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L5 SWE $500K TC (not Bay Area) 15YoE I left Amazon several years ago because things were super toxic on my team so I am writing to ask honestly if Amazon is worth returning to. Some of my friends are boomeranging back to Amazon and getting offers in the $550K TC range for L6 SDE, non-Bay Area. Stocks are low now so although I know it's not all about money, it's tempting to boomerang back and get higher TC and at a low point in stock. Some things I am curious about: A. Is $550K TC for L6 SDE typical now? That's a lot more than what I was paid, I was at $300K TC when I left. B. I assume URA is still happening? When I left, AFAIK it was 6% firing every year, and 10-15% in dev plan to ensure the org hit the 6% goal. And related to that is OLR still a disaster and big fight for who is on LE and PIP? C. I left before ratings went to LE/HV1/HV2/HV3/TT, instead of just the 3 ratings of Least Effective, Highly Valued, Top Tier. Did that change make things better or worse? D. Any big cultural changes under Jassy? AWS had one of the higher techsurvey org results so maybe he was a good reason for that? Are there good teams at Amazon with reasonable work/life balance and high technical standards, or are most orgs still always feeling on fire and on-call and getting yelled at for missing deadlines? E. There were some well-intentioned things that got kinda toxic or misused, any of those better? a. Leadership Principles - I like this concept but the new LP's seem odd and LP's seemed to be used to criticize people and PIP them. b. COE aka Cause Of Error? - I like the idea of retros and we do those at Google, but they seemed to be used for punishment, seemed like a way to get back at other orgs or teams. c. Chime - I like the idea of Amazon dogfooding its own VC platform, but Chime had so many technical problems and missing features. We were moving to Slack at least for chat when I left. d. Daily Connections - I liked the anonymous daily surveys since it let me give feedback on my manager and stuff versus only doing it 1/year. But I hear some managers try to find out who's giving negative feedback or ignored the feedback. F. Any better benefits and perks? G. Are perf reviews better now? "Forte" seemed a bit bland and shallow, but at least was a lot less work then before where you had to put in areas of growth tied to LP's. If you've gotten this far, if you're curious, one attraction of Amazon is that because it is so fast paced, I learn a lot. I mostly left because of treatment. I can bare working a lot of long hours. But not when me and my team are getting yelled at anyway by everyone up the leadership chain. It's like 70 hour weeks were the expectation instead of that we should be appreciated. But I imagine not every team at Amazon is this way.
With the attrition, and hiring of stupid people, Amazon is a shit show right now. You can get opportunity to grow but if the manager sucks, it would be a nightmare no matter what
Amazon is more of a shit show now.
B. Yes there is is still 6% C. Worse - You have much less leverage as HV1 and HV2. D. Feels like always on fire. Three VPs from the Alexa org just announced their departure. Attrition (non URA) has reached over 12% vs 5% in years past. E. Yes LPs are still abused especially deliver results and bias for action. Used to make you work 60 hours a week. F. No perks outside of 50 dollar cell reimbursement. G. Forte is now split by performance and LPs. I agree you learn a lot, but they still treat people so poorly. The focus, PIP abuse goes on every month. Being late by 1 day on a massive deliverable that already had an unrealistic timeline is frowned upon and these people will eat you alive in Forte.
This π There are now more ratings and itβs much easier to land in the bottom half of the ratings chart if you lay it out then to be a top performer. Much more granualar. If you do join. Ask about the oncall load always. Donβt join any team that has more than 1 sev2 a week. Hopefully this will allow Amazon to hire a dedicated oncall team for shitty ops heavy teams. Perks have not gotten better as the Frugality principle is still around. You get free Bananas. Missing a single deadline will forever paint you as someone incompetent on the team.
β Three VPs from the Alexa org just announced their departure. Attrition (non URA) has reached over 12% vs 5% in years past. β - Dang, why do these ppl ever leave and spread their culture elsewhere too ! Not good.
Sounds bad still
On the way out. 10+ years. Happy with all I learned but the place has changed significantly (good and bad changes and open to perspective). Feels a bit Day 2 in some areas.
No stay at Google. Trust me