You would think with how huge and renown amazon is as a company they would have their pick of top engineers. It's not the case. None of my friends that work in Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other unicorns even consider applying to Amazon on their job search. It's actually pretty comical, I have no idea where Amazon gets their talent pool from.
Eh, not so fast there. Perhaps that talent pool is larger and more diverse than you realize. It’s entirely possible that I’m out of touch now, but when I was at MSFT 10 years ago, there was a steady flow of top talent to Amazon. All the people I knew who went over were sort of the way-overachiever type who wouldn’t mind being punished (and rewarded) by an employer. They were single, male, career and status obsessed. Also among the best developers and managers I worked with. FAR from the bottom of the barrel. I myself declined all invitations to come over, but people want different things from their jobs. I liked the ability to hide and coast in relatively slow-moving MS.
10 years ago their abusive workplace culture was not nearly as well known as it is now and also the possibility of massive stock appreciation isn't as likely either given sky high valuations. I see no reason why someone would choose Amazon over a unicorn or any other FANG company which offers much better work life balance.
I agree with all this. Heck, I even agreed 10 years ago. I’ll only say that those people I knew seemed almost attracted to the abuse, as though they believed it would help make them wealthy. (They did all become millionaires, but you’re right that they could have done so at many other companies.)
Maybe your friends at Facebook, Google and Microsoft aren't such special snowflakes and in fact there are plenty of engineers around good enough to do the job? Don't mean to sound harsh but it's not like working at any of the above companies instantly makes you some kind of Einstein.
I agree. I have worked for a lot of FAANGs and nobody I knew ever went to Amazon.
I was partway through agreeing to an interview request from Amazon last year when my research turned up how stingy their 401k match is. Similarly their stock vesting schedule is awful compared with everybody else.
It's not that I desperately needed that extra bit of money on top of the perhaps generous salary (no sum was named).
It's that being stingy about that stuff indicates to me that they will be less than generous in every possible situation, say if I need time to deal with a health issue or a family emergency.
