Why do people bash Amazon engineering?
I gave aws interview two days ago. I make less than an average Amazon sde. I thought the people were very nice and the interviewers probed me deeply into the questions I answered. Everyone seemed very smart. They may be frugal but I am sure they have world class engineers and are obviously killing it in the cloud business. I just feel it's just creates a false sense of insecurity among Amazon employees leading them to believe that they are not very good, but from my perspective they have a wonderful sandbox to play in where they can really change the world. TC 150K Boston
If you come from top places like Facebook or you’ve worked at startups where you’re expected to produce work, you’ll realize that the amazon engineering quality is very low.
Top places like Facebook 😂😂😂. I used to be there and left after one year. The codebase was the least organized most hacky thing ever. Sure "Facebook engineering quality" ahah
Heh, left after one year probably because you couldn’t keep it up. Sore loser.
People love to hate. Ultimately amazons engineering is top 1% of companies by and large (ymmv as you look at various teams) but since they are definitely below the majority of other companies that frequent blind they get hated on. It doesn’t help that the cult like LPs give fodder
There is a lot of jealousy from other cloud contenders on how well AWS is doing. They are at the absolute top of their game while Google Cloud barely makes money (also a dumpster fire of reliability). Don't let those disgruntled individuals change your impressions. AWS is the absolute top for cloud
I interviewed and got offer. The experience was super, Engineers are down to earth too. Definitely top engineering
Well those guys are more interested in foundational tech products more than in business products. Because they can afford it, ads business is making huge profits.
Sure, if they can why not. But still a lot of people using their tech products, including amzn. But the other way is not.
Great engineers definitely exist at aws, and amzn in general. On average number of eng at amzn is way more than any other company, and it is difficult to keep the bar consistent. Also, a lot of aws eng went from amzn to FB and G. So yesterday’s amzn eng are today’s fb and G. Not all, but there are.
I've only had solid experiences working with ex-amazon engineers. However, the stories they tell about their time there...
You know people always want to assure themselves that they made the right choice. I am not saying it is wrong, just telling a perspective why they could have been telling these stories. Of course everybody had different experiences, but company is simply huge and definitely you may have at least 1-2 bad experiences.
Sounds like survivorship bias. All the ex-amazonians you know left for a reason. The one's that didn't have a reason to leave never did.
There are obviously great engineers and talented folks at Amazon. Amazon has grown at a pace that none of the other FANGM match. They have a wide range of products and have to hire a lot more people. So there would definitely be a drop in the quality of engineers but the average quality would still be better than most places.
I agree I had a great experience and was impressed by my Alexa interviews
Alexa interviewed you?
We had a nice chat in my kitchen