[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)