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Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Umbreon posted:

Well poo poo, I know AWS recently started setting up shop in the city I live in, I might have to actually try this. What's working for AWS like?

I love it. In my thirty year IT career, this has been my favorite job. It’s chaotic and you’d better be comfortable “dealing with ambiguity” but if you like turning chaos into order (only to have more chaos spring up in new and interesting ways) this place is for you. You get to work with ridiculously smart people doing ridiculously cool things at a scale undreamed of in all of human history.



The Fool posted:

So I know AWS posts a bunch of remote positions too, which I would be super interested in. While I am pretty platform agnostic but most of my professional experience is with Azure. Would that be better, worse, or no different than having no cloud platform experience?

No different. If you are smart, have a proven history of being teachable and a fast learner and have the unteachable characteristics of an Amazonian (bias for action, learn and be curious, customer obsession, etc) it doesn’t matter how skilled at clouding you are. We can teach you that.

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CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




^^^ The stress and burnout and lack of real work/life balance is what keeps me from even looking at a place like AWS


Proteus Jones posted:

poo poo. Lack of automation eats into my shitposting time on these dead, gay forums.

Why the hell else would I learn python?

Automation lets me take longer coffee breaks. These old dumb stubborn fucks are doing it wrong.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Agrikk posted:

If you are smart, have a proven history of being teachable and a fast learner and have the unteachable characteristics of an Amazonian (bias for action, learn and be curious, customer obsession, etc) it doesn’t matter how skilled at clouding you are. We can teach you that.

I've seen you mention this a few times and it is just making me more confused about not hearing back. I am going to take a page out of your book and just apply to anything remotely technical.

Umbreon
May 21, 2011

Agrikk posted:

I love it. In my thirty year IT career, this has been my favorite job. It’s chaotic and you’d better be comfortable “dealing with ambiguity” but if you like turning chaos into order (only to have more chaos spring up in new and interesting ways) this place is for you. You get to work with ridiculously smart people doing ridiculously cool things at a scale undreamed of in all of human history.


No different. If you are smart, have a proven history of being teachable and a fast learner and have the unteachable characteristics of an Amazonian (bias for action, learn and be curious, customer obsession, etc) it doesn’t matter how skilled at clouding you are. We can teach you that.

drat, that sounds awesome. I always love learning new skills whenever possible, and management at all of my jobs so far have sung praises about my soft skills(I seriously love helping customers in any way I can, especially when I can put my knowledge/skillset to good use in the process). I guess I'll start looking into AWS and start grabbing all the relevant certs/experience for anything I can reasonably expect to land and see how things pan out from there.

If you don't mind me asking, what did you mean by dealing with ambiguity? So far in basically all of my jobs, this translates to "lol there's no documentation for anything so get hosed if you run into an issue that you're not trained on dealing with", which has lead to the bulk of stuff I wound of teaching myself.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I assume it means “customer comes to you and says they want to make their service faster”, or a CEO declares that they need to be “in the cloud” without being able to flesh that out and you need to figure it out and build the fix up out of the tools AWS offers.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Thanks Ants posted:

a CEO declares that they need to be “in the cloud” without being able to flesh that out and you need to figure it out and build the fix up out of the tools AWS offers.

A 3-screen UI for defining that CEO's cloud service, one of which is asking for payment info, should take 2-3 years and several subordinates. You'll probably walk away with a massive stock options grant and your choice of next assignments.

Umbreon
May 21, 2011

Thanks Ants posted:

I assume it means “customer comes to you and says they want to make their service faster”, or a CEO declares that they need to be “in the cloud” without being able to flesh that out and you need to figure it out and build the fix up out of the tools AWS offers.

Am I just naive/broke-brained if that actually sounds... fun?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Umbreon posted:

Am I just naive/broke-brained if that actually sounds... fun?

It's the right type of challenging, if you consider the alternative sort of challenging at a lot of places would be things like fighting with accounts to be able to buy the tools you need to do your job properly.

Edit: Should make it clear here that I am taking stabs in the dark, I don't work at AWS so wait for the official response.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

CLAM DOWN posted:

You can always tell who the dinosaurs are, by looking for the ones bitching about automation.
Automation is creating a skills gap between junior and senior engineers that will soon be almost completely uncrossable, but I imagine that's different from what you're talking about

tortilla_chip
Jun 13, 2007

k-partite
Where do see that gap forming? My experience has been senior engineers build a service offering within some framework but the junior folks end up supporting it and learn the details when something breaks.

Vargatron
Apr 19, 2008

MRAZZLE DAZZLE


Vulture Culture posted:

Automation is creating a skills gap between junior and senior engineers that will soon be almost completely uncrossable, but I imagine that's different from what you're talking about

You think so? I'd imagine you'd see automation branch out into it's own role and there would still be demand for junior engineers in a different role.

FlapYoJacks
Feb 12, 2009
I have an uncle who is “Principle consultant” of AWS in DC. He keeps trying to get me to move there with him but... it’s DC.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
Note:

The following is one guy's experience in his small corner of AWS. I don't know for sure how life is as an developer or a sales manager or a product manager at AWS but I know a few of each that have been here a while.

CLAM DOWN posted:

^^^ The stress and burnout and lack of real work/life balance is what keeps me from even looking at a place like AWS

It is absolutely true that AWS will suck everything out of you and leave you a dry husk if you let it. We have plenty of "AWS Heroes" who think that they are going to valiantly SAVE THE COMPANY by working 60-80 hours a week, but those people are chumps who will burn out after 6-9 months and then bitch about how there's no work/life balance at AWS.

I tell all of my coworkers that I'll be pissed if I hear that they are working a minute more than 32 hours a week (we are instructed to take 8 hours a week on personal projects like learning a new skill, helping someone outside of the role, etc) and that the company is too big to be "saved" by the heroic efforts of one person. The trick is to filter out all of the makework bullshit and to focus your efforts on stuff that will really have an impact. We do have people in my role (which isn't a support case-taking role) who are taking support cases every day, working 60 hour weeks and are afraid to leave the house without their laptops. Those people are doing it so loving wrong just typing this out is pissing me off.

Yes, my role requires me to be available to my customers 24/7/365. But by working smart we have implemented systems where this translates to honestly being pageable one week of eight and during that week I still manage to get 8 hours of sleep a night, go to the gym, have breakfast and dinner with the family, rehearse with my band and post on these dead gay forums. Do I have the occasional late night? Yes. Do I have customer launches on Saturdays and Sundays? Yes. But I also go skiing mid-week and take zero PTO for it no questions asked. I pick up my kids on their half-day teacher-prep days and go get lunch and ice cream for the afternoon no questions asked.


Umbreon posted:

If you don't mind me asking, what did you mean by dealing with ambiguity? So far in basically all of my jobs, this translates to "lol there's no documentation for anything so get hosed if you run into an issue that you're not trained on dealing with", which has lead to the bulk of stuff I wound of teaching myself.

Imagine all of the projects you have ever worked on for all of the places you have worked. Now imagine all of the topics (technical and interpersonal) mentioned in posts in this thread, the "pissing me off" thread, the "small shop" thread, the "short questions" thread. Now try to write a policy and procedures guide that instructs an AWS employee how to manage each and every one of those situations. Impossible, right?

That is AWS.

AWS has so many services, with so much complexity and interactions, being used by literally millions of customers in amazing and unforeseen ways that it is impossible to build a procedures library. Instead AWS users are taught to refine and rely on their best judgement when responding to a customer issue.

It's like when I was first hired. I was planning on living in a remote area and wanted to know the telecommuting policy. "We don't have one," I was told. "Well poo poo, that stinks," I thought. "No no no, you misunderstand. If we had a telecommuting policy we would have to enforce the telecommuting policy and we don't want to do that. So instead people work where they want, how they want and we assume they are grownups and professionals who will do their job responsibly when asked. If a problem develops, then we deal with it."


Thanks Ants posted:

I assume it means “customer comes to you and says they want to make their service faster”, or a CEO declares that they need to be “in the cloud” without being able to flesh that out and you need to figure it out and build the fix up out of the tools AWS offers.

Basically this.

Umbreon posted:

Am I just naive/broke-brained if that actually sounds... fun?

When I give the new hire training I give the following lecture:

"There are twenty of you in this room. After five years of being at AWS I know the following: there is going to come a time in your career here, it typically comes at around the 6-9 month mark, where you are going to really appreciate how much duct tape and bailing wire there is holding this place together. It holds our services together, it holds our customer relationships together, it holds the company together. Some of you are going to say holy poo poo this place is so broken and you'll leave this role or leave the company. Some of you are going to say holy poo poo this place is so broken but you will laugh about it, lean in, and start fixing things."

It's a crazy place to work, but its never boring. Like I said: it will suck the life out of you if you let it but I don't let it. Every day I have access to the smartest people in IT (we have literal rocket scientists working here), I have a free account that lets me rack up thousands of dollars in funny money charges as I build stuff using all of our services (I have a workpress site that could scale up to millions of hits an hour but it gets maybe three hits a month :D ), I ask "does anyone have a suggestion on how to do X" questions daily in our chat channels because I am running into new scenarios or architectures all the time.

Agrikk fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Apr 16, 2019

LochNessMonster
Feb 3, 2005

I need about three fitty


Such a role sounds like it’s a lot of fun. What’s your official title?

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

LochNessMonster posted:

Such a role sounds like it’s a lot of fun. What’s your official title?

Technical Account Manager

LochNessMonster
Feb 3, 2005

I need about three fitty


Agrikk posted:

Technical Account Manager

Sounds absolutely amazing and like a lot of fun. The bias for action is so appealling as well. The amount of times I just start building poo poo while others keep insisting we should talk more about how to do it gets on my nerves more and more these days.

Mute_Fish
Nov 9, 2009

Judge Schnoopy posted:

Find any API in the world you can hit, and use powershell as your connector (invoke-restmethod or invoke-webrequest). Dig through the results and turn them into a nice pscustomobject showing the details you care most about. If you're feeling cool, use data from that object to make a separate API call and format those results too.

Once I learned how to operate on the API level for a lot of software / hardware, automating work has never been easier. I'm in high demand at my job to help other admins automate their common GUI tasks or make batch operations from templates.

It will make you absolutely invaluable in IT.

Thanks for posting this. I haven't really looked into API calls all that much in the past but spent some time last night messing around with invoke-restmethod and this stuff is really cool and interesting.

Vargatron
Apr 19, 2008

MRAZZLE DAZZLE


I got out of my previous position because I was one of the ones that thought I could save the company single handedly and it burned me the gently caress out after 7 years. I'm at a much lower pace job where things aren't as mutable and it's way easier for me to manage mentally. I think there's people that can really do good with roles at AWS, but that's definitely not something I can deal with mentally at this point in my career.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
I absolutely respect that. The chaos and level of activity isn't for everyone and there are days when I wish for a simple civil-service job where I could show up and read a book for eight hours. :)

George H.W. Cunt
Oct 6, 2010





How’s the money because I like money

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Agrikk posted:

have the unteachable characteristics of an Amazonian (bias for action, learn and be curious, customer obsession, etc)

What does the koolaid taste like over there? :shobon:

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

George H.W. oval office posted:

How’s the money because I like money

Not as great as some places. But the sweet, sweet AMZN stock though.

feedmegin posted:

What does the koolaid taste like over there? :shobon:

drat tasty, thanks for asking. There’s more if you want some.

Agrikk fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Apr 16, 2019

ChubbyThePhat
Dec 22, 2006

Who nico nico needs anyone else

Agrikk posted:


drat tasty, thanks for asking. There’s more if you want some.

Does it taste like purple, because that's my favorite flavor.

(Like actually, it was my favorite kool-aid as a kid)

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!
So what's the salary range and would they care that I'm an American living in Canada?

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Bonzo posted:

So what's the salary range and would they care that I'm an American living in Canada?

I don't know the salary range because AWS is Frupid (Frugal and Stupid) when it comes to stuff like publishing salary ranges. All I know is what I make and it's not polite to talk about salaries. :D

AWS has an office that is small and growing on Bremner Blvd in Toronto, ON. I don't know much about it but I bet that telecommuting is allowed.

ChubbyThePhat
Dec 22, 2006

Who nico nico needs anyone else

Agrikk posted:

I don't know the salary range because AWS is Frupid (Frugal and Stupid) when it comes to stuff like publishing salary ranges. All I know is what I make and it's not polite to talk about salaries. :D

AWS has an office that is small and growing on Bremner Blvd in Toronto, ON. I don't know much about it but I bet that telecommuting is allowed.

Honestly I've been side-eyeing a ton of devops rolls to work from home rather than sit in an office all day. It sounds fantastic and I at least want to try it to see whether it fits with me as a person or not.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair

Agrikk posted:

All I know is what I make and it's not polite to talk about salaries. :D

You should just say you don't feel comfortable sharing it, because it's perfectly reasonable to talk about salaries.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


It absolutely is reasonable, and the only reason it is discouraged is so that you can comfortably underpay people without them knowing and therefore complaining about it.

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!

Agrikk posted:

I don't know the salary range because AWS is Frupid (Frugal and Stupid) when it comes to stuff like publishing salary ranges. All I know is what I make and it's not polite to talk about salaries. :D

AWS has an office that is small and growing on Bremner Blvd in Toronto, ON. I don't know much about it but I bet that telecommuting is allowed.

Well I'm sure they are glad that the PCs scrapped the proposed law that would require companies to post salaries for all positions.

Microsoft is be opening a new HQ in Toronto and sounds like there will be Azure jobs so that might cause some competition. Without telling me what you make, is it more or less than 70k CAD(50K US)?

Sickening
Jul 16, 2007

Black summer was the best summer.

Bonzo posted:

Well I'm sure they are glad that the PCs scrapped the proposed law that would require companies to post salaries for all positions.

Microsoft is be opening a new HQ in Toronto and sounds like there will be Azure jobs so that might cause some competition. Without telling me what you make, is it more or less than 70k CAD(50K US)?

Sounds awful.

lament.cfg
Dec 28, 2006

we have such posts
to show you




Bonzo posted:

is it more or less than 70k CAD(50K US)?

:chanpop: I sure loving hope so

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Nuclearmonkee posted:

It absolutely is reasonable, and the only reason it is discouraged is so that you can comfortably underpay people without them knowing and therefore complaining about it.

I didn't speak clearly: I wish I knew the salary range for the exact reason you mentioned. If I knew the range, I would absolutely share it.

It's just that I am not comfortable sharing what I make.

Bonzo posted:

Well I'm sure they are glad that the PCs scrapped the proposed law that would require companies to post salaries for all positions.

Microsoft is be opening a new HQ in Toronto and sounds like there will be Azure jobs so that might cause some competition. Without telling me what you make, is it more or less than 70k CAD(50K US)?

The TAM is a senor level position and as such makes over triple that figure. I won't say how much more than that I make.

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

One thing to keep in mind is most of the big tech companies give you a significant portion of your comp in stock (RSUs). So the base salary, while good, won't totally knock your socks off. But add another 25% or more to that base figure, and you're talking about a pretty drat nice paycheck. This is especially true for a company like Amazon, whose stock has only really ever gone up in the grand scheme of things. This means your grant is likely to be worth even more by the time it vests. You'll also typically get refresh grants for good performance reviews as time goes on.

There are some obvious downsides to this. The stock might go down instead of up. There's vesting periods to deal with (Amazon is notorious for massively backloading the vesting period so you get like 50% of your stock in year 4, knowing full well a huge number of people burn out and leave before then). It makes financial planning and doing your taxes a bit more of a pain (though nothing TurboTax or a mainstream CPA can't handle).

Basically I'm just saying asking for base salary info isn't the right question to be asking about jobs at one of these FAANG companies or whatever we're calling them these days. Stock and bonus factor in hugely.

Bonzo
Mar 11, 2004

Just like Mama used to make it!

Agrikk posted:




The TAM is a senor level position and as such makes over triple that figure. I won't say how much more than that I make.

Totally understand. Thanks :)

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Docjowles posted:

One thing to keep in mind is most of the big tech companies give you a significant portion of your comp in stock (RSUs). So the base salary, while good, won't totally knock your socks off. But add another 25% or more to that base figure, and you're talking about a pretty drat nice paycheck. This is especially true for a company like Amazon, whose stock has only really ever gone up in the grand scheme of things. This means your grant is likely to be worth even more by the time it vests. You'll also typically get refresh grants for good performance reviews as time goes on.

There are some obvious downsides to this. The stock might go down instead of up. There's vesting periods to deal with (Amazon is notorious for massively backloading the vesting period so you get like 50% of your stock in year 4, knowing full well a huge number of people burn out and leave before then). It makes financial planning and doing your taxes a bit more of a pain (though nothing TurboTax or a mainstream CPA can't handle).

Basically I'm just saying asking for base salary info isn't the right question to be asking about jobs at one of these FAANG companies or whatever we're calling them these days. Stock and bonus factor in hugely.

Doc knows what's what.

If you think of it like a forced savings (albeit forced savings with risk) then at year four you have access to funds what you probably wouldn't have if you just saved money on your own. With articles like these claiming AMZN will hit $5,000, issues granted today could continue to rise and giving your benefits package a big boost. Of course, the bottom could fall out of the market as well...

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Agrikk posted:

The TAM is a señor level position
I had heard about the sexism in the tech industry but this is ridiculous

tortilla_chip
Jun 13, 2007

k-partite
RSU grant schedules vary greatly amongst hyperscalers as well. As a contrasting data point, Facebook grants vest immediately on a quarterly basis.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007





Thank you for your insight, for real :)

Sepist
Dec 26, 2005

FUCK BITCHES, ROUTE PACKETS

Gravy Boat 2k
My friend is a senior network engineer at Amazon Go and his base is 150 but he started with 200k-ish in RSUs and gets quite a few every year hes there. His original RSUs are worth over 500k now. Personally I prefer to have the higher salary than RSUs

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BaseballPCHiker
Jan 16, 2006

Agrikk posted:

I absolutely respect that. The chaos and level of activity isn't for everyone and there are days when I wish for a simple civil-service job where I could show up and read a book for eight hours. :)

I work local government and I love every minute of it. Super low stress, but still we're big enough and have enough budget that we get to do lots without getting bogged down by state level bureaucracies. I get great benefits a good pension and health care, 18 days of PTO just two years in and I leave my work at work every night.

Still sometimes I do wonder what I could make leaving for the private sector.

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