[GabrielF00]

As an Amazon employee, I tend to think Amazon's reputation is overstated. Some teams definitely have very high operational loads, but in general my hours have been comparable to friends in similar tech companies and certainly less than friends in industries like medicine, management consulting, etc.

It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.

[naturalgradient]

Well compensated? Amazon pays significantly below other mega cap tech companies, and as a PhD student in machine learning with a lot of friends interning and applying for jobs I can confidently say Amazon is nobody's first choice due to low salaries and working conditions.

I'd rather say I am amazed they get anyone great working for them because it really is clearly and painfully obvious that almost everyone would rather work for Google, Facebook or Microsoft regarding machine learning.

Have first hand knowledge of salaries. Amazon offers 30-50% less than other top tech companies for machine learning. There is literally no silver lining or upside as far as I can tell.

In that context, it does not matter if Amazon pays more than <other job> in <other industry> or treats employees better than <other company> in <other industry>.

[ctvo]

Every measurable I've seen has Amazon very close to total compensation for similar levels. The real differences are in perks and vesting schedule (theirs is notoriously bad - 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% I think)

It's hard to make a case that they underpay by 50%, have horrific working hours yet still have / retain an engineering workforce that's talented enough to deliver consistently.

[Analog24]

This is selection bias. You have first hand knowledge of what Amazon offers new graduates with little or no industry experience (and yes, PhD students fall into this category). The compensation for more experienced employees is substantially higher.

[arcanus]

That's surprising, if it is indeed that large a gap.

Are you sure you were not comparing positions between product groups and research? They tend to have different compensation.

[marssaxman]

It certainly sounds like a sweatshop in the descriptions I've heard from friends who work there, or have worked there in the past, compared to the experiences I and others have had in other large tech companies. I can only think of three people I know who have stuck it out at Amazon for more than two years. The egregiously back-loaded vesting structure is clearly built around the expectation of a high attrition rate, so I believe that the meat-grinder effect exists by design and not merely incompetence.

[natalyarostova]

When I get stressed I just open my stock vesting page and say "two more years." :^)

[vadimberman]

> It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.

Amazon employs over half a million people (https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-...). I doubt engineers make more than 5-10%, someone has to mind the fulfillment centres, and the fully automatic robotic future is yet to arrive (https://qz.com/1039169/amazon-is-looking-to-hire-50000-peopl...).

The blue collars make up the bulk, and while the accounts of white-collar sweatshop conditions are argued about, nobody ever contradicted the accounts of blue-collar workers, and numerous complaints have been filed: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-settlement-could-pave-wa....

[krapp]

>It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.

With a company as large and complex as Amazon, many things can be relative, but if you work as an engineer or programmer at Amazon, chances are that conversation doesn't apply to you, or at least, that it applies less to you than to others.