Frankly I very much doubt that most of the claims in this thread are real or worthwhile. Besides the obvious anti-Amazon hardon that HN has, the thread itself will select for the most unhappy Amazon employees. Indeed what we're seeing is a kind of race to the bottom, now with gender bingo. It's really unfortunate that the mods let these kinds of anonymous, negativity-fueled threads stand. It's an open invitation for firms to drive negative coverage about their competitors.

It's mostly the compensation. I make twice as much at AWS as I did working as an engineer at non-tech companies.

Other comments on this post indicate that Google and FB pay more than Amazon, but I'd probably have to take a sizable pay cut to work elsewhere.

> ... I'd probably have to take a sizable pay cut to work elsewhere

There are other companies besides Amazon that say this. Because of this, it can't possibly be true. The only way to know for sure is to brush up your resume and see if you can get some better offers. Don't take your boss's promise that you're well paid. They can't possibly be objective about it.

Yeah it's insane. I can't tell if the people who say it isn't bad just have good teams or are lying. The fact that there is a chance of crying at work based on your manager is absurd and washes away any good of working at that company.

I can easily believe it. The overall structure may be designed to be ruthless to employees, but teams and orgs have a ton of leeway to form their own culture.

They purposely break up teams that get too big in order to keep with the idea of "two pizza teams", that is, a team small enough that two pizzas would be enough to feed everyone. The team and managers set the tone of culture at this level. At the next level up, the smaller teams coalesce into the upper org headed by a vp or whatever. The upper management here and the team managers sets the culture for cross team interactions.

It can therefore be possible to be on a good team if your managers are proactive and shield their team, but managers also have a ton on their plate and are beholden to the same power structures that are attempting to grind them into dust.

There was one manager that was beloved by all in the org because he took care of his direct reports - he saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to a greenfield project in a different org. A bunch of senior engineers followed along shortly after.

It is often said that people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. I've seen it be true much more often than not.

I'm guessing brand popularity had something to do with it. Along with perceived 'prestige' of working at that company.

But yeah it does sound a bit crazy to me as well. Perhaps some of their employees are there on work visa and don't want to risk them and their family having to relocate to another country again. But I don't think that's the case for all the people whom complain.

Its because Amazon is very easy to get into today. It has no prestige.

Businesses do not want their employees to have mobility. They structure environments to prevent mobility.

This is incorrect because i cant pass a Google or FB loop and im convinced its eventually going to lead to my suicide.

Mate get a grip. I see you posting everywhere — Blind, Reddit, here. And different aliases everywhere. Seriously, stop defining your self worth by where you work. It's sad. If you're so dissatisfied with Amazon's "prestige" just quit.

Telling someone who expresses suicidal feelings to "get a grip", and using the J-word ("just") to tell them a supposedly easy way out of it, is cruelty. I'm sure that you don't mean to be cruel, so please don't do this.

If there were an easy way out, the commenter would have found it. What he or she needs is respect, empathy, and support for finding a not-so-easy way out of it. If you can't do that, please don't reply, regardless of how annoying you find the comments.

You're right. I didn't mean to be cruel... sorry about that, but I can't seem to edit/remove my comment.

There are SO many other tech companies out there.