How do you explain Amazon’s stock rise
Most Blinders here have negative opinions against the Amazon culture and employees. If it is that bad, how do you explain its stock rise in the past few years? It may not be the most popular workplace for Blinders but it has been the most popular company that the media and people talk about.
Company is good, being an employee at Amazon might not be good. I don't think many people have doubt on the company and it's growth potential. People's negative opinions on Amazon is how it treats its employees. Amazon used to lose tons of people every year because of its bad treatment to employees. The only reason that the retention rate is higher these years is because of the stock appreciation.
But can’t you always ask your next employer to match the stock appreciation at Amazon if you want to leave?
Not a lot of company can match amazon's comp because of the 400%+ growth in the past years. E.g. Amazon only wants to pay sde II 182k - 240k but a lot of people made 300k+ as sde II in the past 2 years. Google and Facebook usually can't match that at sde ii level and their hiring bar is higher than Amazon so it doesn't make sense to move. But this year, a lot of people will start looking outside
Stock prices are drive by consumers not employees. Amazon employees might be unhappy but consumers love amazon.
Blinders evaluate Amazon as a potential employer, not as an investment stock. Even most Amazonians agree that Amazon culture is shitty and working there is soul sucking. Theoretically, you could have slaves working for you with no pay and you will be financially doing well. And the fact that Amazonians keep trying to convince themselves and everyone else that they are very happy employees is pathetic and shows how insecure they are
I don't think Amazon's rep is really deserved. The truth is that Netflix and Facebook are equally brutal on low performers and the only real difference is the NYT article on FB focused on privacy issues rather than employee experience. Google is the only FANG that doesn't have a reputation for being ruthless in this respect and the reason for that is they spend literally months on hiring to try and never let a low performer in--but if one does slip in they really are just as ruthless. At none of these companies can you slack off and expect that to go well for you. In terms of other things like WLB people at Amazon work hard but few work the kinds of hours that are typical at Apple. Many at Amazon work a 35hr week with only a few teams pushing 50hr on a regular basis and hardly any getting into the 60hr-as-normal territory Apple is infamous for. Ok so you can complain we don't have free food, but that hardly justifies all the shit posting. So I think it's just a meme following the NYT piece.
One word. AWS.
Yeah AWS really is the reason for the majority of the stock appreciation. If AWS was its own company it would easily be a $500 billion valuation. $27 billion revenue run rate, growing at 46%, and extremely profitable. A lot of room for growth opportunities as well since companies data needs grow constantly, new services are added, and more and more companies move to the cloud. AWS alone should be worth more than Facebook as an entire company.
How did you arrive at 500b valuation for AWS? You mentioned current revenue is 27b. Are you just multiplying revenue by 20 to arrive at this 500b AWS valuation ?
Working at amazon is like being a Chinese citizen. Country is growing very fast but sucks living there.
I love being an Amazon customer. Hat tip to everyone who works hard to keep it that way. That being said, I would think twice before joining their ranks.
If you have a farm and having lots of people working for you day and night, how rich you will be?
The day Amazon starts treating its employees well is when I will sell my AMZN stock.
Shitty workplace is not the same as good company performance
Do you mean the former has boosted the latter?
They are doing well as a company, but it’s shitty to be their employee