This is only tangentially related to the article, but I recently quit a 2+ year stint at Amazon where I was permanently designated a remote employee who could not be called back into the office (one of the stipulations I negotiated in writing before starting).
Not only did Amazon try to weasel out of our written agreement, but I found Amazon's management to be toxic, their HR department lazy and ineffective, their base salary is bottom-rung and their stock isn't doing well, their benefits were the most stingy and dismal of any company I've worked for in my 30+ year career, they treat their customers like shit and their employees worse. The only benefit to staying the first two years was the sign-on bonus, which is spread out over your first 24 months. After that, you're better off working at a bootstrapped start-up.
I was fortunate enough to have an excellent manager during my first year, but that is definitely not the norm at Amazon. I'm not sure why anybody works there to start with, let alone if they're forced into multi-hour long commutes everyday, just so they can be marginalized and abused in person.
Can you give more details. What position? Examples of stingy benefits? I've considered joining Amazon as an experienced SWE to get experience working on apps with higher scaling needs. I'm thinking it could be worth putting up with some of the downsides I've heard about for awhile just to get this experience and move on.
Sure. They give you 8 paid holidays a year, their employee purchase program is basically a $100 gift card if you spend $1,000 on their website, but only on products they sell, their PTO benefit is very 1990s (accrued and limited), they subjectively apply their leadership principles (read arbitrarily beat you over the head with them), management is abusive, and their internal tools are jankey as hell.
EDIT: Their sign on bonus is generous, so you’ll make a lot during your first two years, but after that your annual salary will drop significantly. Supposedly, their RSUs are supposed to make up for that, but they don’t.
Not only did Amazon try to weasel out of our written agreement, but I found Amazon's management to be toxic, their HR department lazy and ineffective, their base salary is bottom-rung and their stock isn't doing well, their benefits were the most stingy and dismal of any company I've worked for in my 30+ year career, they treat their customers like shit and their employees worse. The only benefit to staying the first two years was the sign-on bonus, which is spread out over your first 24 months. After that, you're better off working at a bootstrapped start-up.
I was fortunate enough to have an excellent manager during my first year, but that is definitely not the norm at Amazon. I'm not sure why anybody works there to start with, let alone if they're forced into multi-hour long commutes everyday, just so they can be marginalized and abused in person.