What you were supposed to do was not go work at Amazon, just like plenty of us won't work for Facebook, etc. Amazon being a terrible place to work isn't something new or foreign to us SWEs. Hell, every time they tried to interview me they'd tell me about how AWS is "run like a startup" and has very little do with the rest of the company. That's telling right there.
Don't let them have our engineering talent even if they offer you the moon (like Brays $1mil/yr). They should be fighting to repair their reputation to even be able to hire SWEs/etc but because people pop out of College and want to go make $120k (or people who only care about their income and not ethics) they have no problem keeping that boat full of new blood.
I cannot fathom making $1m as a SWE over 5 years while the massive majority of my company are treated like cannon fodder and it's well known throughout.. oh, everywhere. It's really easy to quit and sound like a hero in that situation. You're not a hero. You were still part of the problem that we've known about for a long time.
I've been at AWS for almost 3 years now and I don't share the negative sentiment. From what I'm seeing, in general, management tries to do the right thing. I think it's more likely that given the size of the company and the public spot light it is in, incidents that happen everywhere are given more than average attention.
Can you clarify why you see "run as a startup" as a bad thing? I'm genuinely trying to understand your perspective.
I'm not here to convince you that Amazon sucks or something, I was really directing it to the thread OP who is upset that they're not helping as much as they'd like to.
The way that AWS is tossed around/described almost makes it feel like a class-gap between Amazon employees. "Oh, don't worry, you're with AWS, we pay for our employees parking and give them healthcare, you're not part of those Amazon shlubs who have had articles upon articles released about how poorly they're treated. But you're kinda cousins, so you should care about them, just don't care about them too much. We're all the Amazon family!"
For my more applied response to "run as a startup" being bad - after working in 10 startups and losing half of my lifes holidays/weekends/etc launching apps that never make money just sounds like you're going to try your hardest to work me to burn out. So, I don't really like that sentence nowadays even in non-AWS worlds, but I'm no longer in my 20s back when I let companies bleed me dry. Don't let companies do that to you, it's not worth the mental health issues that come with it. Not saying AWS is like this nowadays, but plenty of startups are.
> The way that AWS is tossed around/described almost makes it feel like a class-gap between Amazon employees. "Oh, don't worry, you're with AWS, we pay for our employees parking and give them healthcare, you're not part of those Amazon shlubs who have had articles upon articles released about how poorly they're treated."
I Google around a bit, and found this article [1] from 2017 where an Amazon VP commented that his benefit package is the same as that of warehouse workers.
> For my more applied response to "run as a startup" being bad - after working in 10 startups and losing half of my lifes holidays/weekends/etc launching apps that never make money just sounds like you're going to try your hardest to work me to burn out. So, I don't really like that sentence nowadays even in non-AWS worlds.
Thanks for sharing that. I'm not trying to convince you either, just sharing my perspective to ensure a balanced discussion. When people say "run as a startup" I think they mostly refer to the positives, i.e. having a lot of autonomy and a surprisingly low amount of politics (for the size of the company). People at AWS work hard but it's not crazy and from what I've seen it certainly doesn't rise to anywhere close to your startup experience. One particular about work at AWS is that if you're in a service team you'll be oncall for some amount of time each quarter. Operator culture is very important here. Oncall duties will vary by team, and I think workload will also be different for different teams.
In my experience (having worked at a startup myself too), I think the biggest two differences between a startup and AWS are: i) AWS actually has processes (called "mechanisms" internally) and they generally work, ii) when you're building a product, it will usually be successful. This is because the process to get to a product definition (the "working backwards" process) is extremely rigorous and rarely results in products or features that are duds.
Amazon is a shining example of the differences between the professional managerial class, and the working class. Despite those differences, they are more similar than they are different: they're both in the precarious position of needing to work to make a living, their compensation is divorced from the value they create, and their compensation is never enough to leave the working class.
Given how a key Amazon value is being "frugal" or often times called "frupid" internally, they regularly have little resources for FTEs let alone the workers in warehouses.
Recent College grad here(January, 2020): I thought I was crazy being one of the few people that tried to stay the hell away from Amazon. I've heard so many mixed reviews about their working culture. I spent six years in college and absolutely don't want a company like Amazon to make me hate myself as a programmer. Programming is very dear to my heart and I only want to use it for good.
Congrats on graduating! I started my career during the 2008 recession. I hope things are going more smoothly for you.
My biggest advice and what I wish I'd known back then or heeded better:
Networking will be your savior during this. Find open source projects that you're passionate about and work toward contributing to them. Just help out where and when you can, even if it's just helping to moderate chats, webinars, etc. Depending on the size and organization of the project you'll meet and work with other contributors that use that project in their day-to-day lives at their companies in production. These will be your feet in the door at companies that actually use your passion-project plus you'll learn an incredible amount through osmosis.
A lot of open source projects bring in interns, GSOC, etc type of stuff. They won't expect you to hit home runs. Don't be upset if you're put on documentation duty or editing in the beginning. We all need those skills and some of us engineers get so in the weeds that we forget how to do those more soft skills.
You probably already know all this, I have no idea what compsci courses are like, I didn't have the opportunity to partake in college.
Don't let them have our engineering talent even if they offer you the moon (like Brays $1mil/yr). They should be fighting to repair their reputation to even be able to hire SWEs/etc but because people pop out of College and want to go make $120k (or people who only care about their income and not ethics) they have no problem keeping that boat full of new blood.
I cannot fathom making $1m as a SWE over 5 years while the massive majority of my company are treated like cannon fodder and it's well known throughout.. oh, everywhere. It's really easy to quit and sound like a hero in that situation. You're not a hero. You were still part of the problem that we've known about for a long time.