alt Hacker News> The company has flagged its unique pay structure, lagging AI reputation, and rigid return-to-office rules as major hurdles.
No mention of reputation for harsh/ruthless/backstabby management practices towards employees (including for tech white collar, not just biz and blue collar)?
Is that not a major factor? Or are they not aware of it? Or is mentioning it politically off-limits? Or is putting it in writing a big PR risk? Or is putting it in writing a big legal risk?
I know Amazon's reputation for treating employees poorly came up in multiple discussions at one university's big-name AI lab, for example. Not only do some people read the news, but people talk, in groups and privately.
Replies
> unique pay structure
As an ex-Amazonian, I hate seeing this corporate euphemism. We would be reminded yearly that compensation at Amazon was “peculiar”, when really it was just relatively low for FAANG. I would have preferred frank honesty, which I think would look like “we pay relatively low wages, for relatively good engineers, and the difference makes more money”
I had senior faculty in a top-5 CS program tell me that they steered their students away from AWS because they didn't want them to be miserable.
That's not a bug, but a feature
After reading so many horror stories (whether actually true or not), my mind now just associates working at Amazon with mostly negatives: They're going to ride you like a horse and beat you up, for below-average compensation, and then if you want to claw your way up, it's a Game Of Thrones style slugfest with few winners. The opposite of "Rest and Vest." If this is exaggerated, they sure aren't doing any PR work to deny it or counter this negative reputation.