almost 100% white text to me - about as high-contrast as you
| can get. Maybe this is a light/dark mode issue?
| kentonv wrote:
| I don't have dark mode enabled. What I see seems to be the
| default style, and is consistent across multiple browsers for
| me.
| dymk wrote:
| Very interesting. This is what I see -
| https://i.imgur.com/eV4yDd0.png
| kentonv wrote:
| Huh! It's more than just colors, you have padding between
| paragraphs whereas I don't. I think the page must not be
| loading correctly? I do see these two stylesheets
| returning 404:
|
| https://benadam.me/assets/prisma-dark.19c66771.css
|
| https://benadam.me/assets/work.b7de8a03.css
| dymk wrote:
| The padding for the paragraphs is indeed coming from
| prisma-dark.css - that would explain it!
| pc86 wrote:
| This is almost exactly what I see on Edge 64-bit
| 96.0.1054.62, Windows 10 19042.1415
| ajkjk wrote:
| This is what I see: https://imgur.com/dN7nPOS . Almost
| unreadable after a few minutes, it's so faint.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I think it is because the font is so thin it looks gray, even
| if the thin lines are made up of 100% white pixels. FireFox
| reader mode makes it readable though.
| ollien wrote:
| Yeah - on my phone it's WoB but on my desktop (which is dark
| mode) it's BoW
| kiddico wrote:
| It's a surprisingly small world we've created
| winternett wrote:
| This happens with so many sites now... UI and 508 compliance
| seem to be going out the window lately... Almost thought I was
| goin blind. :(
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "How manual most of the processes were" - manual processes are
| more durable to turnover
|
| "Documentation is very important at Amazon" - helps alleviate the
| impact of constant turnover
|
| "Teams are fragile" - um, because of turnover?
|
| "Everything is urgent" - indirectly because of turnover, because
| if you don't nag people to enable your deliverables, you get
| fired.
|
| "Everything is built in house" - helps make you harder to fire,
| gives you bully power over other new hires since you know it top
| to bottom, protects you from the organization that is trying to
| constantly turn over people
| clvx wrote:
| This makes me wonder how much complexity can they grow until it's
| not sustainable by the culture? At what point smart talent would
| say enough is enough and start hiring average joe's? How would
| that be reflected to customers?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| How long before admitting for a FAANG has the same notoriety as
| saying you work for Walmart, McDonald's or Target?
| teg4n_ wrote:
| The idea of leaving before the year mark at a company that does
| signing bonuses stresses me the fuck out. Don't you have to pay
| back the bonus? When I got an Amazon offer that was the case
| dymk wrote:
| It depends. Companies can ask for (or demand) the signing bonus
| back. But some won't. I've heard of it going either way - it's
| luck of the draw.
| fermentation wrote:
| Amazon gives their signing bonus out monthly over the course of
| the year to offset the lack of equity in the first few years,
| so I don't think you'd have to pay it back in this case.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| At Amazon sign on bonuses are paid over the first 24month, so
| there is no need to pay back anything.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Is that a signing bonus or a agreement to get paid less in
| two years?
| thisguy47 wrote:
| It is because they have a different vesting schedule from
| most companies. Instead of 25% of your stock annually with
| a 1 year cliff, they pay out 5%, 15%, 40%, 40%. So once
| your signing bonus is up, your shares ramp up.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Is there a meaningful difference?
| willcipriano wrote:
| To me a signing bonus is a upfront payment for you to
| agree to join. Paying it over two years is just a regular
| bonus paid biweekly. Time value of money makes the lump
| sum a lot more valuable, especially in these inflationary
| times.
| dymk wrote:
| Sure, a single lump sum bonus might bump you in a higher
| tax bracket, whereas the bonus paid over 2 years may keep
| you in a lower bracket.
| [deleted]
| delecti wrote:
| You have to pay them back pro rated. If you leave after 10
| months you'd only have to pay back 2/12 of the bonus. At least
| that was the case when I started at Amazon (admittedly almost a
| decade ago).
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| If you get a signing bonus that you pay taxes on, then have
| to return part of it the following year, do you get to deduct
| it from taxes?
| delecti wrote:
| I stayed over 5 years, so I never had to repay any bonus. I
| can't be sure what the tax implications would be of it, but
| based on what I know about taxes (more than most, less than
| an expert) I suspect it would count against your taxable
| income in the year when you had to pay it back.
| junar wrote:
| Yes, as long as the amount you repaid exceeds $3,000.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525#en_US_2020_publink100
| 0...
| ddlutz wrote:
| Interesting, I had two amazon offers and no signing bonus was
| like that. They essentially just prorated it out over the first
| two years as extra monthly income to be equivalent to the stock
| you would get in the later two years.
| benadam11 wrote:
| Its "sign-on payments" now - so essentially you get a salary
| augmentation for your first 2 years (and its applied to each
| paycheck) so you don't need to pay anything back when you
| leave.
| NotVerstappen wrote:
| Think this depends on the amount - my sign-on bonus worked as
| you described, but some others I know got a lump sum (they
| were more junior and getting a smaller bonus).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Amazon signing bonuses are there so they can compete on offers
| while retaining the internal culture metric of max salary.
| _moof wrote:
| I had to pay back relocation once. Incredibly painful, but holy
| shit was it worth it to get away from that place.
| spike021 wrote:
| This is like my situation. I just left after being there for 20
| months. Various reasons on the team side. Imposter syndrome is a
| bad excuse but it contributed. Tried switching but other teams
| insisted on a full interview loop before I could even see it that
| team would be a better fit.
| dpark wrote:
| > _Tried switching but other teams insisted on a full interview
| loop before I could even see it that team would be a better
| fit._
|
| That's because they have no consistency in their hiring bar. I
| know multiple people who were contacted immediately by Amazon
| recruiters after failing an interview loop. "Hey, that other
| team says you suck but I bet you're perfect for our team." When
| you know other teams are happy to take your reject candidates,
| you can't trust internal candidates any more than external
| ones.
|
| In fairness, Microsoft has a bit of this. The further across
| the company you want to move, the more likely you'll need to
| interview. But it seems within Amazon that there is no attempt
| at consistency.
| spike021 wrote:
| I definitely can understand that. But if I'm a mid level
| engineer I kind of have desires in what kind of team I'd like
| to join. I'd really hope a hiring manager can entertain that
| and let me speak with one or two people on the team before I
| have to agree to a loop. That's just me though.
| dpark wrote:
| You're definitely right. You should be able to do that. We
| call that an "informational" at Microsoft. You just chat
| with the hiring manager or someone else on the team with no
| guarantee of an interview (from either side). It's still an
| evaluation from both sides, but a loose one.
| treis wrote:
| > I know multiple people who were contacted immediately by
| Amazon recruiters after failing an interview loop. "Hey, that
| other team says you suck but I bet you're perfect for our
| team." When you know other teams are happy to take your
| reject candidates, you can't trust internal candidates any
| more than external ones.
|
| That happened to me too but I chalked it up to incompetence.
| They told me at the beginning of the process that I'd have to
| wait a year to re-apply if I wasn't successful the first go
| around.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Depending on OP's exact start date, the value of their RSU grant
| may be lower than when it was originally granted, making it
| easier to jump ship:
| https://finance.google.com/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ?window=1Y
| throwawayboise wrote:
| "Everything is Urgent (but takes forever)"
|
| Sounds like my first job out of college (it was early 1990s, big
| consulting shop).
|
| There was a ton of pressure to arrive early, stay late, 55-60
| hour weeks were normal, continually document progress on your
| tasks, but the project overall was well behind schedule and what
| had been completed didn't really work.
|
| We got paid straight overtime after 40 hours, and I didn't have
| much else to do with my time, so it wasn't all bad. I only did it
| for about a year. It was a good reference for my next job.
|
| Young people can afford a few years in the salt mines to get some
| perspective.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I worked on a big team at Microsoft about 8 years ago. The
| overall project was behind so they started buying us dinner
| every night until we could stay late and get back on schedule.
| The sub team that I worked on wasn't behind at all so I just
| went home like normal every day.
|
| After a few days of this my manager pulled me aside saying that
| some of the higher ups had noticed I wasn't staying late with
| the rest of the team. Of course I wasn't. I didn't have any
| work to do. I started showing up to the team dinners, but it
| seems the damage was done. My next review went poorly and I
| immediately started looking for a new job because I didn't want
| to deal with that bullshit anymore.
|
| Coincidentally, I believe that was the last review Microsoft
| did with their infamous stack ranking so maybe the next one
| would have gone better.
| [deleted]
| trts wrote:
| > In order to be efficient on a macro level, it requires being
| (very) inefficient at the micro level.
|
| This is put succinctly.
|
| Seeing Amazon from within was an absolute shock. It is hard to be
| hyperbolic about the company's technical achievements: Prime,
| AWS, 2-hour Delivery, Alexa, Prime Video, Amazon Go ...
| absolutely incredible, world-changing stuff.
|
| But the experience of working there felt like the place was on
| fire. People transferring teams in droves, joining in droves from
| outside, entire teams doing duplicate or triplicate work,
| managers of managers of managers of managers. And yet the speed
| at which they launch successful products at global scale is
| unrivaled.
|
| I'm glad I got to be a part of it but there's almost nothing that
| could entice me to go back.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-05 23:00 UTC)