[Chronic9q]

> The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did.

No, they didn't. They likely were interviewed by the hiring manager. Which, a hiring manager of an internal tools team, does not face the public scrutiny of engineering detail required by a front facing mass consumer product. Therefore internal tools teams do not require as rigid software engineering rules as mass consumer products.

> Amazon could have easily allocated them to some flashy consumer product, but management decided that it's important to have a team working on HR software.

No, they couldn't. Internal HR tools usually means CRUD applications. Why would you put a SQL developer on a deep learning optimization team?

Don't try to defend Amazon here. They have messed up with the way they treat employees. 30 hour weeks doesn't change that.