Comment by colmmacc

Comment by colmmacc 10 months ago

68 replies

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I've worked at Amazon (and AWS) for over 16 years and have made many friends, and it's how I met my wife. What's always kept me here is that it's been fun the whole time, with meaningful problems and opportunities that move the needle for so many customers.

So many modern experiences that are built into our improved quality of lives; apps on phones that can know my tastes and preferences, hailing a cab virtually, a bonkers level of selection of goods to all consumers, low friction same-day delivery, far greater access to online services including education and financing, just wouldn't exist (or at least not as quickly) if weren't able to cut down so many old-school structures and replace them with much more efficient and available alternatives. Getting to create a transformation in digital infrastructure and logistics at that level is just nuts. And there's still plenty to do. The money is great too; a far better result for me financially than the startups I worked at.

But all that said; Amazon isn't for everyone. It's probably not for most people. I don't mean that in the "Amazon only hires the best" sense. That's true, but so do the other big tech companies. It's more that you have to be a particular combination of driven and outcome focused with a relentless tolerance or even insatiable need for urgency, hard work, and trade-offs.

If that resonated, and you have an opportunity to join Amazon towards the middle or advanced stages of your career; definitely try to do it. I interviewed several times at Amazon to get in. But if you are at the earlier stages of your career; choose your team and manager very carefully and care a bit less about the company you join. That will make a bigger difference.

mykowebhn 10 months ago

Yours is a heartfelt, sincere take on a successful 21st century career in tech, but I feel it is so one-sided.

Yes, you seem to have benefitted greatly, but your examples of efficiency and availability are flawed. For example:

"apps on phones that can know my tastes and preferences": I don't see any benefits. When Youtube recommends for the billionth time a stupid soccer short because I previously watched one soccer short, I want to scream. Also, privacy or lack thereof.

"hailing a cab virtually": made possible due to full-time workers who have none of the benefits of full-time workers, in other words, exploitation.

"a bonkers level of selection of goods to all consumers": One word that encapsulates the other side of your "bonkers level of selection"--Temu.

"low friction same-day delivery": Made possible due to our reliance on fossil fuels

"far greater access to online services including education and financing": I'm not sure about the financing part. Education? Yeah, if I want to learn about something like video-editing. But I could've bought a book on that in the past and probably learned it much more in depth. If I wanted to learn something like German Idealism, not so much.

I think your pocket book has benefitted immensely, but all of the other benefits don't seem like benefits to me on a macro level. But kudos to you for doing so well and believing the world partakes in your good fortune.

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  • roenxi 10 months ago

    There seems to be an argument here against markets, energy use and entertainment. While criticism is legitimate, little there is related to tech specificially and it is more a complaint against the construction of modern society from the 1700s onwards.

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    • specialist 10 months ago

      Amazon, Uber, etc. are more platforms than markets.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • borski 10 months ago

    That’s a pretty cynical view. In essence, what you’re saying is “all the things you care about are not things I care about and/or actually despise.”

    And that’s OK - you don’t have to work at Amazon! But the implication is that the OP has the “wool over their eyes,” so to speak, and I think that’s unfair. They’re allowed to love their job and find it impactful, even if you don’t. :)

    It’s possible I misread this somehow, so if that’s the case, apologies in advance.

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    • azemetre 10 months ago

      It's not cynical to point out external costs, the alternative is to take corporate propaganda at face value without ever questioning if things are right or not.

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    • j_maffe 10 months ago

      GP isn't arguing for subjective preference but objective value. People are of course allowed to find their work impactful. Doesn't mean it actually is.

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  • hluska 10 months ago

    What do you do that is so pure it doesn't have externalities?

    Reply View 16 replies
    • arcticbull 10 months ago

      Let they who work on a product without externalities cast the first stone

      Reply View 4 replies
      • yamazakiwi 10 months ago

        The opposite, as it is a privilege to work somewhere without externalities.

        Reply View 3 replies
    • bigstrat2003 10 months ago

      People working on functional programs, of course.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • cwalv 10 months ago

      Academia or journalism. Or maybe a lobbyist

      Reply View 0 replies
    • fwip 10 months ago

      Degree matters. Working at a missile factory is worse than working for Amazon is worse than working for a public library.

      Reply View 8 replies
      • cm2012 10 months ago

        Working at a missile factory could be one of the best/most important things you do with your life. Anti-air interceptor missiles save innocent lives every week in Ukraine, for instance.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • notinmykernel 10 months ago

        Well, if you are R&D, you may be working on a ~~missile~~ drone project for Amazon. So, one and the same.

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      • fwip 10 months ago

        Whoops. Should have remembered not to offend the pro-war crowd here on HN.

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      • CamperBob2 10 months ago

        Ask your friendly neighborhood Ukrainian refugees if they agree with that.

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      • Nimitz14 10 months ago

        You are stating as fact what is in fact your (naive) opinion.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • fwip 10 months ago

          The fact is that the degree of harm matters. My opinion is that weapons of mass murder have made the world worse.

          Reply View 0 replies
strivingtobe 10 months ago

As a current Amazonian (and one that, as mentioned in my other comment, enjoys working at AWS largely because of interactions with brilliant tech minds and projects), I agree with most of your comment.

However...

>choose your team and manager very carefully and care a bit less about the company you join

I love my team, and even my organization that I work with. Multiple people on my team have stated that ours is the best team they've ever been part of in their career. But I don't love my company. I'm still at Amazon because even though my company is actively pushing me away, the love and enjoyment working with my team has been enough to get me to stay. So your advice here really strikes a chord with me, and I wish I could echo it.

Unfortunately, this advice isn't actually tenable, because no matter how great your team is, it's only one company leadership decision away from being ripped apart. I've watched this happen multiple times now, and this announcement is going to make it happen again. Caring less about your company just doesn't work when your company has shown multiple times that they are willing to throw away your team like that.

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  • ta_1138 10 months ago

    The problem isn't that you shouldn't care about your company, but that caring about your company is going to be far less important in your day to day.

    And yes, your team is one decisions away from being ripped apart, or you are one manager change away from being very sad. I'm sure many of us have been there before: From top of a stack rank to bottom due to a manager change, with minimal in-team changes.

    So you can try to care about your manager as little as you want, but the changes will happen to you eventually. Embrace that you are going to have to change teams or quit companies, because no love for your company is going to help.

    If anything, what this should teach is to aim for a specific level of company growth: Grow too fast, and you might as well be at a different company in 8 months. Grow too slow (or shrink!) and there's no advancement, and it's all internal politics, as the L7 who has been here for 10 years is probably not leaving, because they know that nobody else would hire them at that level.

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  • CydeWeys 10 months ago

    Everything is ephemeral though. Not just your team at work that you enjoy, or a team at any workplace that you enjoy, but everything. So don't worry about crossing that bridge until you come to it. There's no good situation that is a sure thing to continue indefinitely, so enjoy them while they're there and then be prepared to make moves if they end.

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red-iron-pine 10 months ago

> But all that said; Amazon isn't for everyone. It's probably not for most people. I don't mean that in the "Amazon only hires the best" sense. That's true, but so do the other big tech companies. It's more that you have to be a particular combination of driven and outcome focused with a relentless tolerance or even insatiable need for urgency, hard work, and trade-offs.

aka "its a wall to wall hustle that will never get better, and when it comes to trade-offs, you're the one making them"

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  • ryandrake 10 months ago

    Yea, words like "driven" and "relentless" and "urgency" betray the reality: It's probably a pressure cooker with constant, needless hustle and urgency. Agree with OP: It's not what most people are looking for out of their work.

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  • HDThoreaun 10 months ago

    I mean I know a few people who seriously do want that type of culture. They want to work 60+ hours a week and they want colleagues who arent to be punished. Amazon is a good fit for those types.

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xtracto 10 months ago

I've heard from people working there that Amazon tech is full of Indian managers. And the "hearsay" here in Mexico is that Indian work "ethic" is terrible. That they are terrible bosses (same with TCS and HCL who also have lots of positions here in Mexico).

A Mex programmers subredddit r/taquerosprogramadores has plenty of stories about that.

Maybe it's just the structure AZ has established for Mexico. No idea.

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  • forty 10 months ago

    Beware of generalizing behaviors and qualities based off people races and origins. This is what is called racism and is frowned upon or illegal in many places.

    If it helps you, I have one counter example handy: I have had an excellent Indian manager.

    Reply View 19 replies
    • xtracto 10 months ago

      Ooh and I've worked with several Indian people who are great as well. I was just mentioning the stereotype of how mexican people in tech see them.

      I even had a great indian engineer who emigrated from India (his parents are still there) who actually complained about Indian work culture.

      It's like myself when I complain about mexican culture (for work, ethics, corruption or mediocrity)... I know that not everyone is like that, but shit where I'm from (southeast Mexico, Campeche) you'll be lucky to find someone that breaks the stereotype.

      And I've several friends still there.. I just don't like the education and vslues society imparts us there

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      • forty 10 months ago

        Re-reading your comment, it's indeed clear that you were reporting other people point of view, sorry for the accusing tone.

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    • tomrod 10 months ago

      Close, that's the definition of stereotyping based on race and can lend to bigoted acts and decisions.

      Racism emcompasses a bit of a different scope, including policy, institutional structures, and norms, of which stereotypes is directly related to norms and can be indirectly influential on the others.

      Reply View 7 replies
      • forty 10 months ago

        Interesting. The word "racisme" in French has also yet another meaning: the word "race" (identical spelling in French) cannot be used for human beings in French (works for cows and dogs) as "racime" is defined by the belief that there are several human "races" (which is scientifically wrong). The word race as used in English is translated by something like "ethnical group" for example.

        However, the comment I originally reacted to would be definitely qualified as being "raciste" by most French speakers (and be illegal in France)

        Reply View 5 replies
      • sn9 10 months ago

        That's just "structural racism" which is a subset of "racism".

        If we were to believe that structural racism was the only kind of racism, we'd be forced to conclude that people can't be racist because people aren't structures.

        But it's precisely the opposite as structures are composed of people and racist people are often the reason we have structural racism.

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    • trallnag 10 months ago

      [flagged]

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      • pawelmurias 10 months ago

        Those scholar use a particularly racist definition.

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      • ipaddr 10 months ago

        Some scholars think it's making judgement based on race. Others scholars think only those in power opinions matters and those without power can make judgements based on race and that wouldn't be considered racism. Others think it's a natural and norm thing based on tribalism.

        But in your example a person of color would have a higher status in America compared to an Indian national. So the person of color is being racist.

        In the future the only acceptable version will be the first because keeping track of who had power in what context is going to be impossible to track and can get easily shifted. That's the definition the law uses currently.

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      • wan23 10 months ago

        This is one of those cases where a word can have multiple meanings. And anyway, prejudice based on national origin is, in fact, frowned upon no matter what you call it.

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      • samatman 10 months ago

        That definition sounds very convenient for someone who wants to be racist to a group they've decided has institutional power. I can see why such a person would want to twist the plain meaning of an understood term in such a nakedly manipulative way.

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        • trallnag 10 months ago

          It's a thing. There's a whole Wikipedia article about it, with quite some references. Enjoy the rabbit hole

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      • bigstrat2003 10 months ago

        > To many scholars in the US racism requires institutional power to codify it.

        Yes, that's because many scholars in the US are intellectually dishonest and wish to redefine "racism" in ways that benefit their arguments.

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      • [removed] 10 months ago
        [deleted]
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  • feyman_r 10 months ago

    The chances of your having a manager of Indian descent are higher in tech compared to other professions. That's a function of the 'ingestion pipeline' that's built through the US education system (H1B through higher-education). In a high-expectations field (tech), coupled with a high-expectation company (Amazon), folks who manage to stay back, tend to be seen more, and will be rewarded by being managers (till Peter Principle kicks in). Most middle managers in exacting teams (for products like AWS) are likely to be demanding.

    My hypothesis is that a part of what you're observing is just some form of 'survivorship bias' - changing jobs with visas isn't easy (been there done that) so folks are more willing to 'bend' to the culture being driven internally than just moving out (esp. with the long wait times).

    At some point, its hard to distinguish the people from the culture, and what came first, but that's a different conversation.

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  • red-iron-pine 10 months ago

    heard similar things about challenges getting a lot of near-shoring tech (chip fabs, etc) set up in MX

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JustLurking2022 10 months ago

Hate to say it but Amazon was hiring the folks getting laid off from major banks a few years ago. They abandoned hiring only the best a long time ago.

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  • snozolli 10 months ago

    [flagged]

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    • simoncion 10 months ago

      > What a profoundly toxic, bigoted statement.

      Which sentence was toxic or bigoted? "Hate to say it but Amazon was hiring the folks getting laid off from major banks a few years ago." or "[Amazon] abandoned hiring only the best a long time ago."?

      On top of that, many banks have a hiring bar for their software folks that's far, far lower than one would expect a company whose primary job is ensuring the correctness and integrity of its records to have.

      (Also: "profoundly" toxic and bigoted? *Seriously*?)

      Reply View 1 reply
apwell23 10 months ago

> choose your team and manager very carefully

how can an outsider possibly do this?

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  • baq 10 months ago

    an outsider can't.

    ...but you definitely can once you're in.

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    • goostavos 10 months ago

      If you're allowed to get out! There are some vicious managers out there. The worst among them will force a PIP if they so much as think you might be hoping ship.

      Luckily, in my time here, it has seemed like managers with this egregious behavior tend to get forced out of the company. However, they do insane amounts of psychological damage while they're here. Some teams have faced real tyrants :(

      Reply View 1 reply
      • mylies43 10 months ago

        I had a friend who had exactly this happen, they wanted to switch teams and suddenly they had a PIP( that they were not even told about but which blocked the process ). She had to get the manager on the other team to investigate and once he started digging he found a completely empty draft PIP in place of a actual one. When he brought that up it disappeared the next day without a response from the original manager :////

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jgerrish 10 months ago

Hey Colm. I briefly met you at my stint in Amazon around 2011.

You were an inspiration and a wonderful example of the calibre of talent Amazon has.

I especially remember the ease with which it appeared you navigated informally between teams, building relationships and bridges to help the company and fellow engineers. Although I'm sure it was actual work, it was still inspiring.

Happy to hear you're still there and found love.

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lokar 10 months ago

Thanks, that’s a really interesting perspective. I had a similar tenure at Google, and it was a great fit for me, but for very different reasons. Working towards technical perfection, almost divorced from any real world implications. Just puzzles to solve as elegantly as possible.

But I can see how that would not be for everyone. And I did see people who were more customer/outcome oriented really struggle.

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gosub100 10 months ago

What do you say to the warehouse workers peeing in cups because they're not allowed enough time to use the bathroom? Who get fired for being a few minutes late to stuff boxes? How can you rationalize your wealth while they work harder and live in poverty?

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Yeul 10 months ago

Yeah for me work is work. It's not life. I don't make friends. I don't celebrate co workers birthdays. I make money for my employer and after that I go home.

I do my research if the company has a ping-pong table or cafetaria I am not going to apply.

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  • ctvo 10 months ago

    I wouldn't go around bragging about not caring about people I spend 8+ hours a day with for years on end. It's not the good look you think it is, and you haven't reached some modern level of enlightenment here.

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