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A comment on Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made?.

Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by koolk3ychain on Sunday December 27, 2020 @02:34PM (#25553597)
Quitting my job at Amazon, only second to going on the record and explaining to my boss that the reason I quit was "oranges" - I did this because I knew my boss would be reprimanded and asked by HR / mgmt "why did your employee quit because of this reason here?" and have to explain why I quit because of "oranges". I should add, that almost all of the other lead engineers moved to other teams or also left.

It's taken me more than a year to un-learn and cleanse my head of all the stupid games I had to play at that bullshit company.

Finally, quitting drinking. I never really drank that much, but at this point I don't really crave alcohol at all.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by Sevii on Sunday December 27, 2020 @02:51PM (#25553719)
Oranges are people with 5+ years tenure at Amazon. Only outclassed by red badges in ‘peculiar-ness’.

One benefit of being full remote is that these kind of social problems are way less annoying this year.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by koolk3ychain on Sunday December 27, 2020 @05:41PM (#25554894)
Haha, this is true. I'll add that where I was working S-team members were showing up weekly, in other words the writing was on the wall that org level things were not going well. I mostly meant "oranges" as a random word that popped into my head to fuck with my boss. I was between "oranges" and "Methyl anthranilate" (the artificial chemical that behind "grape" flavor) ;)
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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by bekantan on Sunday December 27, 2020 @03:19PM (#25553915)
What’s peculiar about “red badges” and “oranges” at Amazon (genuinely interested)?
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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by meowface on Sunday December 27, 2020 @06:01PM (#25555010)
At a company where I worked, red badges indicated someone was a contractor. Everyone else had a white badge (sometimes with a colored marker for certain kinds of access).

"Red badges" were routinely made fun of and hazed. A pretty high percentage would end up getting hired full-time and the hazing would stop, so it wasn't exactly "personal", but it was definitely kind of weird.

(I have no clue what a red badge indicates at Amazon, though.)

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by programmerslave on Sunday December 27, 2020 @02:54PM (#25553742)
How long did you work at Amazon? I’m a current employee and absolutely hate it. But the money is good and I’m learning a lot about building large scale systems
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Re:Ask HN: What are the best decisions you’ve made? by koolk3ychain on Sunday December 27, 2020 @05:37PM (#25554875)
A little over a year. I also got to work on some really cool leading edge tech, but god did the culture and environment suck. I'd give back $20k to take that time back.
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