[throwaway981211]

I’m an engineer now at Amazon. I’ve been here 7 years. 5 years ago, our culture was far more toxic. More recently, some orgs are horrible places to work and others are much better. I don’t think we’re much worse than other companies. Our pay for engineers is less than Google and Facebook, as far as I know, but we beat other companies such as MSFT.

Amazon naturally attracts people who want to accomplish big things. It just happens that many of these folks are assholes.

Is Amazon predatory to its employees? Some organizations are - yeah absolutely. Are we worse than other companies I worked prior to Amazon? No. Does that mean it’s okay? No. I’m just saying there’s a public perception of Amazon being at the deepest level of hell and it’s not true.

We absolutely burn people out. We overwork employees. We don’t promote them when we should. We try to find the tiniest bit pick reasons not to promote. We practice stupidity and call it frugality? You’re an engineer making $200K total comp a year? Your computer doesn’t work and is crashing? Oh too bad - we won’t replace it for you. Yeah I mean that kind of fucking stupidity.

We encourage everyone to automate their role so we can replace those folks with college hires.

Amazon is not a place you can have a long career at. You’ll have to jump teams or orgs every couple years and eventually you’ll get tired enough that you learn to manage upwards yourself and stick with a manager that you can manage.

[AtlasBarfed]

Sooooo.... it's not toxic anymore, but you still need to hop teams like crazy or they kick you to the curb?

Your description sounds like my friends who worked there or just left, they were used for 2-4 years and then nitpicked to deny the deferred compensation stock. It's a rolling scam! But so is the rest of the new economy.

I'd hate to know what it was like before.

Interesting that you said "it's being fixed" traces right around the time the various worker stories went viral. And yet you and several other people say "it's not bad!".

I get there's no stats and its all anecdotal and situational, but the very experience of being hired is terrible. Even though I had friends there, I never bothered interviewing. Why waste two days?

At least google has free food. I'd waste an interview with them.

[VRay]

It was basically as that guy described when I was there through 2015, but it really wasn't that bad. I saved enough money in the bank to quit and live off it for 6 months, and after that it was less like an oppressive life and more like a game I was playing.

I'll tell you what was REALLY stressful: Trying to find my first engineering job after graduating from college. It took almost 9 months, and I ended up in a really shitty low-paying internship. The whole time bills I couldn't pay kept piling up, and my best friend in the world (my cat) ended up passing away partly because I couldn't afford to pay for any more surgeries after putting thousands of dollars' worth on my card.

If you can land a job at Amazon, though, congratulations: You've made it. You can get a programming job anywhere in the world and make money in the 95th+ percentile. You've got health benefits, a 401k plan, life insurance, etc. If you ever get so burned out that you're crying at your desk, just quit your job, sell your shit, break your lease, and backpack around the world for a year. (Or go get a laughably easy ~$100k/year job out in the Midwest)

[trustfundbaby]

> Amazon naturally attracts people who want to accomplish big things. It just happens that many of these folks are assholes.

You could probably just replace "Amazon" with "Silicon Valley"

[throwaway981211]

I mean - I haven’t worked at any other large tech company so I don’t have any data point to make that claim.

[hef19898]

While I won't go as far as calling it a scam (as one comment did below), I can to a certain degree confirm what you said. Also, is it bad? Yes. Worse than other places? No, simply more open and direct about it. Personally, I prefer the openess about it. And from a company perspective, it works out pretty well, doesn't it? All that is for the office workers and managers. Warehouse workers are different.

At least for Germany I know that Amazon is paying above average salaries for them (compared to DHL and others). And generally speaking warehouse workers, and all other rank and file logistics workers, are treated like drones. Again, nothing special about Amazon. But that doesn't mean the situation should be accepted.

All that being said, Amazon is a great place to learn and gain a shit load of experience. On all levels, even if there is a hard ceiling for blue collar workers to get promoted to white collar positions these promotions do happen regularly. The blue collar worker still has to suck up to a manager, so. In other places I know these promotions do never happen. The most important thing to have in mind when working for Amazon is, IMHO, to work on a feasible exit strategy from day one. Because long careers are the exception to the rule there. Oh, and be aware that it is a tough place to work at. Of you are om with that, go for it. Otherwise, stay away.

One last comment, one I learned the hard way. If you are not really comfortable with the way Amazon can treat people, even if you do what you can to make a difference there, you will be part of the problem simply by pushing forward and going a good job delivering high quality results. The one cannot be had without the other. Personally, I am not sure how I see Amazon, pretty peculiar place.

[haltingproblem]

You (and other Amazon) employees keep saying orgs/organizations while talking about Amazon vs. Google vs. FB vs. .... I was confused and after reading for a bit I realized you mean divisions within Amazon.

That might appear to be a valid distinction, to an outsider it appears less material. Perhaps you can start by describing how the culture varies within Amazon.

[throwaway981211]

Amazons internal organizations all have slightly different culture, although there’s a core set of company values (Leadership Principles) that keep us bounded together.

Within Amazon, some places will absolutely grind engineers with nightmare on call rotations, untenable deadlines or deliverable dates, etc. but these things are part of any job depending on your company. What really sets Amazon apart is the brutal honesty - if you’re not performing or meeting someone’s expectation, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable it is - you will get called out, sometimes in front of colleagues.

Over time, you learn there’s ways of influencing people or motivating them to be at their best. One such way is running a cut throat organization where people end up blaming others to save themselves - sometimes because it is the other person who dropped the ball - other times because that’s how you preserve yourself.

As a business model, this actually works. Running a cut throat organization where people are terrified to go out of line out of fear of losing their jobs - it has worked at Amazon at scale.

But to be clear - not all of Amazon is like this. I’ve been lucky to bounce between really great teams during my 7 years at this company. I’ve had one bad manager who didn’t know how to manage and honestly wasn’t qualified for his role. I’ve met people who legitimately helped me grow and become a better engineer and mentor to others. I’ve gone through two promotions. I’m paid really well.

[deegles]

Is the AMZN 401k match still garbage? I remember it was a max of 2% paid out in stock with a 2 year vest.

[throwaway981211]

401K match is garbage but salaries are decent. I’d say we’ve gotten far more competitive in pay, and that’s not even counting the crazy stock appreciation over the past several years. In terms of overall benefits, we aren’t competitive - which makes sense considering Amazon isn’t a cash printing machine like FB or Google. We genuinely don’t have the money to spend unless Bezos was to deliberately sell $1 billion each year for Amazon corporate benefits. That itself is a fuzzy proposition - how do you give benefits to these corporate badges while squeezing warehouse workers? If you do something, it should benefit everyone.

[AtlasBarfed]

I though salaries were capped at 150k or something. Which is good, don't get me wrong... but a lot of the other FAANGs beat that easily?

[throwaway981211]

Salaries are capped at $160 but salaries are a part of your total comp. Most of my compensation comes from stock not salary, and my salary is maxed.

[wolco]

Most places are not like this. Imagine getting respect and $200k?