You should really consider that as a SDE in AWS, you probably have one of the most prized roles in the company and therefore are perhaps treated the best.
Not every team is in the cloud services business. Retail orgs have to necessarily run with as little expense as possible.
I now work on the Retail side and if anything feel less pressure, but do not feel any less appreciated.
The frugality principle is a disaster. It's a bad joke and the company uses it to justify the stupidest things.
The frugality comes from the fact that it's not Retina. Big whoop.
And I know what you're thinking. "Well your stuff is old, so you could obviously go in and get an upgrade!" Nope, went in the other day, literally, and was told I had to wait another year.
Frugality is absolutely widely misapplied at Amazon. Nearly every developer I've met that has been at Amazon for more than a year is dissatisfied with the hardware policy.
My first director at AMZN explained this to me early. Don't ask if you can have something. Establish that you need it, confirm with your manager that you need it, then go to people and say "I need this. I have manager approval." Don't ask, tell.
And that's not counting the H&S aspect RSI is not fun
I have a standing desk.
What am I missing?
I can walk around, go to meetings, sit on different floors, sit on couches, work from home and still be developing the same as I would at my desk.
All I'm trying to say is: Slightly faster builds on a powerful machine, or flexibility and consistency on a laptop. This might just be a matter of preference, and ideally companies should accommodate either preference.
The reason why I use a mac is because everything I build is deployed on Linux. Coding on a WIndows laptop means I wouldn't be able to compile anything, and coding on an Ubuntu laptop...well...I still like having a first world OS experience.
On windows Just use an X server or run Hyperv and run VM's
OSX is a fantastic development machine. Most developers use it. It completely fits all my needs and is provided for me by employer so that I can be happy and productive and effective. Which, as you remember, was the original criticism. That Amazon DOESN'T do that.
Also I spent a good deal of time building carrier grade software for major telco's (using map reduce I might add).
Serious developers develop on Identical hardware to the live system and I mean identical as in came of the line in the same batch.
Its all about removing risk
Maybe SDETs have it easier? :)
Most of the things I see in this article are bullshit, at least as a software developer is concerned. Maybe the business side is way worse, but I doubt it.
I've never seen anyone refer to "Climbing over the wall" when hitting it. People talk about "working hard and making history", but what major leading software company (Google, Facebook, anything in Silicon Valley) doesn't talk about changing the world?
The internal "anytime feedback" tool is geared towards giving people unprompted POSITIVE feedback when they do something you think is worthy of recognition. It is not meant to undermine each other's bosses, that's laughable.
Yes, once you reach a high enough level (Senior Manager (ie manager of managers), Director, VP), you hear stories all the time of your bosses emailing you things on Sundays and expecting a response the same day, but again, at the level of responsibility that we are talking about, where you are paid six figures multiple times over with additional six figures worth of stock, that's common expectations from most leading software companies that are in a cuthroat business.
I've never seen developers or senior developers be expected to respond to emails on Sunday or after midnight. In fact, right now, because of StageFright, most developers don't even have access to work email on their Android devices.
> "workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings"?
Don't make me laugh. If anything, the emphasis on "Leadership principles" emphasizes that as leaders we are more than our ideas, we are meant to build relationships, and not act as assholes where the idea is king.
> "Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement".
NOPE. Just a standard boilerplate NDA and non-compete clause the same as at every software company I've worked at before - small and local, or large and multinational. OF COURSE there are teams that are under stricter security (e.g. the Kindle Fire team before it was announced), but again, that's not unorthodox.
I've never seen anyone cry at the office, not even close.
> "Within Amazon, ideal employees are often described as “athletes” with endurance, speed (No. 8: “bias for action”), performance that can be measured and an ability to defy limits (No. 7: “think big”)."
NOT EVEN CLOSE. "Bias for action" simply means that when faced with a choice to either try something and fail, and ultimately risk wasting that time, versus sitting around and trying to analyze the tradeoffs, we want to err on the side of trying. It's kind of like Facebook's "Move fast and break things", only without the breaking. It just says that we want our people to experiment, attempt moonshots, and figure out quickly if something will work or not.
"Think big" means that every decision we make needs to be considered at Amazon scale. If you build a caching library, think about what happens if every team at amazon started using it. If you build a feature to solve some problem for Amazon.fr, consider if every single marketplace needed it, and then 10 more regional marketplaces showed upworldwide. Would the same solution work?
>"Workers are expected to embrace “frugality” (No. 9), from the bare-bones desks to the cellphones and travel expenses that they often pay themselves. "
Typical standard per-diem when travelling like I have at other companies. Frugality isn't supposed to be "be cheap". It's "consider before spending". There is a whole Amazon legends about how you get a door for a desk, and it's not supposed to be literal. The point isn't that Amazon makes you use a door for a desk. It's that at some point in the company history, they realized they could get doors from Home Depot for cheaper than a simple office desk and thought "hey that's a good idea". These days desks are not doors. If you request you can get an adjustable ergonomic sit/stand desk. And no, if you're a developer, you don't have to buy your own second monitor. The company provides 2 monitors just like anywhere else, and reasonable developer-friendly specs for the machines.
>"Instead, Amazonians are instructed to “disagree and commit” (No. 13) — to rip into colleagues’ ideas, with feedback that can be blunt to the point of painful, before lining up behind a decision."
The bullshit just won't end. Disagree and commit isn't "Disagree and be aggressive". It's "If you disagree but are overruled, make your point AND MOVE ON." Don't sabotage the chosen approach if you were overruled. Don't make passive aggressive comments. Don't celebrate if it turned out you were right after all. Make the best argument you can, but if it's overruled, you go with the decision, and be a team player.