[cesarbs]

My wife works there as an SDET and her experience so far is vastly different from yours and from what the article says. Most days it's a 9-5 job. The only times she has stayed late were because she really wanted to finish something that day i.e. she was never told to do that. Maybe there's less pressure on SDETs? But she says the devs seem to work about as much, at least from her perspective.

[chuckcode]

Can definitely see how different parts of the company operate differently but no paternity leave an minimal maternity leave speaks a lot to the general philosophy of the overall company.

[untog]

It's interesting - all (I think?) the people interviewed in the article sounded like they worked in non-dev roles. Might not be the case, but it might explain why your wife hasn't had the same experience.

[cesarbs]

I think the article is really exaggerating on negative points. Get a handful of people who had really bad managers and extrapolate their stories to the rest of the company - I'm pretty sure one can do that for any large company.

A co-worker's wife also works there as an SDET and her experience is the same as my wife's. A guy I went to college with works there as an SDE and he also says it's pretty much a 9-5 job. He doesn't work on a service though, so his team doesn't have pager duty and that contributes a lot to it not being a stressful job.

[MCRed]

It's a 9-5 job if you check out or are on the way out. Many people are on the way out and don't even realize it.

[cesarbs]

Then everyone in my wife's team must be on their way out. We're talking about 10+ people here.

[Schweigi]

My wife worked there in a non-tech role and from the stories she and her friends told me I have to say that the article just scratches the top of the iceberg.

[Zombieball]

I think this is a very important point. While I have heard of very stressful orgs where SDEs are under high pressure, I think that the work environment for non Deve is vastly different.

[Crito]

Amazon treats SDETs much nicer in my experience. I can't really say why or how that is, but that's my experience. They seem to be shielded from the bulk of company politics, and don't seem to be common targets for throwing other people under the bus.

[retailengineer]

My job is 10-7, only because I take an hour off playing ping pong every day. My major complaint is that they don't have enough ping pong tables. Also, having to decide which food truck to eat at on a particular day is annoying. I'd much rather have free cafeteria food.

[jdubs]

SDET?

[cesarbs]

As others said, Software Development Engineer in Test. She's a dev that writes test automation code.

[satyajeet23]

Software Development Engineer in Testing, I think.

[cesarbs]

That's right.

[scurvy]

Funny how Bezos has disdain for Microsoft, but then steals all their jobs titles. MS first coined the term SDET for that role.