I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

https://primitivehacker.medium.com/i-got-fired-from-amazon-as-a-software-development-engineer-1986b72c9d3

by _zymx • 5 years ago

74 105 5 years ago

primitivehacker.medium.com

jleyank• 5 years ago

“Being an engineer who wasn’t happy with a situation like this, I gave my manager a piece of my mind. She brought gender into the equation and said that I couldn’t speak to a girl like that, so I decided to hang up the phone.”

If this is an accurate description of what went down, including verb tenses, it’s bad for multiple reasons: leave gender out, don’t refer to oneself in the 3rd person and watch what you say as nobody should willingly be an asshole.

Perhaps the lesson is also that we have to aggressively cya. With records of the no answers and the like, it reduces the who said what bs. And maybe, we have to train people to act professionally vs. putting up with bs.

hirundo• 5 years ago

Giving someone a piece of your mind or hanging up on them, regardless of the provocation, is a risky move in any job. It's an essential job skill to be able to phrase and rephrase issues with sufficient neutrality, and to practice that religiously. Being calm and responsive -- the opposite of hanging up -- is difficult when you feel you are being insulted. But it's the correct strategic move, even if you're updating your resume at the same time.

cmiles74• 5 years ago

In my opinion, these two quoted sentences are doing pretty much all the work in this article. I'm kind of surprised this article is on the front page, given the lack of detail.

yummy_box2• 5 years ago

I also work at Amazon, and I can tell you, your experience was pretty unique. Some teams are worst than others, of course, but no one expect you to pick up a project by yourself, fresh out of onboarding and own it end to end. After you clear your interview loops, you get the chance to match with several teams (not always) and that is your chance to figure out what the team does, whats the situation over there, etc... if you were hired for a specific team, and you feel is a bad match, you can talk to your recruiter/hiring manager and they will find you another team. Is more expensive to let you go, after you cleared the interviews, than to send you to another team. Most teams are always hiring, they even pouch engineers from another orgs, etc... I'm by no means saying Amazon is a paradise, as I said, it highly depends on the team. But for them to fire you like that you have to be doing pretty bad, or maybe your manager felt you were a bad person. For other folks reading this: The team matching rounds are *very* important, if you get assigned a bad team, you need to react quickly, and move on. I feel sorry for OP, I wish him/{*} well.

Sparkyte5• 5 years ago

My experience is pretty much with you.

moron4hire3• 5 years ago

There is always someone coming into the thread to say "that's not been my experience". Frankly, the company is so large, how could you know? When you get a situation like the article describes, you could be sitting a desk over from the guy and still never know. I've seen dozens of stories just like this of toxic behavior at Amazon. It makes it sound like they have their flagship projects that they use to attract developers and a long tail of drudge work they need to attrit through developers to get done.

crossroadsguy5• 5 years ago

When someone says this about companies like Amazon or Uber I immediately find it suspicious (Shills? Apologists? Or people from PR/HR?) because people at these two companies I know personally have nothing but horror stories. As in - that is the general sentiment I get.

There’s another aspect I always get - they knew what they were getting into or it became clear pretty quick and they went in or continued just for the money.

What never gets mentioned is “best and brightest” minds rhetoric that I see in posts and comments online. They say it’s so fast paced, toxic, burn outs causing the revolving door of attrition to move constantly that there’s no time to meaningfully do this “interacting with those proverbial super minds”

lightbendover• 5 years ago

On the flip side, my first week was “here are three disparate teams that are all on fire, go put them all out by yourself.” And honestly, that was my best manager, one that I returned to years later. It’s a huge company, almost any set of onboarding circumstances have transpired.

fumer• 5 years ago

I also work at Amazon, and I can tell you, your experience was pretty unique. Some teams are worst than others, of course, but no one expect you to pick up a project by yourself, fresh out of onboarding and own it end to end.

I am a SDE at Amazon and I can tell you for a fact that so far the majority of the projects I've been involved roll out exactly like this. The excuses vary, and fortunately I haven't seen the inclusion card in play yet, but all the gaslighting and sacrificial lamb elements and shifting responsibilities and career tactics are ever present.

if you were hired for a specific team, and you feel is a bad match, you can talk to your recruiter/hiring manager and they will find you another team.

I have to call bullshit on this. Either you play that out in stealth mode until you are sure the other team picks you, or you are in a world of pain. As soon as you click on the recruiter button, your SDM and senior SDM are notified immediately, and if you are not in the best terms with them they can and more often than not do screw up with your plans and even your job. There's a horror story around my corner of the org of someone who wanted out of his team and simply did what you said should be done, but long story short his transfer was sabotaged by the SDM who afterwards placed him in a performance improvement plan with no return.

But for them to fire you like that you have to be doing pretty bad, or maybe your manager felt you were a bad person.

No, not at all, at least from what I see on a daily basis. All it takes is that you get in the way of your manager's career goals. They have attrition metrics and goals and you have your yearly Forte to cull the herd and keep the average tenure below 3 years.

yummy_box2• 5 years ago

I have to call bullshit on this. Either you play that out in stealth mode... Again, that depends on your org and team. I know many people(including PMs, UX, Data Science roles, etc...) who have jumped between teams in the first few months of being hired, and even after several years of working at the company. That doesn't make it "bullshit" , your experience is just different. Before I was hired, I read all the horror stories in TeamBlind as well, and I was surprised to see a different environment. Maybe, is survivorship bias, sure, but it just haven't been the case. For example is well known, that AWS is way more cutthroat than Devices, Retail, and the other orgs, but again, depends on your team as well. Most stories come from people who were PIP-ed. As I said before, Amazon is no Google or Microsoft regarding how they treat their engineers, TC, or WLB, thats for sure, but I have heard first hand stories at Facebook(for example) that are way worse than OP's. You can switch teams very easily, even across countries, my manager was able to move to a team in the US from India, being L4, so, there is definitely opportunities.

hackernews7775• 5 years ago

If you got fired over this it's highly likely you said something pretty bad. The only times I have seen anyone get instafired at Amazon is when they have done something that could be deemed as harassment. (eg. making sexual or racial advancements towards a direct report) Anybody else who gets fired for performance reasons knows they are thin ice for a long time.

xwowsersx• 5 years ago

what is a racial advancement?

hackernews7775• 5 years ago

Making some sort of harassment with a racial component that's on par with sexual harassment. Despite all the DEI policies and whatever, the baseline for termination is pretty much the same as most employers, off color remarks are not getting you fired but putting down a fellow employee certainly can.

allenrb• 5 years ago

I’m reasonably sure they got “advances” and “harassment” jumbled up. Ie, both “(unwanted) sexual advances” and “sexual harassment” are things, but only “racial harassment” is a thing.

At least, I think so. Sometimes the world changes while I’m looking the other way.

Sparkyte5• 5 years ago

Sometimes you can get fired/hired over competitive hiring process. Like SWE who have worked there that fail to gain a level almost every other year tend to slant toward the let go phase so Amazon can pick up a shiney new employee in place. This was something Microsoft used to do long ago. I don't agree with this model unless there are traits to the employee that are making work life for everyone harder.

whycombinatore• 5 years ago

Amazon has shit managers. Stop whitewashing your behavior.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

I said this is bull shit

0des• 5 years ago

It's always interesting to see the ratio of green names to normal names in these threads.

Jonovono2• 5 years ago

What do the green names mean? Never understood

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

New account

karpierz• 5 years ago

I think they're newly created accounts; IE, likely throwaways.

thinkindie• 5 years ago

as far as I understand, recent accounts, therefore they are most probably "burner" accounts.

jareklupinski• 5 years ago

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented green = new account; orange means YC founders

gregschlom• 5 years ago

Unless you're color blind, in which case you don't see any difference...

colinmhayes• 5 years ago

The Amazon damage control team has made it to the thread.

peakaboo2• 5 years ago

Fact check says they want wants best for us.

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

I won’t comment on whether the action is justified or not in this instance, but:

Never hang up on a colleague. Ever. As far as social phone etiquette goes that’s probably one of the most egregious things you can do.

Instead, humble yourself, politely disagree and document over email, copying another colleague who witnessed, or if unavailable the manager (in this case the skip).

rkk3• 5 years ago

IDK they probably would have been better off if they ended the conversation earlier rather than "giving their manager a piece of their mind" & then hanging up.

If a conversation is getting too heated, excusing yourself and taking a beat isn't the worst thing in the world.

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

I don’t disagree. My read on it was more like they were arguing and the author just abruptly hung up in frustration.

Definitely could be wrong tho

treis• 5 years ago

Both are certainly bold choices.

crossroadsguy5• 5 years ago

I kinda agree but when one side is hell bent on being dishonest and toxic right from the beginning then does it really matter whether you actually hung up or not unless every such call of yours is getting recorded and monitored precisely?

Dudeman112• 5 years ago

If you don't wanna give them more ammo, yes.

If someone is hell bent on that, you must minimize your vulnerability surface.

So just distance yourself emotionally, act professional and document stuff.

thebruce87m2• 5 years ago

Or: if someone is accusing you of gender based discrimination, assert that you will be hanging up ( politely ) and switch to a recorded medium, where the first thing you say is: “you accused me of <gender based thing here>, I don’t think this is fair because <airtight reason here>”. Boom, documented.

Note: if YTA this may work against you. Either way the NTA has the documented proof they need.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Or just shadow mute them. Eg lower the volume let them talk while you browse hn.

meowfly• 5 years ago

I agree. It is my advice to people in similar situations that at the point a relationship with a coworker sours, move to a medium that allows lots of documentation and stay extra civil. Try to invite a third party to all your meetings and move as much communication as possible to messaging or email.

At a previous job I had a product manager that was trying to get me fired because I was refusing to work on some "high priority" projects where we were being dictated the scope and timeline. My team, for some reason, was absolutely craven. They just let me take the heat and then in private conversations thank me for speaking up.

Our PM was new and it was easier to put pressure on us than tell some VP their pet project wasn't getting done. The relationship between both of us went extremely south.

When my PM complained, both of our bosses got sucked into a meeting about me. I was able to respond with plenty of documentation as well as coworker testimony that cleared me of doing anything wrong. Even though I had actual resentment of this person, it was never displayed.

It's clear to me that my PM looked bad by badmouthing me to coworkers, and communicating to me in emotionally aggressive ways. I think OP is making a political mistake by showing emotional outbursts. It makes it too easy to discredit the substance of their argument as simply being a personal issue.

Sparkyte5• 5 years ago

Amazon is actually really hard to get fired from. I knew this one guy who used to binge drink during while working all day. He only got fired after he brought production down for the third time in six months. I left because I had higher pay offers. I'm an idiot to say the least, but a person who can acknowledge their faults is likely to be someone who gets hired persistently because they know to address it.

tinyhouse4• 5 years ago

That's actually very false. Amazon is not hard to get fired from, but it takes time since there's a mandatory pip process (for performance based firing) like in many tech companies (about 4 months in the US, longer in some European countries; it's often shorter if the candidate agrees to take large severance and leave).

hackernews7775• 5 years ago

I thought he was referring to the fact you don't have to be particularly clever or competent person to keep your job. Amazon isn't known for firing people on the spot for honest mistakes (CoE gets filed and life goes on). It's usually more along the lines of people are not doing the work they were assigned to do.

kempbellt2• 5 years ago

Ah, ye old "Performance Improvement Plan". The passive-aggressively worded, modern version of whipping someone for "not working hard enough".

If you ever get slotted for a PIP (such a cute name...), it's probably better to look for new employment as soon as possible.

hackandtrip2• 5 years ago

The fact that an individual can bring production down is 1000% a problem in the process; outages should not attributed to single commits but to a series of problems in the process. Just saying this since the number of times someone being production down should not be cause of shame or firing

kempbellt2• 5 years ago

Someone has to have the keys to the kingdom. Ideally, multiple people do - bus factor.

If no one can bring production down this is also a problem. If only one person can, better hope they don't get hit by a bus, or take a vacation, or rage quit.

Sparkyte5• 5 years ago

It is complicated. They released code out of cycle which isn't a process issue. It's a person issue. You don't do that stuff without planning a MCM. You also don't become unreachable after a deploy.

brailsafe• 5 years ago

I've been fired from a few positions for various reasons, though never explicitly for saying anything in particular. At least one for probably raising many obvious issues with my useless manager over a longer period. I think in retrospect, what I'd take away is that it can be a very difficult position to be in — especially if you have dependants — to try and stick with a job you know will try and ruin you. In my experience, every single time it was fruitless to try and do my best, or convince myself it would get better, and always a sign that I should quit, as risky as it might be. But I didn't, and I burnt out and got fired, when I could have just quit and had an easier time moving on. Don't bother trying, find a better place to try at.

poulsbohemian5• 5 years ago

Sounds like the biggest mistake he made was lashing out at a likely in-over-their-head manager. We are only getting one side, but sounds like he was trying to do the right things to either overcome the challenges and/or create boundaries, but he may have been hired to be a sacrificial lamb. In my consulting times, I was brought into something a lot like this for the purpose of being fired so that the CTO could save their job. It can be very challenging to get a read on an employer / client who is intent on misleading you. It can also sometimes be a manager who needs to save their own job who may not be deliberately lying so much as simply in a fight / flight situation themselves.

cvhashim• 5 years ago

You see the sacrificial lamb thing with contractors/consultants because they won’t sue for being put in a bad situation and fired afterwards but not sure if it’s too common with Full time engineers. Amazon is just a toxic workplace and I recommend all my fellow engineers avoid that place like the plague. I’ve heard too many horror stories like OPs.

poulsbohemian5• 5 years ago

Early on in my career, about year three or so like this guy, I got hired into a similar situation - gig wasn't what the company said. The key was to stay calm and set boundaries at every step. If you let it get emotional, it creates an excuse for management to turn you into the scapegoat. If you instead act like the consummate team player, over communicate, etc, it become hard for anyone to actually fault you. It might be miserable for a while, but the key becomes to start building allies so that you can escape the situation as soon as possible either to a new team or a new gig. Or hope that the team goes through a shakeup soon enough and because you did your thing you are a survivor.

throwntoday• 5 years ago

The funny thing is that Amazon really stresses their leadership principles and I recall one of them being "have a backbone", basically to disagree with anyone if you know you're right.

I can see how he snapped over his moron manager bringing gender into things.

9999000009993• 5 years ago

These stories scare me. Particularly from Amazon where you don't get most of your TC until year 3.

At least at Netflix they pay more cash and if I get fired after a year I have it in my bank.

moron4hire3• 5 years ago

Absolutely. And that's just your base. Every year, you're getting more and more that don't vest until this range of time that is so incredibly far out on tech industry scales.

This is what kept me out of Amazon. The over-emphasis on RSUs for compensation was clearly a half-scam designed to avoid paying full salary out to people and to try to squeeze anyone who was on the fence about leaving.

9999000009993• 5 years ago

Thanks for the info. I have zero tolerance for bs so I really value being able to leave.

bradknowles2• 5 years ago

I’ve been in multiple different jobs over the years where part of my compensation was stock or stock options.

Sometimes it can be some real money. At AOL in 1996, I cleared more than $80k from stock options, which was more than my base salary for the year. But I ended up walking away from stock options at AOL that would have been as much as $16m, if I had managed to find a way to stay there. But the place has just become too toxic.

I’ve also been at places where I theoretically had stock or stock options, and they wound up being literally worthless.

Stock and stock options for employees are meant to be a form of golden handcuffs.

That’s why I don’t include them in my consideration of what I would be compensated for at a job. If I get some extra money that year, great! If not, then I’m not too dejected.

tinyhouse4• 5 years ago

That's a false statement. Amazon plans your 4 years compensation when you join with the idea that you are paid pretty equally every year. The difference is that in year 1 & 2 TC is mostly cash while in year 3 & 4 a big component of the TC is RSUs which replace the cash bonuses from year 1 & 2 (it's called bonus but it's paid regularly and not in large sums; I think they do it to keep the base salary low). The reason whey TC is often higher in year 3 & 4 is stock appreciation, but that's not guaranteed. If the stock goes up 10% every year you wouldn't see much difference.

You can think about it this way. When you join, Amazon takes part of the money they need to pay you in year 3 & 4 and buy with it Amazon stock which you can sell only in year 3 & 4. (one difference is that you pay income tax on it when you receive it and not capital gain tax)

9999000009993• 5 years ago

Wait, so in year 1 and 2 I'm getting large cash bonuses? That's still inferior to getting cash upfront.

Say after 10 months you have a medical issue, that means you quit to focus on healing and lose your bonus.

ciabattabread• 5 years ago

Wait, so did he get fired, or did he resign?

"What an imbalance of power and being an engineer who feels a strong desire to empower other engineers, I reached my limits and wanted out. A few weeks later, a developer on a neighboring team who reported to the same management resigned."

poulsbohemian5• 5 years ago

I read that as indication that the overall team was imploding, IE: other people were having the same kinds of problems he was experiencing.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

I was technically fired but told my wife before the zoom call that I was going to announce my resignation. So when things got heated I hung up knowing they would fire me.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

I resired

browningstreet2• 5 years ago

Neutral tone and temperament are essential skills at this level. Opinions, not so much.

I’ve worked in similar environments where an SVP ignored all communications about a project until it was useful for them to be interested and gaslight everything that had happened and had been communicated before. In fact, the stink wasn’t on anyone involved, but the project itself. There’s a way to come out of these things unscathed, but righteous indignation usually is never particularly effective.

Krisjohn• 5 years ago

Paraphrasing: It doesn't matter how much shit gets piled on you, how little support you get, how stupid the deadlines are, or how bad the communication is, if you get visibly upset you lose.

scruple2• 5 years ago

I have nothing but personal anecdotes and observations to base my thoughts on here but it seems to me that this has become true of life in general. And as the OP has now learned, it's of no consolation how right you are or how justified you may be to get angry in the first place, either. You still lost.

browningstreet2• 5 years ago

..except you're suggesting there's no recourse beyond "getting visibly upset". There are plenty of wisdoms out there, from non-violent communication, to mindfulness, to "professionalism" that suggests "getting visibly upset" isn't the most effective means of disrupting or altering negative conditions.

yaacov• 5 years ago

A lot of my friends work at Amazon. The situation this engineer was thrown into sounds worse than average but I have heard similar stories.

Amazon usually takes 3 months or so to fire people for real or imagined “poor performance”, so this engineer must have said something pretty bad on the call.

_zymx• 5 years ago

Note for all here: I am not the author, but thought this was interesting though I do not agree with the sentiment.

asow925• 5 years ago

Sounds like so called "FAANG" companies that OP mentions have a smug sense of superiority.

If you're a good engineer who wants to make a real difference in the world, then I ask why not work at different company with less technical aptitude? You can make a far greater impact solving their problems instead of trying to stand out in a technocratic cult that gaslights you and suppresses your creativity.

hackernews7775• 5 years ago

"FAANG" companies that OP mentions have a smug sense of superiority.

I think it is the opposite.

No one is going to fire you over shipping a kludge or low quality software, especially when you document why it is the case. People get themselves into trouble by getting emotionally invested in their work and avoiding the task at hand. If someone gives you an idiotic task at Amazon, give them an idiotic solution. You are right though, if you want purpose and real meaning behind your work seek it out elsewhere.

asow925• 5 years ago

I believe what you're saying, and also wonder if OP got too emotionally invested.

Jansen312• 5 years ago

Doesn't work this way. When they give you shit, you either turn in gold or resign. Otherwise it will just be scapegoat firing. Seen this many times. This happen not because the company culture but individual managers that need to protect their ass while waiting fo opportunity to move before their scapegoating turn on them. That is why theyb should have implemented a 360 degree feedback/review yearly performance. Bad managers need to be rooted out at most no longer thatn 1 season of review.

peakaboo2• 5 years ago

Did you just use making the world a better place in a non-ironical way?

That stuff is from comedy, not reality. You can't make the world a better place from your computer. You can make money, you can build nice programs, but not make the world a better place.

asow925• 5 years ago

Can you make the world a worse place from your computer?

poulsbohemian5• 5 years ago

I know what you are saying and to a large degree I agree with you. But, I will note that in my career the software I worked on helped people get health care, helped abused children find help, kept pilots and their passengers safe, and a whole lot of other worthwhile missions. So if your skill set is tech, there are opportunities out there apart from just selling more advertising.

bradknowles2• 5 years ago

With respect, I must disagree.

I think there are some serious problems in this world that we can help solve from our computers, and in addition to the company making some profit, the world as a whole can also benefit.

We will see.

thedz• 5 years ago

Being an engineer who wasn’t happy with a situation like this, I gave my manager a piece of my mind. She brought gender into the equation and said that I couldn’t speak to a girl like that, so I decided to hang up the phone.

I'm going to guess there's more to "gave my manager a piece of my mind" than described that led to firing

moron4hire3• 5 years ago

The lack of response on the issues probably means they had already decided to get rid of him for whatever reason and were setting him up to fail. He probably didn't get fired because of the outburst. The outburst was just what got filled out in the HR form.

This isn't any judgement on the developer. Management can get a lot of stupid ideas about why they need to get rid of someone. Maybe the developer picked a bad time to use the restroom and his manager didn't see him immediately available whenever the manager walked around the room to find a target to micromanage. A toxic project can tend to taint anyone involved on it, even if the person working on it is doing a stellar job, given the circumstance.

In big corporations, there really is no "working your way up" or "working from behind". If you get stuck in a shit project, it really doesn't matter what you do. Either the company will attrit through developers until the project is no longer a hot potato and then the next developer to get it will get to stick around for a while, or (more likely, due to the lack of continuity) eventually the project gets canned. No apologies will be issued.

tinyhouse4• 5 years ago

These companies have many bad managers. People shouldn't waste their time working for shitty managers. Always better to leave sooner than later.

comprev• 5 years ago

As always there are three sides to this story. What OP claims, what Amazon would say to justify the sacking, and what _actually_ happened.

flashgordon• 5 years ago

Almost been through a very very similar situation twice. What I learnt from the first time (a year into my first job out of college) was to have written commitments - and put things in writing. I had a project manager who played very dumb and on a day I was out of the office went upto my manager complaining about work not having been done. My manager set up an "urgent meeting" even though she knew I was on a day off. Almost as a way to stage it up. This was when my senior colleagues had educated me in the values of putting status/commitments/questions in email so there is a trail of your effort!

Igelau• 5 years ago

FAANGs, noun: something you don't want to get lured into

errcorrectcode• 5 years ago

Bottling-up anger is unhealthy and exploding is unprofessional. Inform them of thoughts tactfully in real time, whenever possible.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

I did, very tactfully. I was about as non-defensive, transparent, and professional as you could imagine. When I realized what was really going on I told my wife I was going to quit. About 30 min later this meeting happened and during the meeting made the decision to make it easy for them to fire me if they wanted to.

thebruce87m2• 5 years ago

“Working at a FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) company is the holy grail for software engineers.”

Is it, though? Personally I prefer to be a big cog in a small machine.

NBJack2• 5 years ago

To each their own, but it does seem to open more doors at companies big and small.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

It is when they’re paying you 800k annual compensation

mbrodersen2• 5 years ago

Working at a FAANG company is the holy grail for software engineers

Wot? Really? What on earth makes the author think that is true for all software engineers? It certainly isn’t for me.

primitivehacker6• 5 years ago

The 800k annual compensation

mbrodersen2• 5 years ago

So everybody working for Facebook is making 800k? Is that your claim?

I Got Fired from Amazon as a Software Development Engineer

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