Tech IndustryMar 28, 2019
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Alexa News

How is Alexa News team compared with other teams in Alexa, or in Amazon in general, in terms of 1) engineering culture ? 2) average work load ? Is it like 40 hours of productive work / week, or more like constant crunch 60-70 I'm considering joining the news team, if all goes well after the interview process. Bonus: what kind of insightful questions I should ask the team as I'll meet with them? Sure I'll ask standard stuff about : processes, product, technologies. But what kind of good questions would an Amazonian ask

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Yahoo VOui62 Mar 28, 2019

What is alexa news? What do they do

Facebook alterego2 OP Mar 28, 2019

It is the team supporting the news platform, answering queries like "Alexa, tell me the latest"

Yahoo VOui62 Mar 28, 2019

Is it organic news? As in no editorial intervention? Completely driven by algorithms?

Microsoft OIC-u812 Mar 28, 2019

Ask how the turnover rate and morale are. Ask for the average time on the team. Ask how many weekends a month you’ll work. Ask how much comp time is given, on average. Yeah, I’m a bit cynical. Amazon culture is hit or miss.

Facebook alterego2 OP Mar 28, 2019

Hot or miss, is very team specific in big companies. I was in MSFT a while ago, but contrary to general believe, our team's WLB was terrible, mostly because we were migrating to cloud, and we did not have any clue, nor the management

eBay svblinder Mar 28, 2019

How long with fb? Wlb there?

Facebook alterego2 OP Mar 28, 2019

6 years with FB, WLB ok-ish

Amazon Cynimist Mar 28, 2019

Brand new team so not many people will be able to tell you much. Director (Marcu) is well known and respected but beyond that not sure. Edit: there are two different teams doing stuff with news. One is Zeitgeist/News (Uppuluri) and one is Search/News (Marcu) - not sure which team you are thinking of. Different VPs of course - because this is Alexa so obviously each VP will have conflicting programs. Ugh.

Yahoo VOui62 Mar 28, 2019

What is marcu background

Facebook alterego2 OP Mar 28, 2019

Wow, thank you so much for insight, @Cynimist