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.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-benefits-201...

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.