[HN Gopher] Amazon CEO says company will slow hiring rate, no ha...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon CEO says company will slow hiring rate, no hard return to
office planned
Author : belter
Score : 158 points
Date : 2022-09-09 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Amazon explicitly hires remote employees in Canada. Are they
| going to try and force them all to move at some point?
| ipaddr wrote:
| You might have to move to Vancouver for the AWS team or Toronto
| for a different team.
| malfist wrote:
| Doubtful. They were hiring remote pre-pandemic too, it's part
| of how amazon operates.
| ghaff wrote:
| Other companies have done so in the past, well pre-pandemic.
| And historically companies have asked (i.e. told) people to
| transfer locations all the time--at least if they wanted
| promotions. Companies also eliminate projects and
| organizations. All of which is to say that just because you're
| hired into a position that's either remote or in a specific
| location doesn't mean those options will exist in a year or
| five years.
| finikytou wrote:
| if the contract says remote they won't. however most of amazon
| contracts don't state it's a remote job.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this is only for some roles. When they've pinged me the jobs
| are explicitly in Vancouver
| PeterStuer wrote:
| What he actually said was 'maybe we should consider a temporary
| freeze on hiring first female dwarfs?'
| shishy wrote:
| Yay, maybe fewer amazon recruiter emails now. I figure their
| recruiting team is big but they were sending 4-5 emails a day
| from different recruiters which feels like a lot!
|
| Certainly seems like tech hiring is about to slow down like
| crazy, at least from my friends' qualitative experiences in
| recent weeks.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I've gotten multiple emails from the SAME recruiter in one day.
| I'm certain they are not all coming from a human pressing Send
| each time.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| About a year and a half ago, I applied for a role in security
| engineering. I went through a phone screen and a 5-hour
| interview gauntlet, then got rejected.
|
| A week later, another AWS recruiter e-mailed me saying I'd be a
| great fit for a security engineering role asking me to apply.
| It felt like salt on the wound. I was thinking...I just
| finished interviewing and got rejected. Do you recruiters not
| talk to each other?
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Mine slowed down for a few months and recently they've been as
| high as ever
| ulfw wrote:
| I've had only the worst kind of experiences with Amazon
| recruiters.
|
| Someone recently wanted to hire me as a Junior Android
| Developer. I'm not a (professional) dev. I've never done
| Android. I'm a Senior Product Exec
| champagnepapi wrote:
| > Certainly seems like tech hiring is about to slow down like
| crazy, at least from my friends' qualitative experiences in
| recent weeks.
|
| I think that it already has slowed down pretty significantly.
| LtWorf wrote:
| My amount of recruiter email has increased :-s
| shishy wrote:
| Anecdotally mine has too but I have a lot of experience and
| I am not sure how serious some of these recruiters are ;)
| moneywoes wrote:
| How much experience do you have?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| It isn't just that they send recruiting emails, they refuse to
| honor any opt outs and the recruiters will say things if you
| don't respond like... "I'll never stop trying" or "You don't
| live that far from me, I may just have to drop by"
| bitL wrote:
| I recently received a mail from them which was like "We found
| your profile interesting, so we automatically created a
| profile for you in our career web and will notify you about
| any matching job openings", all after I turned them down
| multiple times in the past. I basically just said whatever
| and let it go.
| delecti wrote:
| I've found a strategy that has worked fairly well for me. It
| doesn't result in them permanently leaving me alone, but it
| at least grants a reprieve. Ask to be removed from their
| contact list, and also reference the last person you asked.
| "Hi John, no thanks, and please remove me from your contact
| list. I previously asked Betty (bettysmith@amazon), and it
| seems to have not gone through."
|
| I get about 3 months of silence from them each time I do
| that. When I just respond "no thanks" I continue to get about
| 1 contact per week.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| It seems like borderline harassment. I am thinking a small
| claims case may get the right people involved to at least
| permanently be removed and maybe even get them to settle
| for small amount.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I'm not convinced there's always a human on the other end
| of these emails. After suspecting so (when I started
| receiving multiple reach out from the same Amazon recruiter
| in one day, all with 24 hour follow ups), I starter
| replying to some with a short "Sounds great!" or just "Ok"
| and literally never got a response. I did however continue
| getting more reach outs.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Not just that, when i was banned from Amazon interviews for
| one year (I don't know why to this day), their recruiters
| kept contacting me. I spoke to one (on a whim) and the
| recruiter came back and apologized to me that they could not
| move forward with the interview process. Apparently they
| don't vet who they contact.
|
| I still get Amazon recruiter emails.
| recursv_thnkng wrote:
| Amazon employees also get those sorts of emails. During my time
| there I'd get emails from recruiters and management who had no
| idea I worked there but also those who did with the intent to
| poach me for their own team.
| deepakhj wrote:
| I've been getting bombarded by recruiter emails. Sometimes from
| different recruiters on the same day.
| davidw wrote:
| Anecdotally, I have gotten a bunch of recruiting messages from
| them over the past year or so for remote positions, whereas
| previously they were like "come live in rainy, gray, depressing
| Seattle!" and I would politely respond "I live on the east side
| of the Cascades with lots of sun. No f'ing way am I moving to
| Seattle!". Still not interested in a job there as I'm more of a
| startup guy, but it does seem they're more interested in remote.
| enviclash wrote:
| Adaptively! I love it. Twice per week in office might be the best
| for everyone? We have a mandatory day and a minimum weekly time.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Twice per week in office might be the best for everyone?_
|
| That works if you're happy living near the office. It fails for
| anyone who wants to live far away.
| RobertDeNiro wrote:
| Yeah. Might as well make it 5 days a week at that point.
| Since it still requires everyone to live near the office.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, a 2 hour eah way commute is probably doable one day a
| week but not every day which gives you a lot of latitude
| from most cities. Obviously you can't move a plane flight
| away. (Well you could. But it would be expensive and
| painful.)
| roflyear wrote:
| I don't want to work one 12hr day and 4 9-10hr days ...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Been there. That day becomes a waste.
| ghaff wrote:
| I do it from time to time for an event (like a
| conference) or meeting in the nearish-by city. I'm at
| least 90 minutes door to door whether I drive or take the
| train. The day's not a waste--but it is a very long day.
| It's mostly events to tell you the truth; I have very
| little reason to go into our office there these days.
|
| I did actually commute in about 50% of the time at a
| previous job. It wasn't really sustainable long term.
|
| (My nearer office is a relatively easy commute though I
| don't go in there either.)
| Sevii wrote:
| Amazon did the same thing the first year of the pandemic. Hiring
| petered out, but nobody was quitting due to pandemic concerns.
| Then in 2021 (when I left) we had massive turnover. They probably
| had to over hire a bit in 2022 to recover.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| "We don't have a plan to require people to come back... But we're
| going to proceed adaptively as we learn."
|
| No plan to come back != a promise to never force employees back
| to the office. Paired with Amazon's continued commercial real
| estate investments (discussed in the article), that's a massive
| competitive disadvantage in the remote work space. As a remote
| worker who plans on buying a home and putting down roots in the
| small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in hell that I'd
| accept a job offer from a company that dangles RTO over my head
| like this.
|
| Of course, Amazon is toxic enough to avoid anyway. But I hope
| other employers don't embrace this nonsense.
| letsgo39 wrote:
| that's absolutely your right. But don't try to force what works
| for on everyone, or confuse your desire for what the market
| overall will do.
|
| There will be plenty of remote work but the articles about
| death of in office are exaggerated. In a recent informal poll
| of a top VC startup CEOs (via a private mailing list) many were
| bragging about how they went back to the office and the
| benefits they are seeing as a result. However, this is an
| unpopular opinion you won't see on twitter.
|
| Finally, if someone can hire you in the middle of nowhere they
| can also hire folks in South America which is a huge
| engineering demographic and currently underpaid. Same timezone.
| They can also more easily hire people in different timezones
| like India or Eastern Europe. Because of that, I do expect over
| time salaries of in person to diverge from salaries of remote
| work.
|
| Remote work may still be a great value prop for people like
| you, but as I said don't pretend everyone is moving to remote
| work or expect the same benefits as those living in major urban
| hubs and showing up for work in person.
| onion2k wrote:
| _As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting down
| roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no way in
| hell that I 'd accept a job offer from a company that dangles
| RTO over my head like this._
|
| Amazon refusing to make a firm commitment doesn't mean you
| shouldn't work for them if you want a remote role. It means you
| should see that role as just one job in a long career that will
| contain many jobs. If Amazon decide they want everyone back in
| the office and you want to carry on working remotely, then you
| quit and find a new remote role.
|
| Literally any company might decide that they'd like everyone
| back in the office, and make moves to make it happen, no matter
| what they might promise _today_. Your current employer could
| announce "Yeah, we know we promised, but things have changed
| so now we're unpromising." A promise from your employer means
| _very little_.
|
| My career advice to anyone looking for a job is to find what
| you need _now_ and to be prepared to find a new role when your
| needs change. The same is true if your needs remain the same
| and the company changes around you.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Good point.
|
| But I don't think it's a good idea to build a career on
| shifting sands -- if you _know_ that you want to work
| remotely, it would be silly to accept a job at Amazon when
| you know they could force you back into the office at any
| time and you can 't do that. If the job market significantly
| cools, or you like your current project and coworkers, it
| would be a shame to go through another hiring process because
| of an external decision like that.
|
| If they make a great offer, and you're really excited about
| the opportunity, though... could be worthwhile. Just another
| factor to consider in the process.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I've worked professionally as a software developer since
| 1996. I was a hobbyist for 10 years before that. The sands
| are always shifting. My "stability" comes from.
|
| - an always updated resume
|
| - an always updated career documented
|
| - keeping my skills in sync with the market
|
| - keeping a strong network
|
| - having sufficient savings
| Ntrails wrote:
| I'm on a contract for working in an office. I was employed
| to do that, signed up to it. I am offered some remote
| working capacity, during Covid it was 100%! But whatever I
| get is not my primary working condition.
|
| If you intend to do a 100% remote job as a life plan, don't
| take a job that isn't contractually 100% remote.
|
| I feel like we're in a weird place wrt WFH policies atm.
| ghaff wrote:
| And that all-remote startup could run into headwinds and
| run out of funding.
|
| There are larger companies that almost certainly have a
| longer history of being more remote-friendly than most, if
| not all, of the West Coast companies. But there are no
| guarantees anywhere.
| jraph wrote:
| I agree with both of you. One can always get a job from
| somewhere if there are interested and leave if the
| expectations are not there anymore. And on the other
| hand, better join somewhere you have more trust that the
| expectations will be met in the long term.
|
| I'm currently remotely working for a company where the
| remote part of my hire was a sine qua none condition.
| Everybody knows this. We are several people for whom
| coming to the "back" to office (to the extends that
| coming to the office always was exceptional) is not
| practical. During onboarding, we are told that the
| company will help you and find accommodations if you move
| to another country (though if we can choose a country
| where there already are people working for the company it
| would be better). The company has been already, de facto,
| split in two countries (in which there are offices). The
| company recently bought a smaller office because people
| didn't come as often / as many. The company actually
| could not handle everybody coming to the office at the
| same time anymore. At this point, a "everybody in the
| office from now one" would be highly unexpected.
|
| Someone mentioned contracts, indeed my home is one of the
| two places where I can work from. And actually they don't
| care, I could work from anywhere as long as I'm reachable
| and I can work in good conditions as long as they are
| concerned. Of course, if I hurt myself and I'm not at one
| of the two places, that would be on me, insurance-wise.
| VectorLock wrote:
| >A promise from your employer means very little.
|
| This is true, and I think actions speak louder than words in
| this case. If you see your company not renewing lease, or
| growing without expanding office space, I think you can take
| that as a good indicator they won't change tack so hastily.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It takes my manager 2 hours and $50 of transportation cost to
| reach the office (one way!), and his manager is in another
| country where he is the only team member. My team's never going
| back to the office.
|
| Amazon has already made it clear it will leave the decision to
| individual teams, and it has been the case so far.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Until your manager changes which happens often at Amazon.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Until your manager changes which happens often at"
| many/most companies.
|
| As I wrote elsewhere, there are no guarantees in life.
| Maybe you're at a large stable company that pays well
| enough and that has a pre-COVID history of being remote
| friendly. In that case, you're probably in reasonable shape
| at least until you want to change jobs for some reason. But
| anything that's team dependent could change in a heartbeat.
| You may be able to drag your feet for a while but
| eventually you may have to choose between going back into
| an office at least part-time or finding something else.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Amazon has over 1 million people. Different departments are
| different. My department (Professional Services) is permanently
| remote, I've never consistently worked over 40 hours a week
| accept when all hell broke lose because of Covid.
|
| I manage customers expectations so I don't overwork myself.
| Closi wrote:
| Not exactly nonsense, of course employers should be able to ask
| people to work in an office if they think that's the best place
| for them and it's clear that working in an office might be part
| of the job during hiring.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The version of "ask" in that sentence actually means "tell".
|
| Not setting clear boundaries about what you expect from
| employees is unfair, have some kind of agreement on number of
| days in the office, SLA for how long in advance a meeting
| needs to be booked for you to make it in office or whatever
| suits the companies needs.
|
| Failing to make a clear decision on this is unfairly punitive
| for people expecting to live their life in a way which they
| chose. Those people who are brave enough can interpret it as
| it's fine to buy a house far from the office. More
| conservative people will have to stay within the commuter
| belt.
|
| At least in the UK/Europe I imagine that it's not going to be
| long before someone ends up in court claiming constructive
| dismissal because an employer suddenly decided they had to
| work in a particular office.
| Closi wrote:
| Their position is pretty clear - we expect to be able to
| tell you to return to the office at some point in the
| future if we want you to work from the office.
|
| IMO it's not really unfair or ambiguous - if you want to
| guarantee you can always do your job remotely then don't
| take the job.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I disagree. Permanently reserving the right to
| significantly and materially change your working
| conditions isn't clear or fair.
|
| Perhaps for people who are still young, free and single
| it makes little difference but for people like me it
| changes everything from where we could buy a house, where
| our children will can go to pre-school / school and what
| our childcare arrangements with the grandparents look
| like. It's not something we can change just because some
| exec misses being able to rule over thier kingdom in
| person.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| > No plan to come back != a promise to never force employees
| back to the office
|
| That doesn't apply solely to Amazon, or even the rest of FAANG.
| _Any_ company, even those currently remote-first or remote-
| only, are just one CEO change away from an open-plan office.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I've worked at 8 jobs in 25 years and 6 since 2008. Anytime
| that a job stopped meeting my needs and desires, I changed
| jobs. Any company is just a means for me to exchange labor for
| money. The last thing I stress out about is if a job isn't
| going to meet my needs some day in the future.
|
| I wwas initially contacted by a recruiter at Amazon Retail
| about an SDE position in mid 2020. The recruiter said that the
| expectation was that I would relocate after "Covid was over". I
| was about to say no thanks and keep working as your bog
| standard enterprise dev with my big house in the burbs in the
| southeast.
|
| We kept talking and she suggested with my background I apply
| for a fully remote position in AWS Professional Services and
| the rest is history. But in the grand scheme of things. It's
| one of many jobs I've had.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| In my experience, an important chunk of the experience depends
| on who your boss is, another chunk depends on the company
| itself.
|
| I experienced both "toxic" and "fantastic" work environments at
| AWS, during my 6 years tenure. I'm not surprised other can find
| Amazon "toxic", but I know that there are good people there,
| and good teams, and good job opportunities.
|
| Also, I used to pretty much work ~90% remote, back in
| 2008-2014. My boss(es) never had anything against that. The
| "remote work" policy is influenced by the company, but it also
| depends on your boss and team.
|
| I think your assessment is way too polarized against working at
| Amazon. My 0.02.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I've worked at Amazon a little over 6 years now. I have not
| found it toxic. I had the good fortune of joining Amazon
| working under a director who had been my manager at a previous
| company, so I knew what he was like going in, and when I
| decided to switch teams I worked for someone else I already
| knew from around Amazon. I think it's like joining any other
| company - as the team interviews you, you also want to be
| interviewing the people for the team you'll be joining to see
| if it's what you want.
|
| Different pockets of the company have different trade-offs and
| incentives. The on-call burden on some teams is higher. When
| I've seen this happen under good management, the managers work
| to do different things to relieve the burden (such as spending
| time working on tech debt, improving test automation, and so
| on).
|
| Some of the aspects of Amazon's culture that I hear criticized
| often come with unfair comparisons. No one likes getting paged
| at 1:00 AM, and that's a thing that can happen to you at
| Amazon. In my personal experience though, I got paged at weird
| hours much more often working at start-ups. Amazon at least
| (again, generally, in the parts of the company I've worked) has
| a healthy culture around continuing to improve operations,
| preparing people for on-call, and to address any page events so
| that particular reason for getting paged doesn't happen again.
|
| (I'm just offering my own opinion, I don't speak for Amazon in
| any official capacity.)
| masterof0 wrote:
| That depends on the team/org you are, if you are in some cosy
| team in CDO, that just maintain a couple of services that
| other internal services use, that aren't really that
| important, then of course is not toxic. Talk to the folks at
| EC2, VPC teams.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Im not sure people are always referring to the tech sector of
| Amazon when they call it toxic - unless explicitly stated as
| "planned attrition" etc. I've heard great things about AWS,
| for example. My opinion is people refer to the company as
| toxic as a whole because of how warehouse workers' conditions
| are or the disruption of communities around Amazon
| warehouses.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Can you share a little bit about how Amazon handles on-call?
| Do they make their dev teams be on-call for their product
| areas, do they have first line responders/SRE, and things
| like that?
| jkingsbery wrote:
| What counts as "first line" depends on your situation.
|
| On my first team, we managed internal tools. Our customers
| were other people at Amazon, they submitted tickets to us
| directly.
|
| For some teams at Amazon, there is at least a filter
| through some sort of customer support to handle certain
| kinds of issues. You are still on-call, but it's not like
| you are interacting with customers directly.
|
| Also, since teams at Amazon tend to be small, the amount of
| things you are on-call for tends to be however much your
| team handles on its own. I know of other companies in which
| the oncall covers areas in other team's code bases - this
| is not the typical setup at Amazon.
|
| Generally, we don't have SREs. Software engineers usually
| understand best how their software works, so we get faster
| mitigations, and they are also incentivized better to not
| write buggy software.
| masterof0 wrote:
| You are oncall on your team's services. No matter how old
| those are. The frequency depends on your team size, and the
| level of tickets/incidents depend on the quality of the
| codebase. I have seen everything from one high sev ticket
| every 2,3 months to constant paging (3am, etc...)
| flictonic wrote:
| Counterpoint to your anecdote. I didn't find Amazon all that
| toxic for my first 2 years until I had a baby. First, the
| parental leave is significantly worse than competitors. I
| took 3 weeks when my son was born and another 5 to help my
| wife transition back to work herself (only 6 were paid by
| Amazon). There was a 10 week period in between leaves where I
| was stressed, anxious, and feeling overworked and burned out.
| My performance suffered. I received no extra help from my
| manager but also received no negative feedback during that
| time. Welp, came back from the 2nd half of my leave and was
| immediately put on a pip (technically called 'focus'). Worse,
| there was absolutely zero empathy from this manager during
| the focus.
|
| Maybe Amazon can be a good place to work if you're ALWAYS
| able to be a solid performer but god forbid you're going
| through something in your personal life that temporarily
| impacts your ability to deliver.
| ianai wrote:
| I think it's time to fight back against the anecdotes against
| whatever point. There've just been too much bad faith and
| misdeeds done in service of internet misinformation.
|
| As you said, your anecdote isn't worth much. Much less since
| you're posting semi-anonymously in an Internet forum.
|
| With how job descriptions can be unilaterally rewritten by
| corporations at will even having a stance of remote work in a
| job description shouldn't be taken as solid, unshakable
| truth.
|
| Edit-trust that corporations will use you exactly as far as
| it benefits them and in the most exploitive nature they want.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| > Much less since you're posting semi-anonymously in an
| Internet forum.
|
| I mean, I don't make it that hard for people to figure out
| who I am if that's a thing they care to do.
|
| But I think you're right about the larger part - it's hard
| to trust Corporations. As I said in my case, and what I
| advise others to do, is rather than trusting a company (big
| or small), try to find individuals there you can trust
| (either, early in your time there, or ideally find someone
| that you already trust that happens to be there).
| no_wizard wrote:
| Until _UnRegretted Attrition_ (re: stack ranking) is gone, it
| 'll always be a place to avoid. Nobody likes to work with
| that hanging over their head. I think this is the #1 thing
| that will always hurt Amazon recruiting, everyone knows about
| it now.
| robocat wrote:
| > UnRegretted Attrition
|
| Article with links to further information on UnRegretted
| Attrition (URA) rate: https://archive.ph/dI92l
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I think the more even-handed criticism of Amazon would be
| this: they're a highly process driven company. Practically
| the definition of "process over people". There are certain
| types of people who thrive in that environment. The people
| I've seen be successful there are either people who
| successfully disassociate their working lives from their
| personal lives or who are engineers with high technical
| ability but lacking social skills.
|
| Highly motivated people who always go the extra mile get
| exploited and burnt out. Kind people get their kindness taken
| advantage of and it sours their view of the world. At least
| that's what I've seen from the outside.
|
| The bigger problem I have with the company is the types of
| managers that environment creates. The primary function of a
| manager at Amazon as far as I can tell is to enforce process
| and the secondary function is to maximize output of the
| people reporting to them.
|
| Empathy is actually a disadvantage in this type of role and
| it selects for all sorts of what I would consider adverse
| behaviors among managers. The "leadership" principals relate
| to actual leadership as a jellyfish relates to Smucker's.
| Look up Google's project oxygen findings if you want a
| comparison.
|
| I personally doubt I'll ever hire someone who learned
| engineering management at Amazon unless they've been
| sufficiently detoxified in a different company.
| MarathonSeeker wrote:
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I can't help but read your first paragraph and think of the
| show Severance. Convert everyone to simple worker bees
| without any agency.
| zwkrt wrote:
| It was difficult for me to watch severance because so
| many of the interactions among the employees reminded me
| of my time Amazon. I actually cried a little bit when the
| boss threw a coffee cup and then blamed her report for
| it.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Digressing here, but...
|
| That show is incredibly good. I'm not quite done with the
| first season (two more episodes, will likely be watching
| them both tonight), but it's very interesting.
|
| I think a lot of people at first think that if they could
| have an operation done that makes them essentially skip
| their work day, they'd jump at the chance. This show
| really shows how there could be serious problems with
| that.
| opmelogy wrote:
| How'd you come about this understanding? Very little of
| what you wrote here reflects my experience there.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| > Practically the definition of "process over people".
| There are certain types of people who thrive in that
| environment. The people I've seen be successful there are
| either people who successfully disassociate their working
| lives from their personal lives or who are engineers with
| high technical ability but lacking social skills.
|
| That has been _exactly_ my experience, after 5.5 years.
| My team spends 4 hours in sprint planning every week
| (there are 9 of us). It is way more important to try to
| plan out work than it is to actually do the work.
|
| > The bigger problem I have with the company is the types
| of managers that environment creates. The primary
| function of a manager at Amazon as far as I can tell is
| to enforce process and the secondary function is to
| maximize output of the people reporting to them.
|
| I did burn myself out trying to reduce operational load.
| I wasn't arguing for it the right way, so I ended up
| doing it myself. I was able to measure my results, but it
| didn't even count towards a promo because I didn't
| "harmonize discordant views"... instead I just did what
| needed to be done.
|
| Many many folks inside Amazon say it has a startup
| culture. That is false. Try to find out how many of those
| folks have actually worked outside Amazon before taking
| their advice.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| > My team spends 4 hours in sprint planning every week
|
| That seems excessive, but I don't know what area you work
| in. Does your team need to spend that long? I have heard
| of that happening within Amazon, but then people vote
| with their feet and move to a team that doesn't spend
| four hours in sprint planning.
|
| > Many many folks inside Amazon say it has a startup
| culture.
|
| I've spent roughly as much of my career at startups as I
| have at Amazon. It's a bit of a mix bag. Having worked at
| start-ups that had to spend time doing undifferentiated
| work (just getting automated deployments, for example),
| it's in some ways nice not to deal with that, and yes,
| you have to follow The Process for that to be easy. I
| sometimes see people taking chances and acting quickly on
| new opportunities. But yes, I also see people not taking
| chances when the cost of doing so would have been small.
| Then again, I once worked for a start-up where you _had_
| to use a particular template for a design document, and
| you _had_ to produce a project plan that 6-month long
| projects that was accurate to the hour. So... I think it
| 's hard to make generalizations.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be more important to plan out the work
| than to do the work? We've all seen the graph of how much
| more expensive things are to change the further down the
| process is.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| I absolutely think you should plan out how your customer
| will solve their problem with your product, including
| concrete examples, and make sure you are always headed
| towards that goal. I'm very waterfally that way.
|
| In this case I'm talking about the tasks in each sprint.
| I think 1 day of planning per sprint is a lot. We are
| supposed to be agile. If we missed a task, swap it with
| another. If something isn't actually important, bring in
| something new. We end up doing this anyway... so why all
| the upfront planning each sprint?
|
| Related back to the above comment, (my opinion) people
| really love to establish rules and processes and are not
| able to handle ambiguity. I spend a lot of time (remember
| the 4 hours a week) arguing whether a story is a mouse or
| a hedgehog.
|
| IMHO it's splitting hairs, let's just do the work and we
| estimated a little wrong it just isn't that important.
| opmelogy wrote:
| FYI: I think you responding to the wrong parent comment.
| :)
| jkingsbery wrote:
| Again, this is me speaking just my experience, and not for
| the company in any official capacity:
|
| Capital-P-Policies get followed. But there are a lot of
| lower-case-p-policies, more what you might call guidelines,
| that are not. Sometimes, for good reasons! There are
| examples of things Amazon does that try to encourage
| individual judgement, trusting the people in place. But
| there are also examples where we think we know what the
| right process is, but for whatever reason (prioritization,
| we haven't figured out the right way to enforce it, scaling
| challenges) it's not as strictly followed as outsiders
| might assume.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I've been working as a hands on developer [1] for over 25
| years between 8 companies. I've worked for companies with
| 20 people all the way to AWS.
|
| I've always strived to "live in a position of f%%% you"
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI). Why would I
| let a company "burn me out"?
|
| When the pay/bullshit ratio gets too low, I send my always
| updated resume out, review my "career document" to prepare
| for behavioral/informal interviews (I don't do whiteboard
| coding interviews), talk to people in my network and I get
| another job.
|
| Before my current job, I was a dev lead and then the de
| facto "cloud architect" at smaller companies. My current
| job is much less stressful.
|
| [1] currently my official title is not "software
| developer". But for all intents and purposes, I still
| develop user facing software along with a crap ton of yaml,
| HCL, diagrams and PowerPoint slides.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why shouldn't all employees of any for profit company
| "disassociate their professional lives from their personal
| lives"? I go to work to exchange labor for money to support
| my addiction to food and shelter.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _As a remote worker who plans on buying a home and putting
| down roots in the small, middle-of-nowhere town I live in, no
| way in hell that I 'd accept a job offer from a company that
| dangles RTO over my head like this_
|
| Well, they can be honest about it, "we have no plan...", or
| they could potentially lie or be ignorant about it, like your
| current employer might be, and change their mind down the road.
|
| I'm also a remote worker living in a small town. But I'm a
| realist as far as understanding that this might not last
| forever. Perhaps it turns out there's a competitive advantage
| to office work after all? If so, can't blame companies for
| wanting to return to those conditions.
| bluedino wrote:
| There's been a spike in cases recently, and even my non-Amazon
| employer has encouraged people to stay home the last two weeks.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| On again / off again in office work is way more disruptive
| than an employer firmly deciding they are fully remote and
| furnishing people with good hardware for home offices and
| workspaces.
| ghaff wrote:
| Honestly, equipment is cheap (relatively speaking). It's
| whether you have a good home office environment and your
| employer has very little control over that.
| LightG wrote:
| Could be worse. The whole conversation around WFH is what's
| becomme toxic.
|
| Screw any CEO's on here reading this who are forcing their
| workers to return without considering what is best (for the
| business and for the employee).
| brandon272 wrote:
| > Screw any CEO's on here reading this
|
| You're right, the conversation has become toxic and your
| comment is a great example of that. It's also not in the
| spirit of HN's rules.
| LightG wrote:
| Do you get what you give? Or give what you get?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| how is his statement worse than a company that says "we will
| never force people back to the office" then flip-flops two
| years from now? If you plan to physically locate in a place
| that requires you to work remote you're accepting risk
| regardless of who you work for; a CEO's comments at some
| conference shouldn't influence your risk mitigation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. If your company tells you to RTO, it's not like
| "yeah, but the guy was CEO at the time said in an interview N
| years ago that XYZ, so 'haha, nope!'" is going to get you an
| exception.
| chii wrote:
| if you care enough about WFH, you would negotiate, or quit.
| Probably quit, if the company is actively making this
| policy.
| [deleted]
| oweiler wrote:
| At least in Germany, 100% remote can be guaranteed via
| employment contract. So there is quite a difference.
| gfdsgfdsf wrote:
| cant you probably pay off that house with like 1 year of Amazon
| RSUs?
| colmmacc wrote:
| I'm proud to have worked at Amazon over 14 years so I guess I
| don't agree about the toxic part. At this point I'd be pretty
| surprised if we ever forced employees back to the office.
| Amazon has always had very autonomous culture where teams and
| orgs have a lot of latitude in how they work. We value results
| above doctrine. Andy is also a very pragmatic leader who thinks
| very deeply about these kinds of decisions.
|
| I think offices are more and more going to become an out of
| home workspace for people who prefer them (and I think we
| should give everyone who can commit to coming in enough an
| actual office) ... and an occasional collaboration hub for
| everyone.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I don't agree about the toxic part.
|
| I recently rejected an offer from AWS that paid significantly
| more that what i currently make because of this. I have
| family that work there ( on visa) that were adamant that i
| keep looking and not accept the offer. I am wondering if i
| made the right decision, haha.
|
| Does aws have a higher churn rate than a typical tech
| company?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > I am wondering if i made the right decision
|
| Passing on a career building line on your resume and a
| significant increase of your salary on the possibility (far
| from guaranteed) that you may end up in a team so
| unbearable you would have to leave the company before
| reaping the aforementioned benefits is of course not the
| right decision.
|
| Some teams do truly suck at Amazon, either because of the
| manager or the work (or both), but in those situations you
| can always easily change team after a year if not less. And
| you will find such teams in any other company.
| colmmacc wrote:
| AWS and Amazon is not for everyone, and that's not quite
| about us being 'elite' or the 'we only hire the top X%'
| (though statements like that are probably true too). It's
| more that the first part of "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make
| History" is true at Amazon and long-time Amazon employees
| tend to be unusually driven and missionary and very much
| about shipping things.
|
| For those this suits, it's great, we tend to weed out
| bullshitters and we're vastly less political than other
| operations I've seen. But it's not for everyone and others
| move on, and that does contribute to some churn. If you're
| considering Amazon, it's important to think hard about
| whether this is for you or not.
|
| Our 'median tenure' numbers are constantly skewed by how
| much we've been growing. At times our doubling rate has
| been as little as 18-months, and so you get a lot of
| employees who haven't been here very long just from that
| too. Our actual attrition numbers are pretty middle of the
| range for tech. This year we has a spike in attrition at
| the beginning of the year - as did other tech companies -
| but we think we've been out-performing industry over the
| year as a whole. We were also ranked the #1 company where
| Americans want to work by LinkedIn, which is not nothing.
|
| Amazon is full of very long-tenured folks and tends to have
| very stable leadership teams too.
| rnk wrote:
| I worked back at microsoft when gates was still there. we
| had saturday meetings all the time. Like a couple of
| times a month. I was routinely doing work at 11pm trying
| to get things checked in before midnight. This was before
| gates had kids, we all joked. The stock made the job
| lucrative but it was killer, I can't believe I did that.
| Mostly I saw people retire, not quit or get fired.
|
| The difference with amazon is that everyone experienced
| knows a fair number of people who quit because of the
| stress and negatives, with lots of money on the table if
| it goes 2 or 3 months. I have two friends who quit, each
| with a quarter million coming if they stayed one more
| quarter. It would have to be pretty bad for that. I
| didn't see this happen at microsoft. We made progress in
| our jobs, and rest and vest wasn't even an ironic
| statement.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If you work at any of the major tech companies and have
| been there for awhile, you are always "leaving money on
| the table" because of invested RSUs.
| okaram wrote:
| One factor I haven't seen mentioned is that Amazon has a
| split-personality problem.
|
| AWS is a tech company. Reasonably comparable with other
| FAANGs, with wide variation within teams.
|
| Amazon is a logistics company with a web site. Logistics
| companies treat their employees very differently than tech
| companies. Amazon proper seems to me to have split
| personality.
|
| Warehouse employees are treated badly, but pretty well in
| many ways, _compared to other warehouse employees_.
|
| Tech employees at Amazon are treated well, but I can see an
| exec that came through the logistics part having a
| different mentality.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon,
| and am currently going through their interview process
| (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good
| offer from Amazon).
|
| My conclusions:
|
| 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be
| very good, and bad teams to be very bad
|
| 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you
| can move if you get stuck on a bad team
|
| 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual
| team, so that is something to probe about during the
| interview
|
| 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-
| call load varies significantly by team (I know someone
| working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten
| paged)
|
| 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA
| target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many
| incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I
| wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and
| your boss isn't an asshole
|
| Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place
| to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it
| really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good
| team.
| belval wrote:
| Bingo, I've had a hard time reconciling the HN's
| perception of AWS SDE work and my job. I have people
| telling me that it's horrible, attrition rate, constant
| grind and endless oncalls. Yet I've never experienced any
| of those things. Of all the places I've worked at in
| Canada, AWS was the nicest and I highly recommend it.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is the perception of Amazon
| warehouse workers being transferred over to Amazon
| technology workers. I've heard a ton of bad things about
| the former, but the folks I personally know who work at
| Amazon / AWS as tech workers all seem to be happy with
| it. Of course, how Amazon treats its warehouse workers is
| an indictment on the overall company, so I think I'd have
| a difficult time choosing to work there.
| azemetre wrote:
| I don't think it started with warehouse workers, there
| was a famous NYT article talking about office workers at
| Amazon where entire teams would leave a meeting in tears:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-
| amazon-...
| marssaxman wrote:
| Among folks I know in Seattle, Amazon had a bad
| reputation as a burnout factory before those stories
| about the warehouses ever really came out.
| Lich wrote:
| I know two acquaintances that are SDEs that worked at
| Amazon and hated it. One of them was "forced" to work
| until 3-4 AM. His manager said to him, "How can you even
| think of sleeping right now?". Fortunately he found a new
| position at Microsoft. The other SDE feels like a cog in
| a machine and hates it so much he's going back to his
| home country.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You're always a cog in the machine. If you think
| otherwise you're being naive. No matter where you work,
| if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, your company would send
| "thoughts and prayers" to your family and have an open
| req for you before your body got cold.
|
| I definitely can't imagine "being forced" to do anything
| at a job too often before I'm looking for another job.
| random314 wrote:
| But there was the suicide of an office worker in Seattle.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| There are more than 3 suicides every day in Seattle, I
| don't see how 1 suicide of a person that happened to work
| for Amazon is really telling of anything.
| dont__panic wrote:
| There are certainly some toxic teams out there, just like
| there are in any large org. I think an even bigger factor
| is the fact that Amazon is an enormous vertically-
| integrated monopoly that:
|
| - abuses its market position to run competitors out of
| business
|
| - mistreats its most vulnerable, low-level employees
|
| For many of us, that's a moral dealbreaker. But there are
| certainly some great teams and interesting projects in
| the SDE space if that's what you want!
| opmelogy wrote:
| FYI: all of these are off the mark, some more than
| others. Here's some more info to help flesh it out (which
| is lacking too because there is so much nuance to this
| stuff).
|
| > 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to
| be very good, and bad teams to be very bad
|
| These get sniffed out eventually. It's usually a cluster
| of teams and it comes down to a specific leader creating
| a toxic environment. Some are very good at managing up
| and hiding the problems. But that only lasts so long
| (although sometimes years).
|
| > 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so
| you can move if you get stuck on a bad team
|
| Not true.
|
| If you are SDE I (entry level) moving teams is incredibly
| hard. All of the job posting are for SDE II (except for
| rare circumstances) and above so you can't apply for
| other teams. Usually the only way to switch teams is if
| you know someone there and they can help you out.
|
| If you are not in an engineering role, switching teams is
| even harder. The business side tends to be more political
| and also have more candidates for positions.
|
| > 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual
| team, so that is something to probe about during the
| interview
|
| Not true.
|
| If your skip-level or even higher says no remote then
| there will be no remote. While some groups may leave it
| to each "individual team" it can always be overruled.
|
| > 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but
| on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone
| working on an internal tool that has literally never
| gotten paged)
|
| Not true.
|
| There are teams that don't have on-call rotations. Groups
| that are building software that hasn't launched yet are
| likely not carrying a pager. Higher level managers and
| engineers (Principals) are likely not on a paper
| rotation. And a bunch of business teams don't have on-
| call rotations.
|
| > 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous
| URA target is set to;
|
| Oversimplified.
|
| That 6% changes every year. I've seen it much lower in
| some years. It all depends on what's going on in the
| company. That 6% is just a number they want forced out.
| It doesn't include people leaving on their own terms that
| the company would love to have back, so churn is higher.
|
| > however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people
| make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't
| particularly worry if you're good at your job and your
| boss isn't an asshole
|
| That's a dangerous assumption to make. It's not as simple
| as if your boss isn't an asshole. A big factor is if your
| boss knows how to set you up for success and if you know
| the rules of how things work there.
|
| During review time, groups that are run well will have
| each team bring a list of their lowest performers to
| discuss. They vet how well these employees are
| functioning against the expectations for their level. If
| things naturally fall into the right ratio of people that
| need to be slotted below the bar, then they are done. But
| if there are not enough people they start digging more
| into where people land in relation to each other. If your
| boss hasn't set you up with work that allows you to
| demonstrate your real abilities then you are likely in
| trouble. It's not that your boss is an asshole, but that
| they are inept and screwing things up.
| donavanm wrote:
| Disclosure, long time principal at AWS but all statements
| are my own opinion. 1. Yes, but I believe its more
| culture than bureaucracy. 2. open transfers 30 days post
| hire, IIRC. 3. More org than team, and exceptions abound.
| 4. Yes. 5. Not quite; unregretted is employees with low
| perf rating leaving there is _also_ regretted attrition
| which is mid-high perf rating employees leaving. The
| total is inline with industry norms (10-13% /yr) in my
| experience.
| 1equalsequals1 wrote:
| Are you also proud about their numerous worker and human
| rights violations? Can't wait for the mental gymnastics on
| this one
| davidrupp wrote:
| [Everything that follows is my personal opinion. I do not
| speak for my company.]
|
| Seven years and counting for me, and likewise proud. I have
| found it a good experience, on balance. I have witnessed --
| and been subjected to -- behavior by individuals that people
| would reasonably consider "toxic", and I've been fortunate to
| have avoided long-term impact. I do what I can to fight it
| where I find it.
|
| To the point of remote work, I've been primarily remote the
| whole time, and it's worked out well. If enforced RTO ever
| does happen (I don't expect it to), I'll have a decision to
| make, is all.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Do both of you just "not see" all the bad things your
| company does ?
|
| Your proud of what ? Worker exploitation ? The people in
| fulfilment centres are also employed by Amazon. They're
| your peers. If I worked for a company where my peers are
| treated like dirt, I wouldn't be proud of it. I'd quit.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| It's a cliche at this point - "It is difficult to get a
| man to understand something when his salary depends on
| his not understanding it." I would say compared to Bezos
| (or any oligarch with penis rocket money) we're all peers
| in the sense that we work for a living, but I doubt most
| Amazon devs would say that about the soldiers working the
| warehouses or driving the trucks.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Does your company employ anyone outside of tech? Do they
| outsource manufacturing to a developing nation?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| No and No. We don't employ anyone outside the US
| including support.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Do you know how any large company like Amazon operates?
| This isn't meant to be a demeaning comment. I spent 24
| years bumping around at mostly small companies you've
| never heard of before 2020.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > Do you know how any large company like Amazon operates?
|
| Does anyone really know how a large company like Amazon
| operates?
|
| I've certainly worked for multinational companies before.
| One of our C levels even palled around with Jeffery
| Epstein.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And nowhere in that company's supply chain are that not
| workers who aren't treated like the "elite" software
| developers?
|
| How many people toil away in factories "working" for
| Apple creating iPhones or "working" for Google creating
| their servers and phones. Or is it morally better since
| they are outsourced?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're going for here. I'm sure that
| capitalism makes us all complicit somehow or another and
| of course I can't trace the supply chain for everything
| (or probably any) I use. But the small places I've worked
| have been much more human and egalitarian than the
| multinationals without exception.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| Certainly not speaking for the folks above.
|
| While I am critical of many things Amazon does, what I
| see in the media about AWS is usually laughably false. We
| aren't all in broken marriages due to on-call duty.
|
| The stories I read about drivers urinating in their pants
| because they have too many deliveries scheduled simply
| does not reflect the behavior I've seen from drivers in
| my area (I ride a bike everywhere, Amazon drivers are
| noticeably bike friendly in a way that makes me think
| they aren't under pants-urinating pressure).
|
| So when I see stories about the FCs, I assume the same. I
| guess I am biased towards thinking the media focuses on
| the negative and totally ignores anything good. So... yea
| I guess I "don't see" all the bad things. Still pro
| union... but treated like dirt is probably a little far.
|
| [edit, have worked for aws for about 5.5 years]
| bamboozled wrote:
| You riding your bike around waving at drivers disproves
| nothing. I often read warehouse workers are treated
| badly, threatening to strike, discouraged from unionizing
| and paid terribly.Are you telling me the news just makes
| this up?
|
| You're obviously seeing what you want to see, and that's
| OK, just don't try push it onto others.
|
| The context I made my comment was in regards to people
| saying "Amazon is awesome, I've worked there for 14
| years.". I don't really see why warehouse workers
| shouldn't feel awesome too. If it's really a great
| company, they should feel pretty awesome.
|
| tl;dr I don't believe Amazon is an awesome company based
| on how I see it treat lower skill workers, people who
| think it's awesome probably only feel like that because
| they're needed, as soon as you can be replaced by someone
| cheaper, you will be.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Do you think the blue collar workers who work at your
| company or probably outsource somewhere feel just as
| "awesome" as you do?
|
| News alert: I bet your company would replace you with
| someone cheaper also.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So is your company feeding starving children in Africa.
| It kills me to see people clutching their pearls when it
| wouldn't take much to find something bad about every
| company.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| You don't see a problem with the culture _because_ you have
| been there 14 years. If you had a negative impact of the
| culture, you likely would have left. Survivor bias.
|
| There are a significant amount of people who disagree with
| you (on blind, with amazon proof of employment). They would
| be in the non-survivor-bias group.
| kbelder wrote:
| They'd show failure bias, the same problem but in reverse.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| Thats true. Thanks, I was trying to think of the name.
| masterof0 wrote:
| That's exactly my position, in my case my team is fully remote
| (a niche little team in AWS), I am not sure if I want to buy a
| place where I live either, a team reorg, or leadership change
| can destroy my life plans in a minute. I think the solution is
| a) Start your own online business, or b) Find a fully remote
| job, which for what I have seen so far, smaller companies that
| offer remote opportunities , don pay as much as I make now.
| Does anyone knows any fully remote company that pay FANG
| salaries?
| [deleted]
| moneywoes wrote:
| For those who went through the dotcom bubble is this reminiscent?
| rr888 wrote:
| RTO issues aside it feels more like a regular recession rather
| than bubble popping. The biggest difference is wages were
| insane last year, even in 2000 devs weren't paid more than
| doctors.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The .Com crash was more similar to the Crypto crash you're
| seeing today. Today's tech tightening is nothing like those.
| One of the worst parts of the .Com crash was that even
| businesses that were generating revenue and hitting milestones
| were folding because many of their customers were going out of
| business.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _For those who went through the dotcom bubble is this
| reminiscent?_
|
| One of the world's largest tech companies slowing hiring from a
| decade of absolute torrid pace of recruiting is not at all
| reminiscent of the dotcom crash. Yet?
| shados wrote:
| Dotcom crash was a whole different level, with super senior
| architects and other extremely experienced people lining up
| around the block for entry level positions.
|
| For a while I was running the whole IT and software development
| of a biotech company for 10 bucks an hour. while my peers went
| on to be manager at Best Buy shift to other non-tech related
| roles.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yep. I got laid off right after 9/11 (which was sort of the
| last straw). Fortunately, I almost immediately landed a
| similar (but better job), albeit with a pay cut--and there
| were some lean times for a few years once the tech recession
| hit my new company in force. But I had started looking around
| elsewhere as well and there was _nothing_ that I found.
|
| I lot of people I knew ended up exiting the industry and no
| small number of them ever really got back on track with their
| careers.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| No, that was more of a straight up closure of startups and tech
| companies. Like people would go into the office on Monday and
| all be fired without any idea it was going to happen. The money
| ran out and the good times immediately stopped. Within weeks
| the companies would be liquidating assets and going through
| bankruptcy. This is more of big companies slowly reducing costs
| because of the uncertainty of profits ahead.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, and then when all those startups closed, a lot of
| companies those startups reliably wrote checks to went
| through (at least) difficult times as well. There was a
| pretty hard knock-on effect (mostly within the tech
| industry).
|
| Partly because of public cloud, open source, and the sources
| of revenue of the large firms, there are other exposures
| (especially ad spend in the case of a number of the big
| firms) but financial relationships within tech seem a lot ore
| loosely coupled today.
| bdcravens wrote:
| >> people would go into the office on Monday and all be fired
|
| Guess that's a good reason to put off bringing people back in
| the office. Just one day your work accounts are disabled, and
| the direct deposit stops coming.
| Mandatum wrote:
| Hiring is speeding up again in Australia and New Zealand in
| private companies. Government and public sector not so much, but
| all the consultancies have massive shortages which feeds into
| public sector quite a bit.
|
| I don't think it ever really slowed like it has in the US. Then
| again inflation is only just starting to ramp in Australia. New
| Zealand doesn't really have an excuse.
|
| Singapore seems pretty healthy too.
| amoghs wrote:
| Things are so weird here in Oz. There are tons of layoffs in
| tech, but there's also a huge labour shortage.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Misallocation of capital.
| alliao wrote:
| English speaking and comparatively dirt cheap, fear is the good
| people will be working for US remote companies
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Good people are already working in the US. This is the people
| who couldn't be bothered moving there.
|
| I've had to tell recruiters straight up that they can't fill
| that position and never will in Australia/Canada/New Zealand
| because anyone who could do it is already doing it in the US
| for x5 the salary they are offering here.
|
| If only the US had a functioning healthcare system I'd move
| back there too.
| cwilkes wrote:
| If you are getting paid 5x then your healthcare costs
| aren't nearly going to approach anything close to that
| amount.
|
| As a percentage relative to healthcare maybe (say $10
| generic drugs instead of $2) but if you are getting $100k
| more a year who cares ?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| > If you are getting paid 5x then your healthcare costs
| aren't nearly going to approach anything close to that
| amount.
|
| Australia has a hard cap on how much you can be charged
| for. I lived in the US when I was a teen under the most
| gold plated of plated plans and after a protracted
| hospital stay that was over $2m we still have over $100k
| that was not covered after the company lawyers spent
| months fighting with the insurance lawyers. Things have
| only gotten worse since then.
|
| In Australia the same thing cost $2k out of pocket.
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