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The experience is pretty variable for devs at Amazon. I worked there for two and a half years and was definitely not overworked, nor did anyone on my team or related teams at Seattle seem to be overworked. Occasionally there'd be some crunch prior to launch, maybe a couple times a year, but an average week I'd work 8 hours a day including lunch. Part of that may have been being a device team (Android stuff) because that means there aren't any servers to constantly manage, if there's a big problem the best you can do is push out a fix with the next patch. There were a few people who consistently worked overtime, but it seemed to be because they were ambitious or really cared about their product, not because they were pushed to. Now, the devs in India did seem to work insane hours, and people who had to coordinate with India often had to do phone meetings at awful times, but I'm not sure how fixable of a problem the latter is given the time zone difference.
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Aug 17, 2015 19:20
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SquadronROE posted:Quoting this so it gets attention on this page. This is really interesting, and I wonder how different peoples' experiences will be. It may come down to division by division leadership, I know that a culture is really based on the leader of the organization you report to. Some managers and mid-managers may be really strongly in favor of a work-life balance, since it's the only way to sustain employees with high morale. * Compared to other leading-edge tech companies they're probably average, maybe even a little worse, but they still have new college grads making like 120k their first year between salary and signing bonus.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:19
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foobardog posted:I went to an engineering college, and on career fair day, I ran into an aeronautical engineer who was bummed because there were no jobs for him, and even though Boeing had come, they were only looking for software engineers.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:32
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ntan1 posted:You know as well as I do that 120k post salary + signing bonus is pretty low for total compensation for a tech salary at one of the giants, after 1-2 years. quote:I hear that Amazon also tends to skimp on raises, causing people who have been at the company for a long time to receive less in total comp than somebody who was just hired to that level.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:13
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Popular Thug Drink posted:prestige is the better word i think. like "we pay top dollar for top talent!" when the marginal value difference between the best programmer and the second best probably isn't like $50k
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Aug 17, 2015 21:17
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SquadronROE posted:I have to wonder if this is going to be continuing or if there's going to be some sort of influence to depress wages again. Maybe the push to get more people in on visas will make competition for devs less? Radbot posted:Considering that the every Valley firm endeavors to keep people on-campus as much as possible, either by hook (Google) or crook (Amazon), I'm curious to understand why you think that helps develop social capital "on their own time" (which they have none of).
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Aug 17, 2015 21:23
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SquadronROE posted:I've only ever been through the hiring process for principal engineers and senior engineers, so I only know it's super hard to find candidates that are good. A glut of recent CS grads won't solve that, because it takes time and experience to be a good engineer. Eskaton posted:Well, if they're okay with it, is it really a problem?
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Aug 17, 2015 22:56
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There is but AFAIK almost nobody cares, mostly I hear about it when real engineers complain that software engineers are not, in fact, real engineers.
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Aug 17, 2015 23:22
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Paul MaudDib posted:You can sell off contracts, no problem. HP is doing it right now. An Angry Bug posted:That's because those employees are easily exploited short-sighted idiots who need to be protected from themselves. Amazon employees aren't children, thanks. If their working conditions suck, they'll learn their lesson and move on. Cicero fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 18:20
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Paul MaudDib posted:I mean that half of HP's employees will now be working for a different company than the other half. The high salaries are, I think, a manifestation that even junior devs really can be worth that much, and that one of them may turn out to be a genius who does something incredible is useful but not the primary motivator to paying well.
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Aug 19, 2015 01:11
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BlueBlazer posted:Also not true you can quit whenever you want, most people can't do that. quote:you will never get Dev's quote:(Who can't seem to define what they actually do half the time)
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Aug 19, 2015 01:48
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I basically agree with you, I think you're just missing the original context for this sub-thread, which was a non-programming engineer expressing dismay at how much more new software engineers (at some companies) make than him. That then turned into a discussion around "why do even very junior programmers at these companies make so much money?" For example, new grad engineers at Amazon and MS are starting at like the 120-130k range, Google is like 150-160k (and Facebook is probably the same or a bit more).
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Aug 19, 2015 02:23
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BlueBlazer posted:Meh your right, just so much worker rage lately.  So hiring by these BigTechCos is, while nowhere near the majority, still a non-trivial share of the overall hiring scene. And my experience is that very few junior software developers already have done exceptional work prior to graduation. I personally don't know anyone from my time at Amazon and Google who you could really say that about. I'd imagine that most of the real college coding superstars are probably founding their own companies (although they may end up at a big tech co later via acquisition). * And there are others that undoubtedly pay similarly, like Apple and Yahoo, and a lot of successful later-stage startups like Dropbox, Uber, AirBnB, etc.
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Aug 19, 2015 02:42
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Typo posted:idk dude, I don't understand why every time an IT industry thread comes up people think everyone who program is some spergie. Cicero fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 05:18
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be fair that is partly because they seem to be kind of dim and really selfish, For example: BlueBlazer posted:That paying sperglords a disproportionate amount of money compared to their peers creates a sense of entitlement and disconnect from the world at large?
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Aug 19, 2015 06:17
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Typo posted:Those ranges seem way too high to me, I know people who started around 100k but those estimates seem to be 30-50% too high quote:Company: Amazon quote:Company: Google More on Google: quote:For Graduate: quote:New grad BSc 2015: quote:New Grad SWE quote:New Grad (B.S.), after negotiation (with counteroffers) Keep in mind I'm factoring in that Google gives annual bonuses that average ~15% or so. Also there was a bit of a movement recently at Google where someone started a form/spreadsheet for people to share their salaries. This is public info now because of drama that erupted around it. In any case it makes it pretty easy see roughly what people are making at different levels. Cicero fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 06:27
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Tab8715 posted:I was just about to respond with this and I didn't say liberal/conservative but "fiscally conservative". You'll find that those in STEM are okay with gay marriage, legalized weed, sex outside marriage but flips when you have things like social security, socialized medicine, etc * Yeah there's more libertarians than average too, but I don't think there are that many of them, they're just really loud. And I think they tend to be more pragmatic, too; techies with libertarian leanings in SF, for example, are probably still cool with funding public transportation.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:38
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