Hello monkeys,
I recently stumbled upon two very interesting narratives from ex-employees at Amazon. Here are the links:
Working for Amazon: Better Than Sex, Worse Than Hell (Part 1)
Working for Amazon: Better Than Sex, Worse Than Hell (Part 2)
Some key takeaways:
For starters, this is what employees are faced with every morning:
How do you feel about working at Amazon?(1) Great!
(2) Great! I’m proud to work at Amazon!
Then, they realize that they can actually scroll down the screen, albeit with a very weird method. There were the following options:
(3) I wish I was working a job using different skills.
(4) Prefer not to answer.
Guess what? It doesn't stop here. Here's more:
How do you feel about this statement?“Amazon gives me all the training I need to do my job successfully.”
(A) strongly agree
(B) agree
(C) neither agree nor disagreeI’m about to respond, but mindful of my previous experience, I realize that there might be additional hidden answers. I scroll down and, what do you know, there are two more options:
(D) disagree
(E) strongly disagree
As usual, the correct answer was in the first set. I select it and continue with my shift.When asked whether they had all the tools necessary to do their job correctly, 82% agreed or strongly agreed! If you ever feel you do not have adequate training, please contact HR. I’m stunned. 18% of the people did not give a positive response to an obviously loaded question that might threaten their company prospects?? You respond to the question after logging in, so it’s not like they don’t know who you are.
Well, it’s better than sex because there’s no interpersonal conflict, it’s freely available to anyone who wants it, and it’s even more intensely shameful.
As for being worse than hell, maybe you’ll understand once you complete the same task 50,000 times with a scanner monitoring everything you do.
I guess we can really relate this to banking. The pay, the comp is definitely better than sex. I don't think there is any interpersonal conflict between bankers... Other than the usual banter. While the same task, such as making sure that the font size on your first slide and your sixth slide is exactly the same, is definitely boring and crappy as hell.
And the usual bullshit that banks do, such as promoting an incompetent person just because they're under-represented in order to make themselves "diversified" and "a workplace that is desirable to work in" and "multicultural".
Thoughts?
I once sat through a presentation about how someone wanted to work for Amazon because he "wantEd discounts from Amazon." It really made me wonder about how pay/comp can motivate people to do just about anything (even banking).
Well, to an extent! I believe after a certain amount, money has diminishing utility. Perhaps this is why some people quit banking sooner or later.
I've done A LOT of reading on Amazon, and know a couple of guys that used to work there(Engineers). I myself considered them for the longest time, because it's such a good (read: big) brand-name, and they're working a lot with my specialization (AI and ML). But with that said, I came to the conclusion that it's just not worth it. There are hundreds of other places where you can get the same experience, but also be treated like a human being. It seems to boil down to what teams you're placed in. Shit team with shit management, and you'll be on your way out before you can collect your first bonus. Good team, and you can last some years. Last time I checked their average worker was in his early 30's, with an expected tenure of one year.
Overall, Amazon seems like a churn and burn shop. They'll work you to the bone for a year, kick you out, and you can use that experience to land better jobs in the tech field. I'd pick Microsoft long before Amazon.
This is generic and you have to look at the motivations for why.
They want you to work for the shareholders. Shareholders expect growth YoY, MoM, and Quarterly EPS to be consistently rising. You don't work for Amazon, you work for Amazon's debt!
That being said, they need to churn and burn and often times burn thru and burn out their workforce. Ever wonder why there is a job vacancy? It's often times because they just burned someone out, threw out their bodies without a funeral or burial, and list the job that claimed a life as a great new opportunity.
Some experience as a middle man trafficking candidates thru the slaughterhouse can give you a fresh perspective on the job market. Ask me how I know. :)
How do you know?
Curious George+Ebola Monkey....wowsers. Nice blog.
What else do you know about Amazon?
It's interesting to see how a guy like Bezos seems eloquent, smart, smiling always etc in interviews; it gives you that he has definitely achieved a lot of things and will carry on achieving. Yet without even scratching the surface you hear how much of a terrible built-in culture AMZN has. More, it stands out because most other tech behemoths seem to have much better culture (as per my perception.. correct if I'm wrong). Would love to see any journalist doing his/her job and actually push Bezos quite a bit in that front and see his answer and reaction. Maybe his true colors?
Well, Amazon is essentially Walmart on the internet, and has been for many years. For the longest time they earned money by being the cheapest on selling stuff. And Jeff has since day 1 said that customer satisfaction is priority 1, above anything else. They've diversified a lot the past 10 years, but they still make money selling cheap shit on the web. This in turn makes them a very high-volume seller...so I would actually partially also blame customers for their terrible work culture. If people didn't demand service 24/7/365, with express shipping and 100% success rate, Amazon wouldn't need to whip people around 24/7. It's a race to the bottom.
But yes, Bezos doesn't really come of as the most sympathetic guy in tech. I understand that he's trying to run a business, but their treatment of workers seems to border abuse, just so that they can blow away competitors. As I said, it's a race to the bottom. The only way Amazon can be cheaper is via cornering the market, practice predatory pricing, and drive the workers even harder and faster. A fully automated warehouse would probably be the dream scenario of Amazon.
There's nothing really special about this. Most of the bosses of the big banks, consulting firms, hedge funds, etc that are prestigious hellholes to work at are also intelligent, eloquent, and friendly in person. That's different
I have also heard from many people Uber has a horrible culture...but they're known for above average pay in tech
I worked at a large conglomerate, similar to Amazon but with a larger global presence
I see this question about lifestyle often from college students. I think what people need to wrap their heads around is that the top performers in ANY industry, who want to be on the fast track and reach CEO/Partner/MD/whatever, are all working 60+ hours a week. This is shockingly consistent across vocations and regardless of compensation (even in industries where comp is very low). If you want to be the best you need to work very hard.
The lifestyle at Amazon is not great, but it's objectively pretty good. For most WSO reader who have done a banking analyst stint, the 50-70 hour weeks will look like a walk in the park. When we hear about it being a sweatshop-- you are hearing this from traditional Americans (often from the midwest) who have been raised with the myth of a 40 hour workweek, good pay, and career prospects. This trifecta no longer exists in a global world, and when these people start working they are inevitably let down.
So in short don't believe everything you read. Amazon is probably tougher than average, but there's no reason to think that a highly motivated reader on WSO wouldn't be up to the challenge
Here is the thing: * I am not in IB, but hopefully, in IB your colleagues aren't trying to break you down to put themselves up as it is reportedly done at Amazon. * At an IB you are working in a global environment, at least more global than Amazon. * Amazon is reportedly 70-80hr work weeks for 56k + bonuses of about 5k that wont vest for 2 years. * Amazon has a reportedly toxic culture. * The career prospects at Amazon aren't as great as IB.
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