zlacker

I wonder what their recruiting team thinks about these moves by the company. I know I will not work for Amazon seeing how the manage dissent at the company and I’m sure there are many other people who feel the same.

>>gryzzl+(OP)
Not to worry, they'll simply say they have a "talent shortage" and ask the government to help supply them with workers whose situations are so desperate they won't think about the company's business practices.

(Note, this is not actually a jab at Amazon in particular.)

>>gryzzl+(OP)
The cynic in me thinks that for any number of potential candidates who feel the same, there are exponentially more candidates that just want to work there regardless, and the recruiting team knows this.

>>gryzzl+(OP)
Probably the same way that recruiters for large government contractors feel when the government or military gets bad press.

>>strong+a1
They could be alienating vastly more people than that. However, they only need to higher a tiny fraction of the US workforce each year. So, it’s still not a significant issue.

>>strong+a1
Literally anyone at Uber, Palantir, or Facebook has got to be on their short list of people to recruit.

>>gryzzl+(OP)
Amazon recruiters are extremely spotty: they seem to be winging it most of the time and some aren't very good at listening to candidates (you are looking for a job in compilers? Hey, join the Alexa team!). Amazon is also known as the more questionable FAANG in terms of employee treatment, but then again I know many Amazonians that say they are actually treated very well.

There isn't a shortage of tech talent looking to work at Amazon.

>>Retric+K4
Their pool is not the entire US workforce, it's a relatively small group of highly skilled workers in a market where those workers can make tons of money at many different companies.

Alienating a fraction of that workforce will impact them, I think.

>>gryzzl+(OP)
I think the kind of person that works at Amazon, after all that's been disclosed about worker conditions, is likely to be completely OK with this.

>>bantun+tc
That's not really fair. Jobs are sometimes hard to get, and landing a job at Amazon could make a huge difference in someone's life.

>>bantun+tc
That might not be true; if the story itself indicates anything, it's that at least until recently, there were two people who worked for Amazon who were not okay with it. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more who are just afraid to speak out precisely because of the risk of getting fired.

>>birdyr+i6
Sorry to break it to you, but anyone who is still at Facebook at this point thinks they are at the top of the heap and a lateral move to maybe Google, Apple, or Microsoft would be worth considering if it included a bump in grade. Amazon is a place Facebook recruits from, it does not go in the other direction. [FB and Amazon have the same moral issues if you work there but the environment at FB is an order of magnitude better, particularly for mid-level engineers.]

>>seanmc+A6
> you are looking for a job in compilers? Hey, join the Alexa team!

Many, many projects could use someone who is good at compilers. Just look at all the terrible code that processes command lines, for example :-/ Or all those miserable config file formats. Or really, any sort of text processing.

Compiler guys also tend to be good at writing fast code, for the simple reasons that compilers have to be fast, and compiler guys know what code is generated from each construct, and will pick the faster ones.

>>epicur+61
I know this is an attack on H1bs. Many H1Bs have multiple offers from FAANGS at market rate. Whatever woe you have in your life, please stop blaming immigrants for it.

>>mav3ri+9j
Just because many H1B's have good job offers doesn't ALSO mean there is rampant H1B abuse happening. Both things can be true and the blame for the latter should be placed on the companies abusing the H1B process and the US government for not doing something about it.

I'm all for open borders and immigration. The H1B problem right now is the worst of both worlds though. You have selectively restrictive immigration which means that if you're lucky enough to get an H1B you'll go through a lot to stay. More open borders would help the situation as people would have more labor mobility. Cracking down on H1B abuse would also help the situation and the only entity that can crack down is the Government because it's a tragedy-of-the-commons problem.

>>mav3ri+9j
Most don't have "multiple offers from FAANGS" and they are operating from an extremely poor bargaining position.

And how did you read that comment and come away with immigrants are to blame?

>>mason5+Xj
Do you really think H1B abuse is the pressing problem of our times ? Also, the companies that abuse these clearly have effective lobbying. Ask your senators to not be corrupt, voice your opinion with your vote. Many a times it's the H1Bs that get the abuse along with barely veiled racist attacks.

>>mason5+Xj
Agreed, and I hate how all of those cases get mixed together.

We need to be very clear when talking about it:

There is no abuse of H1Bs at the typical big tech companies we all know, like MSFT/Google/FB/etc. Their H1B employees get paid market rate, same as the US residents working at those companies. Those H1B employees are screwed over big time by the abusers in the category I am about to describe below and by general public who doesn't make the distinction and lumps them all in the second category. Not even mentioning the visa system that ends up screwing them due to that abuse.

Where the real H1B abuse happens is at those giant consulting companies like Accenture, Tata, Wipro, etc. They hire tons of software devs and pay them about $40k/yr, while flooding H1B visa pool and making it way more difficult for people in the first category to obtain a visa due to the sheer number imbalance.

Not only this creates a false image and leads to general public blaming the first group for all the visa abuse stemming from the second group, it makes it really difficult for the people in the first group to get their visas. There is a yearly cap on H1B, and it is much more difficult to obtain it when overwhelming majority of visa applications are filed by the latter group. For a price of one average engineer in big tech (let's say $160k/yr for easier math, even though the real number is very likely higher), a consultancy agency can hire at least 4 engineers and send 4 H1B visa applications respectively.

H1B visa is for "outstanding talent" that is difficult to find locally. This holds absolutely true for tech giants, as hiring a competent person is really difficult, witnessed it myself. But I find it difficult to believe that an "outstanding talent" would go work for a consulting agency and get paid $40k, while they can switch to a big tech company and get paid at least x4 that amount.

Luckily, it seems like the rules are getting tighter for the latter group, with their denial rates skyrocketing, while the usual tech company H1B approval rates are staying as high as usual (close to 100%)[0].

0. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/it-consulti...

>>epmayb+5d
I see no downside of allowing your employer to actively exploit others, simply because they're not (currently) exploiting you. "They've always been good to me", you say, "I never would have expected this."

>>evgen+vf
Can confirm, Amazon in Seattle is literally just a testing ground for people who couldn't get into Google/Apple/FB/Microsoft/etc. on the first try.

Amazon becomes their best available option, and once they work there for a year or two, improve their skills, get some experience, and get tired of dealing with hell that is working at Amazon, they get hired at all those companies they couldn't initially get into. No one says Amazon is incompetent at tech, quite the opposite. There is a lot people can learn while working there, and all those other competing tech giants know it.

I've heard of very few moves the other way around, and in every single such scenario I personally witnessed, there was a lot of very specific circumstances for the person that lead them to that point.

>>gryzzl+(OP)
Is there any real data on how many people would NOT want to work for AWS because of how they treat their warehouse workers?

>>CaveTe+Ap
We all have to eat. Working there and exposing their problems with the credibility of being an insider has a lot of value. I’m not saying working there is necessarily moral, but capitalism requires us all to choose between various immoral choices (have you looked at how your phone is made?). The only real thing to do is try to organize to stop it imo.

>>Walter+yh
While you aren’t wrong, I was thinking more from the perspective of “is this a job I would be interested in” rather than “is this a job where I would be useful.” Honestly, some of the recruiters I talked to were more interested in me knowing C# than any of my actual skills.

>>mav3ri+9j
I assure you they're below market rate. That's the whole point

>>static+4c
Warehouse workers are not highly skilled. But, even if you’re talking just say programmers they still employ less than 1% of us.

>>Retric+YB
I am referring to programmers, and specifically a subset of programmers that can pass a difficult interview - most developers are absolutely terrible, probably > 50%, so cut that number in half at least. It's a relatively small number.

>>strong+a1
And every year there's a new batch of suckers.

>>static+aN
You can cut 90% of programmers that would not pass an interview for whatever reason and there are still easily 10 times more people that qualify than work for Amazon. More so if you consider whatever fraction they need to onboard each year. Absolutely worst case is just slightly increase pay or open a few more offices across the US.

>>Retric+v81
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...

612k engineers. Let's assume that Amazon aims to hire the top 20% (I would expect software engineering skills to follow a power curve), so roughly 100k qualified workers.

That's pretty small if you're looking to employ 2-5k of them. That's a lot of competition given that there are likely at least 50 companies making Amazon-type offers.

I'm not saying they can't hire people if 10% of that pool decides they won't work there, but I'd imagine they would want to extend their pool to maybe top 30% at some point.

>>static+Xb1
That’s more or less the numbers I was thinking.

Amazon does a wide range of software development from robotics, backend AWS, internal software, and front end web development. So, most developers have relevant skills even if some positions are much harder to fill. That said their dev teams have many non programmers like systems administrators and testers etc so I suspect it’s closer to 2k US developers than 5k. As it looks like many of their openings are in Canada, Ireland, India, etc.

>>Retric+3g1
To me, a company that wants 2% of a pool has to be extremely competitive. 2% is a lot.