Would it makes sense to join Amazon if
I plan to marry this year? Got few offers and Amazon is one of them. If I plan to marry at some point this year, is it a good idea to join Amazon? Asking because of the ridiculous PTO, public holidays and the extra pressure to work a lot more. To give more info, this will be a SDE-2 position and I was consistently top 10% performer in previous companies and have worked on wide variety of projects. Good at Java, so hoping I'll ramp up pretty quickly. Expected TC - $240K
I didn’t read anything after “Would it make sense to join Amazon”, sorry. The answer is no. Google “face of amazon”.
Why? If first FAANG, Amazon is still to be reckoned with in terms of scale and what one can learn. And comp is pretty competitive
Just follow the last sentence in my post. Also check nyt article about amazon, and many other news coverage.
If you are a good performer, you will be fine. Problems with opinions is that everyone has one-you gotta do you. WLB issues exist everywhere. It all depends on teams etc
It really depends on what the other offers are. If Amazon is the only tier 1 company, I'd take it. If you have other tier 1 offers, I'd consider them. It also depends at what stage of the dating pipeline are you. If you are just starting to look for a potential partner, Amazon would not be a hindrance since it usually takes some time before things start to take shape at personal front. If you have a partner already and plan to marry, I would definitely consider other options since personal front takes a priority there. It also depends if you are Indian and getting arranged married, you would want to take out time for your partner. But if you have been dating for a while already then I am sure your partner would understand if you have long working hours. I have an Indian friend who joined amazon while he was was seriously looking to get arranged married, and he wasn't able to spare all the time to know his partner. So I'd give it a thought.
Hey! Thanks for this. I have been dating a girl for over a year and half, so was hoping that won't be an issue. I'm still discussing with my GF about this, but want to get the general opinion if I'm making a stupid mistake with this move
You'd be fine in that case. 1.5years is a long enough time period to know someone. Just make sure you communicate it to her that your job will be more stressful than the current one and you expect some support, just in case she didn't see that coming. Congrats, in advance, on getting married 🎉
The factors you mention that are causing you to hesitate include PTO, public holidays and the pressure to work harder. Let’s talk about the latter first. You sound very driven and are a top performer. I am sure whichever company you go to, you will put in the necessary hard work to ramp up and start making an impact. In that context, I think it will be the same wherever you go. As for PTOs and public holidays: Amazon may not give you unlimited leave, but what you get is fair. Not industry leading, but we don’t take up the rear either. You have 6 public holidays in NA I believe. Sure, other companies have have 10, but we are talking about a year here. You also get about 16 days PTOs + vacation days in your first year, which goes to 21 from your second year. It’s not super good, but I won’t call it bad either. Hopefully I’d be able to look you up in PhoneTool soon, congratulations on getting married!
Hey! Yeah I really don't mind putting in that extra effort or work harder. Fortunately I really love building things and all things computer science, so I don't mind the effort. And the PTO, may be isn't that bad, but given the proposed wedding plan, I'm worrying I'll not have time to do a proper wedding with time for honeymoon. Beyond this year, I really don't mind the 3 weeks thing. Despite all this, I'm definitely excited about AWS and hopefully you'll find me soon. Thanks for the response and wishes.
If you are meaning a couple of weeks long Indian wedding by ‘proper’, that might be a problem at Amazon or any other company. Where do you work now?
Congrats on the news! Just be honest with your manager and recruiter ahead of accepting the offer and tell them that your wedding is coming up and that you'll need the time off. Also, just to be safe: prenup
I actually didn't communicate it with the manager in the first call, but now that I'm thinking more about this, I might give them a heads up. Does this come off as a negative thing? Like would the manager think, I won't have focus on work during that month, I know they have better stuff to worry about than this, but very curious about what they would think
I wouldn't think so. You didn't accept yet and this is just a factor in your decision making. The honesty and the fact that you bring it up before having made a decision will be super appreciated. Also, more important: pre-nup
If you have an option that provides same comp with better wlb, go for it, don't care about brand. Else, it's not so bad to join Amazon, tell them ur getting married, hence, will be taking more PTO for 3 Mons on and off. That will set the expectations. Now, for some reason, even if u don't perform well, in some cases, mgr may understand and give u one more chance, u can easily survive for 1yr-1.5yr. U can easily find some other job, when u leave Amazon.
NO. Spend time with your wife. Taking a job at Amazon threatens your marriage.
I’d probably worry less about PTO and more about “face time” with your spouse. I hope she is very independent, has a large circle of friends and doesn’t mind dinners alone. And runaway if this is a relocation. Your marriage will suffer even if all three things above are true.
Depends. We have a system of weekly on-call rotation. If I were newly married, I'd want to join a team with large number of SDEs so that I'm on-call only once in two months and have less than 2-3 high impact issues a week (that's about 50% of Amazon teams). My recommendation: Join Amazon. Spend a few months on the team you're hired for. Before you start your married life, you can go to a team with good WLB if yours' sucks. There a lot of teams like them (there are scores of teams building tools used by 1000s of Amazonians ONLY) which would happily hire you.
Thanks for the suggestion. A friend who referred me is in the same group and his experience is that he only worked 2 weekends, and on call wasn't that bad. I guess I also have to consider the age of the application to assess the on call support. I'm leaning towards Amazon compared to my other offers since I see moving around to different teams is so easy.
Yeah, most people work on weekends because: a) They want to (most people make that decision subconsciously; instead of accepting it, they crib about it) b) They made really poor estimates (like 50% off; they are a good learning though) c) Hard launch dates (true for teams in AWS launching something in their yearly conference, hardly true for any other org) d) Poor management (which is when you move teams)
What options you got?