You're not imagining it. Amazon and AWS want to hire all your friends, enemies, and everyone in between Do you ever get the feeling that there's a party going on and you're not invited? Is that how you feel when you fire up LinkedIn and see yet another long-standing connection has been rewired into Amazon or AWS? Whether it's a veteran CEO such as former HPE EMEA boss turned AWS EMEA boss Andy Isherwood or a whole platoon of …
Quite so! I don't see any feedback from the Amazon workers in warehouses or the third party agency staff that they pretend are not their responsibility. The article reads like an advert.
Any company which treats "talent" different from other workers (who are effectively treated as slaves) is morally corrupt from my perspective, but who cares about morals these days - divide and conquer!
Because of neoliberal globalizing: endless supply. Particularly when a job offer in the west is the potential for a green card.
Record profit Tech, paying "contractors", doing the same work as employees, less than $15 an hour. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/google-workers-sign-letter-temp-contractors-protest
Miscategorizing employees as contractors is illegal in the US, and Department of Labor is not prosecuting companies for doing so.
My experience of their interview process is that they spent one interview (duration 1hr) going through my technical expertise/experience, and then scheduled 5 seperate interviews of an hour each to go over their "Leadership Principles" and "team fit", plus a seperate written exercise. There was also an additional 30 minute call to "coach" me on the Leadership principles and how to prepare for the next stage.
I understand and recognise the need to pick the right person (I'm involved in making hiring decisions in my current role), but 6 hours of interview to determine that is excessive, and a massive demand on time both for employer and candidate for a process that doesn't guarantee a successful outcome. It certainly isn't startup culture.
My previous experience of an employer that obsessed with the principles and "values" was that people used the internal principles to justify some awful/unprofessional behaviour, and that the whole thing ended up contrived and artificial rather than creating a culture of decent, hardworking, likeminded people.
Google is even worse. A couple of friends coinvenced me of not trying to join the Chocolate Factory after enduring between 10 and 13 one-hour interviews to finish the "selection process", only to be offered about 40% of their actual pay.
Really? Maybe that's a local thing because here I've been told by people I know at Amazon, Google and Facebook that I'd make an extra 15-30% if I took a position at at any of them. I'm well paid already so the extra isn't enough to make up for the downsides.
Those that don't will be condemned to spend the next 4 years working in a warehouse (provided that you can last that long).
Seriously... who would want 'worked for AWS' on their CV given all the spyware coming out of Amazon and the systems housed on AWS.
Then there is the shame of working for Baldy.
Mind you... the alternatives Azure and Google aren't much better.
Where are those paid for politicians in DC who squark Anti-trust at the slightest opportunity when you need them eh?
Still, it was nice to see Rand Paul get told off by Fauci yesterday.
The companies that bang on about being great and a great place to work, are the worst. I also laugh at companies that say they only hire the best, but provide low wages and atrocious working conditions. They can't be that smart if they had to get a job with a company like yours.
If you can't talk to someone about the job and work out whether they're suitable, you probably shouldn't have a role in filling the vacancy.
I, unsucesfully, and somewhat reluctantly, went through their recruitment process a couple of years ago.
It was an interesting experience, but it was clearly designed at the 20 something hotshots who would be awed to interview at the mighty Amazon; not the 40 something 'values work/life balance over flogging oneself to death for someone elses rocket gratification' dev that I am.
I had a very similar experience, after having a number of friends / colleagues wax lyrical about AWS and how I would be a perfect fit, I also applied.
Apart from the first interview, which was largely technical in nature (probably too technical to be honest, for the position I was applying for at least), the rest was all about Team Fit and Amazon Values. It was during the Values piece that I started to wonder to myself why none of this focus on delighting the customer actually shows up in their behaviours in the Amazon shop. So I asked the interviewers that very question, I can't remember the answer but I was not progressed to the next interview, something about not being the right person.
Dodged a bullet there, but for some reason, always been vaguely ashamed to discuss it, after all, AWS didn't want me.
Meh. Whatever.
"always been vaguely ashamed to discuss it"
Why?
This question right here made you unsuitable "none of this focus on delighting the customer actually shows up in their behaviours in the Amazon shop"
With no stardust in your eyes, over having "Amazon" on your resume, you were bounced for calling them out on their ethics. And therefore, you'd be a "problem", "not a good fit", for the "team".
Is that a team you think would be a good fit, for you?
Scrape your shoe off, and count yourself lucky.
Same here, I work in a bank at the moment and it would have been a significant pay cut for me to go there, but I thought it would be good to get hardcore AWS experience.
After the first interview, as I sat down at my desk on a weekend to spend 6-10 hours on the 'assignment', it came to me, that this was ludicrous, 6 hours of interviews and an assignment to get a job with less pay and longer hours. Consequently I got back in touch on the Monday and told them I didn't want to proceed.
"AWS's spokesperson says it absolutely supports open source..."
I would have put it that open source absolutely supports AWS.
I'm not into open source development so I don't know how much AWS gives back to the ecosystem.
If they are like some of the other big boys, not much if anything. MS being a surprising exception to that.
Not to praise AWS here, but if you're talking about Elastic,, that's not exactly the way their decision got made. They didn't like the fact that open source means you're allowed to use it for free. I get why someone at Elastic might be annoyed at AWS for making use of something that was given away, but that's part of the calculation when you use a license which effectively says "no support and you can use it without limitation". AWS didn't pay them very much, but they did upstream patches. Elastic wanted to rent-seek on their code and switched the license, and AWS chose to use the freedoms they were given. When you consider that Elastic got assistance from many external developers and didn't pay them for that, you can see why not everybody is on Elastic's side.
"Rent seeking? Are you saying it's unreasonable for Amazon to throw a few coins into a few hats to support all that open source software they copy and paste wholesale and make billions from?"
No, I'm saying I don't agree with someone who demands it when they chose an open source license. Just as I don't agree with someone who makes something GPL and then complains that they can't make it noncommercial use only. You choose your license and it gives others freedoms, including the freedom not to pay you. It's reasonable to be unhappy about this and to complain vociferously, but to unilaterally change the license terms is something they have the right to do but I don't like.
They didn't like the fact that open source means you're allowed to use it for free
Open Source software was never meant to be used the way AWS use it. Unfortunately parasitic companies like Amazon use such loopholes backed up by an army of lawyers.
I see that you thrown in "rent seeking" buzz-word, but in the context you used it, why don't you accuse workers of rent-seeking? Why company should pay workers every month?
If you have not notices Elastic is being developed continuously.
Actually, with GPL, because of Stallman greed and selfishness, it is.
GPL explicitly allows that use without giving anything back. Why? That's because people like Stallman who don't make money selling software wanted to be free to do whatever they like "internally" - the important thing was to avoid others make money from their work, so you he had not to pay them.
Why GPL didn't make a provision stating that if you rent the use of code to others, or anyway use it commercially, you have to publish your changes as well?
Why just cripple pure software development companies? The result is Google, Facebook and AWS.
No, when the GPL was drafted, something like AWS or the whole SaaS idea didn't exist.
I agree with your general sentiment though.
It's also worth noting that when the whole OSS "movement" was conceived, it was basically a rich kids club. The sort of people that could work for free, to show closed source companies, that they can make similar quality products, hoping they will get noticed and have their big egos stroked by people who they bestowed free alternatives upon.
The idea was that they could bait those companies with that software, written in a way only themselves could understand and then charge those companies for implementing "enhancements" or doing other support.
No, when the GPL was drafted, something like AWS or the whole SaaS idea didn't exist.
Wrong. There were service bureaus, for example.
The utility computing model that AWS popularized is not identical to what service bureaus did, but they were certainly providing computing resources on a subscription basis and many of them ran software as a service.
Providing software with source started in the centralized-computing world. And it was widespread when Stallman launched the FSF. The FSF and GPL were attempts to shape the culture and economics of open-source software, not invent the concept.
"Why GPL didn't make a provision stating that if you rent the use of code to others, or anyway use it commercially, you have to publish your changes as well?"
Because they didn't envision a world where code is run for users rather than sold to them. However, that change would not fix the Amazon payment situation. Amazon already did release their changes. They just made money from the use of it and weren't generous about giving back financially as well as with code.
"I see that you thrown in "rent seeking" buzz-word, but in the context you used it, why don't you accuse workers of rent-seeking? Why company should pay workers every month?"
The difference is what they said before. The workers signed a contract saying they would be paid, whereas Elastic didn't. Therefore, the workers are asking for what they already agreed they would get, whereas Elastic were asking for something nobody ever agreed to give them and, in fact, something their license said wasn't required in the first place. Once again, I can see why Elastic wanted it, but changing the license terms is not a very nice thing to do, especially given that there were other contributors to the code whose contributions were being exploited just as much as Elastic's were.
> that's not exactly the way their decision got made
Actually, you're wrong. That is *exactly* the way the decision got made.
> They didn't like the fact that open source means you're allowed to use it for free.
Oh- wrong again. Go and download it and run your own X node cluster, where X is as big as you like, and pay Elastic nothing.
"Oh- wrong again. Go and download it and run your own X node cluster, where X is as big as you like, and pay Elastic nothing."
Yes. And when Amazon did so in order to charge people for it, Elastic got annoyed about Amazon using the right they explicitly gave them and attempted to adjust the license to take that right away. Currently, their new license still lets me set up a cluster for my use if I don't sell it, but if I make money off that, what's to say they won't change the license again because they don't think I'm giving back enough when I donate the amount I think they deserve? This is the debate. Should they change the terms because they want more money, which they have the right to do? I think doing that is against the spirit of the licenses they used.
It's not that simple. I'll give you an analogy.
You are being a good neighbour and decided to give out bottled water to whoever needs it during the heatwave. You put a few pallets of bottled water in front of your porch.
You see that people passing by help themselves to it and are very happy.
One of those people was Amazon worker. He called the manager and they agreed to start selling a new product Amazon Water. In the evening a truck pulled up and took all the water.
The next day Amazon setup a kiosk on your street with bottled water for only £0.99 a pop.
You gave it for free, so nothing wrong happened here, right?
What did you say about the water when you put it out there? If you explicitly said that anyone could take as much as they liked for any reason, commercial or not, then it's an act you expressly allowed. It's fine to be annoyed at someone who uses something you made without paying you, but if you want to prevent it, you need to factor that in when you license it. The open source licenses explicitly give people rights which decrease your ability to make money just by selling the software. If you don't want companies to make money off your software without paying you, then by all means make your license free for noncommercial use; you won't be the first and I'll be entirely behind you. Just don't make it something else then act all surprised when people do what you said they could.
"You gave it for free, so nothing wrong happened here, right?"
According to the GPL Amazon would have had to include on the label that I contributed the water. Did they do that in this scenario? And then on day 2 how much water will Amazon sell? Erm, maybe this is why Amazon is always on day 1.
Apparently Bezos' allowance for Blue Origin is ~3 billion / year.
Divided by the population of the US that comes out to less than $10 per person.
So while $3 billion is a lot of money, it would have negligible effect if it were "redistributed".
For that reason, I find focus on Bezos as the epitomy of evil to be a distraction. The more important issues are the economic inefficiencies due to the lobbying-legislator short circuit. Amazon is an abuser of that, but it does not exist solely because of Amazon.
Apparently, in the US, about $150 billion is spent on "illegal" drugs every year. (I'm not clear on how MJ fits into that.) While Bezos' money supports a lot of rocket scientists and engineers in following their "dream work", that drug money money supports a lot of truly awful gangsters and cartels who maim, bully, and kill for a living.
Yet I'm hesitant to waste time hating on drug users who may be just recreating and not directly hurting others, although they are indirectly supporting those ghastly criminal networks by doing so. It's something to keep in mind when considering hating on Bezos' space shot.
Two of a kind.
Most of US' drug addicts started with illicit pharmaceutical companies selling highly addictive opioids to bilk the public, a gift from our non-functioning FDA.
Bezo, using his ill gotten gains from massive tax avoidance schemes funneled through politicians, bilked free ride from the public and competitors, then gets more money to use the fed trained rocket scientists and engineers for a massive ego joy ride. Who also maims, bullies and kills for a living (yes, some of Amazon's employees die from their unsafe jobs, yes they have higher rates of employee injuries in their ware houses, yes they are bullied (can't use the toilet during working hours), etc.).
When you have a mega-huge company you have to run it like a cult, if you don't then all sorts of people get in and start coming up with their own ideas. Given a workforce that exceeds 1m people how many levels of management do you think there are? How many depts? How many could start a "revolution" and undermine the purity of the cult?
These companies don't make billions by allow individual thoughts, that's for smaller companies to mess about trying to encourage people to think for themselves. AWS, Google and MS are the "Dark Satanic Mills" of the 21st Century, the "You will be thankful for your position that be have honoured you with or go back to doing nothing of value for rest of your life!".
What I find interesting are when you meet focus groups from Amazon, they all look like the recruiters for cults! The chinos, the check shirts, the fake plastered on smiles, it's very creepy to spend a day or two locked in a room with the AWS tech reps as they sell you their tech and encourage you to buy into the cult.
I love the fun cloud tech but just like Disney, behind the dream lurks a lot of hard working people living, not quite a nightmare, but certainly not the dream factory we all imagine it to be from the outside.
Having spent many years at MS and a couple at AWS, I can state that AWS pays better than MS, is a nicer place to work, is FAR less metrics obsessed and that reps at AWS are not encouraged to coerce their customers in to buying software/cloud services they do not need through the threat of being audited. Work pressure, work life balance and general politics are about the same. AWS employees are encouraged to invent new ways of doing things. MS employees are expected to keep ploughing up and down their tightly defined swim lane, at a speed chosen by an incompetent manager, furiously bull$hitting customers as they do so.
I worked at neither, so I’ll trust your judgment.
But the remark : “encouraged to coerce their customers in to buying software/cloud services they do not need through the threat of being audited” seems a bit off. What is there for Amazon to audit ? I thought all there offerings were cloud only ? And while I have been on the receiving end of MS audits, those audits never concerned their cloud offerings.
Off-topic : the MS audits in general were a pain, but overall not too bad compared to others… <cough>microfocus</cough>
my relative's friend had a low-level job with them (warehouse or data tagging or something) and it nearly killed her. Sure the dev jobs might be different but I wouldn't feel right working at a company that I know does that to people (unless I'm specifically working on fixing it).
Judging from this New York Times article from 2015, I wouldn’t bet on it being much different for white-collar workers there.
It is increasingly more difficult though as governments introduce more and more red tape every year.
There is an open war on freelancing and self-employment. These days you probably cannot own your startup, as you won't be able to save enough money from a salary nor bring capital through your own work (IR35), so you will be looking at taking a bank loan or getting an investor.
that is all of that and they are understaffed for pretty much all the time.
we pay pittance, so it's difficult to find someone desperate enough
"You're told that you're the best of the best,"
we prey on people with low self esteem issues
You don't get through the process of hiring unless you're really, really good
you need to jump as high as we tell you Good doggy, now have some scraps
We have our own way of doing things
Where to start, taxes...
Our unusual approach and our culture
Boss thrusted himself to space, so that his employees living in tents could see him through the holes clowning around.
if you're really Amazon material, there's a good chance you're already on their radar
Given so much data that they have...
(all above is satire and just my opinion)
Never considered working there. Despite a huge backlog of development positions (I'm a software engineer), and a steep entry in (codersrank.io anyone? Notoriously difficult and in the end rather useless test facility) they have a policy of firing a number of engineers regardless of talent after one year, some sort of quota system. The logic behind that... who knows? Apparently all/most of the larger firms have that same philosophy. Wasn't aware of it but I knew in my gut that working for the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, etc.. would be a thankless and low paying job. When those opportunities come my way I simply 404 them. No need for the hassles.
they have a policy of firing a number of engineers regardless of talent after one year
Here in the UK, you gain full employment rights after two years. If they fired workers just before this cut off, that could raise eye brows of employment tribunal. The one year in this case seems to be a safe distance for them to avoid suspicion.
If they do it this way, this means they should rather be looking for freelancers and shouldn't exploit hopes of people looking for stable employment. Freelancers however cost more money.
This is then another example of parasitic behaviour of that organisation.
...they have a policy of firing a number of engineers regardless of talent after one year, some sort of quota system. The logic behind that... who knows? Apparently all/most of the larger firms have that same philosophy.
That's part of the whole 'corporate values' stuff. We're a great place to work, we reward excellence, we value our employees. Which means we rank them 1-5. The 5* ones are mythic beasts* who are rumored to escape to the Island, or get a 0.2% pay rise. The ranking system is updated quarterly, so you can see how you're doing. This obviously motivates the 1-2s, because every year, we'll terminate those and/or just the 10% lowest rated employees.
I think Enron were one of the first to espose this management philosopy, and look where they are now.
Which always puzzled me a bit given it tends to reward those employees who figure out how to cling to a 3, rather than top performers. Theory goes it's a way to have an annual cull of the dead wood, but in reality, often just seems to ensure their survival, and demotivating employees a company might really prefer to retain.
The 2015 story in The New York Times appeared just as Amazon was starting its pitch to me. Other online horror stories had already killed the thrill of being courted; that piece buried it.
I still remember an online anecdote from an Ama-wife describing the reality of cheapskate Bozo's cramped, partition-free, shared office spaces and the psycho's dogs-in-the-office policy: Barking, whining, begging, shedding, vomiting, shitting, and sticking their noses in strangers' crotches (including her husband's). Absolutely Revolting.
While there are plenty from "shit-hole countries" who might put up with that psycho's policies, neither they nor we should. Christ, it's 2021, and we reside in the First World.
What the hell is wrong with people that they don't tell Bozo to go F himself?
Have some self-respect, please!
That's why I had left Microsoft previously. There was some fun tech and plenty of smart coworkers, but the corporate Nazis, a$$hole bootlickers, and scared-into-silence numbered far too many. I had top metrics, but who the F cares? The environment was ultimately abusive and oppressive. And Gates, himself? OMG, the little old cantankerous lady (who complained about everything) was boring, charmless, and surrounded by obsequious yes-men (reminds me of Tim Cook).
Monopolies are dangerous for so many reasons, yet the rape artists are still celebrated. Just look at Bozo's dildo launch today. The press ate it up. Not one critical word.
I would say Amazon/AWS send me mail on LinkedIn every few months about some position or another.
Given all the bullshit about the place I wouldn't work there unless I was desperate. Obviously everyone knows about the warehouse workers, but even the white collar workers seem to get treated like shit - micromanaged by process, stiffed out of bonuses, stabbed in the back by managers, overworked, directionless, unfair reviews etc. There is an entire website called "The FACE of Amazon" that goes through numerous horror stories stories.
It's no wonder if they're constantly hiring.
Amazon always had a fairly toxic reputation in Seattle as a place to work. Even when it was very small. Before they moved to Beacon Hill. Microsoft across the lake had an equally bad reputation but Mircosofties always told the same kind of story, my team is OK (even good), but the rest of the company - total bastards.
But I never once heard that from anyone working at Amazon. Always that harried air about them. And as Amazons reputation was already well established locally by the late 1990's everyone basically avoided the subject. Quite different from the three other local behemoths. Boeing, Starbucks, and Cosco. People who worked for them would chatter away about work just like any normal people. The Boeing people (pre McDonald Douglas) were the best to talk to. Great stories.
The other thing Amazon has in common with Microsoft is that it had a reputation for utterly unethical / illegal dealing from the very beginning. They quickly acquired a reputation for screwing over local vendors / companies / individuals from the get go. One of the reasons I have never once bought anything using Amazon or any Amazon products. And if AWS or other Amazon services are involved in a product then everything is locked down watertight and secure on the assumption that anything of value Amazon will snoop on and steal if giving an opportunity. These people have a track record for this behavior. Just like with MS, anything on their computers, they will snoop. Guaranteed.
Thats the thing about lying kniving bastards. Not matter what they say, they are lying.
I got pinged (possibly the wrong word at the moment) by an AWS HR person in the USA. Introductory interview went swimmingly until I mentioned that I had to spend 3 days per week at home due to being a registered carer. They cut it off at that point even though I said that I was happy to travel to customers the other days.
Most people I know who went to work at Amazon left the moment their joining bonus stocks vested (usually 12 months). Mixture of tech and middle management.
The last paragraph of the story doesn't make sense to me.
>>> One insider suggests that the worst thing that could happen would be for AWS to get all the staff it wanted. "I think the company would slow down… because people would feel like they were able to take the pressure off themselves." <<<
Even if they got all the staff they wanted a quarter of them will quit from stress and overwork the next quarter anyway. These people aren't putting the pressure on themselves. :eyeroll:
The only thing which will slow Amazon down is people getting wise to the fact that the minor bump in appeal to your CV of having passed through their meat grinder isn't worth the daft interview process, below average comp and soul crushing work pressure. That or TRPF.
Hiring needs high, for good reason. They write crap code.
I was trying to buy something from someone's web site and it wasn't working. I emailed them, they said they were working with Amazon to resolve it. I debugged it, purchased the item, and the business owner gave it to me for free, for doing so.
Shame on Amazon.
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