The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. If you are moving across big orgs, you are just a blip in the system should something like this come up. And just like a group of startups, some are going to be run worse than others.

Additionally, because of the internal transfer policy and teams frequently switching out members, a lot of work is designed to be picked up by a new person, especially at the SD1/SD2 levels, so people are generally replaceable. Couple that with the fact that the interview process only tests for academic knowledge, without really proving that you can set up infra and services in production. And even more on top on top of that, Amazon gets a never ending candidate pool. So you get a combination of both poor performance that actually need to get PIPed out mixed in with poor teams that are ran like crap because managers themselves are not really technical and end up not delivering and then having to PIP people out.

That being said, because of this sort of structure, if you know how to make moves and "read the room" so to speak, Amazon is the best company for finding that sweet spot of maximizing revenue/actual hour worked. If you are a talented software engineer, not just a developer and generally know how to navigate around managers, you can hit senior engineer or manager levels quite easily, and then cruise control your way at $300k a year, and with an added benefit of lots of remote positions right now (since wfh is a big selling point in order to not get rejected by good candidates). From talking to people at Google/Facebook, those kind of moves are a lot harder to do.

> If you are a talented software engineer, not just a developer and generally know how to navigate around managers, you can hit senior engineer or manager levels quite easily,

How do you “navigate” your way around an 11:30 PM email that contains a 5:30 AM deadline, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread?

"I was asleep. The expectation that I would see it, much less respond to it, is crazy."

Pre-declare available working hours, and adhere to them.

I have a cronjob that signs out of {slack, email, zoom, ...} at a particular time of day, my work accounts aren't attached to my personal devices, and i respond promptly to communication during working hours. I genuinely don't see work-related comms when i'm not working, and my work availability is in my slack profile, my internal email signature, and in my outlook calendar.

Don’t let it get to that state? If you can’t, find a new team?

ignore it

> The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company.

Not really; esp when the processes and priorities are alike across the company (with exception of few organizations that are experimenting newer processes at any given point in time).

> Amazon is the best company for finding that sweet spot of maximizing revenue/actual hour worked.

I don't think a single tenured co-worker who, during the pandemic, moved to Airbnb, Uber, Google, Stripe, and heck, even Coinbase, look back fondly upon the management structure they were subject to at Amazon, now that they've seen how other companies in the space are setup.

> If you are a talented software engineer ... cruise control your way at $300k a year.

Well, there's this: https://nitter.net/quinnypig/status/1386803846970675200

How are other companies setup that make them distinct from Amazon?

I guess it is hard to pinpoint one particular thing, when it is the overall system of ruthless management which causes grief among engs who dare have a performance blip... on top of the constant stream of stories/rumours they hear of their co-workers / from their co-workers... I guess it only makes them want to move to some place where there is less of such constant barrage of negativity (tangential: https://hbr.org/2016/06/the-management-thinker-we-should-nev...). Personally though, I quit AWS three ago, and haven't looked back, though I did like my time there (and have very little to complaint about).

At the risk of sounding like someone who clearly doesn’t have the skills you’re talking about, what do you mean by “reading the room” here? Knowing when to push things, when to drop them, being trusted enough by management that they don’t blame you for failing to meet absurd requests?

HR at Amazon is a shit show. I had $100 of pizza stolen from the fridge at Amazon and I mentioned it casually to HR, as something notable but not too important. And HR then decided to tell my manager without my knowledge. The manager then berated me over communicating about a "trivial matter." So yeah, wouldn't put much stock in HR at Amazon.

I know it's not the point, but how/why did you have $100 worth of pizza in the refrigerator?

Edit: I'm trying to imagine scenarios where that could happen, I have two so far. You ordered pizza for a meeting that got canceled, and the office refrigerator was huge. Or you ordered from a fancy pizza place that had waygu or something as a topping. I'm sorry, I don't know why this is bothering me so much.

It was 5 of the expensive pies from https://www.seriouspieseattle.com/serious-take-out-ballard/

I had gotten them for myself and a friend. They are small pies so a single person can easily eat two of them.

Ok, so that explains how they fit in the refrigerator. Though it's still confusing why you would buy 5 pizzas and put them in the fridge. Is it common around there to buy pizza in advanced and reheat it? Or were they just leftovers, and I was thinking too much about it?

I was new there and didn't want to have to run around to get lunch. The place was a bit of a distance.

Maybe it was paid for with bitcoin, like the infamous case: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/cryptocurrency/bi...

it's clearly a lie!

The value of pizza is inversely correlated to the time it's been out of the oven. Once it's in the refrigerator it's worth max 1%

I mean ... one of my guilty pleasures is leftover pizza straight out of the fridge. Something about that chilled, congealed fat and sugar ... mmmmmmmmm

So to me it makes perfect sense that it's $100

I for one like leftover pizza if it hasn't hardened into a rock. In this case, the pizza had only been in there for less than a day.

Maybe original cost had been $10,000?

Or it was $100 worth of pizza spread over a longer period.

You should've played the game and claimed you've never said what HR says you've said and in fact (here goes the distraction part of the lie) you heard another guy was talking about pizza, so HR must've overheard that conversation and misremembered the details.

The problem is the manager would probably start with "did you have a pizza stolen?" without mentioning HR

The stolen item needs to slightly vary in each telling. Catch a mole 101.

They'll have to call it the "Pizza Trap" instead of the Canary Trap...

From this question alone you could figure who's trying to backstab you.

Maybe manager stole the pizza.

Well, I left because of him. He stole my dignity.

Dignity and pizza.

$100 of pizza? Isn't that a whole AWS service's worth?

I was making good money. And this chef makes pizza to die for: https://www.seriouspieseattle.com/serious-take-out-ballard/

If you had got an NFT for your pizza, this wouldn't have happened since this would prevent them from... Oh wait...

One piece of advice I always offer to younger software engineers about corporate politics is to ALWAYS try your best to make sure you have a relationship with your manager's manager. Cutting out links in the corporate telephone game is invaluable sometimes.

> Maybe his manager is a piece of shit, but I can't believe there's no one to report to above him that can see this for what it is and make it right?

PIP is a tool in manager's hands and above L6 no one gives a squat. They even encourage using it.

People don’t get friendlier up the food chain. It’s highly likely the line manager is reacting to pressure coming from above themselves.

Agree. It is unlikely the manager did this out of pettiness. He probably got pressured by his L7/L8 to fire someone for his org to meet the URA goal. He made the obvious choice and picked the guy applying for internal transfer. Why lose two people when you could just lose one?

Yes, there was an exemption process for this while I was there. (Though it wasn’t called PIP)