r/technology • u/thebelsnickle1991 • Feb 04 '23
Leaked emails show Amazon will only hire students and recent graduates for entry level software engineering positions Business
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-hiring-careers-recent-graduates-students-only-after-layoffs527
u/at98weallrotate Feb 04 '23
In my last class of entry level hires in tech we had several career changers who were older than all the other hires. I’m glad my company doesn’t limit opportunity based on age. We had a doctor, a warehouse worker, a marketing manager, a salesman, a cop, an insurance underwriter… the list goes on. They all had a learning mindset just like the recent college grads. I’m glad Amazon doesn’t see their value. More amazing people for our team.
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u/lebyath Feb 04 '23
That’s me, about to start applying for software engineering jobs this June after this semester. Been doing well at school, I’m surprised. A decade later in life and I’m completely different and am able to do the things I once told myself I couldn’t.
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u/Bekabam Feb 04 '23
Hell yeah! Making big moves, boss, I doubt it was easy. Being open to blowing up your world is a huge mindset skill.
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u/VicTheWallpaperMan Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
I'm 32 and quit lawyering to attempt a switch into programming before I get too old to change careers.
I just finished my portfolio.
Stuff like this and all the recent layoffs terrify me :/
Edit: If anyone of any hiring influence sees this message and is feeling charitable message me and I'll DM you my portfolio! Lol.
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u/psxndc Feb 04 '23
Interesting. I went the other way - quit software engineering to become a lawyer. Good luck! Hope you love it!
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u/VicTheWallpaperMan Feb 04 '23
Grass is always greener lol.
Only thing I'd recommend is stay away from criminal law and city politics lol. Idk your personality type though. I just find it so existentially depressing lol.
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u/psxndc Feb 04 '23
Oh god, yeah. I do IP/corporate work. No existential issues here and if I screw up, worst thing that happens is a company loses a bunch of money. It's not like an innocent person goes to jail or a murderer goes free.
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u/Fr00stee Feb 04 '23
software engineering isnt limited only to tech companies so i think you'll be fine
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u/bkovic Feb 04 '23
With your mindset you are going to go far in this world. Thank goodness for folks like you!
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u/Sindef Feb 04 '23
They're only hiring people entering the workforce in entry level positions?
This seems like the least evil thing Amazon has ever done.
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u/aeolus811tw Feb 04 '23
you need naive and anxious new blood in the meat grinder, to replenish the high turn over rate
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u/theoob Feb 04 '23 •
Get in, get Amazon on your resumé, get another job now that you have another rung of the ladder underfoot. Use them like they use you.
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u/b_tight Feb 04 '23
Amazon for three years on a resume is better than an mba if youre in tech
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u/zoicyte Feb 04 '23
Plus no one over 30 should work in that hellhole anyway.
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u/ThrowawayMustangHalp Feb 04 '23
Plus no one
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u/TheyHateMyLetters Feb 04 '23
It's fine if you don't have kids or family. About 2-5 years of intense work early in the career isn't fun, but pays dividends for the rest of your life.
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u/jmodd_GT Feb 04 '23
2-5 years of your 20s you could spend being young and enjoying the best days of your life outside, making friends, falling in love, creating irreplaceable memories. Those are the true dividends that appreciate beyond any salary.
Nowhere on your CV will it state hours worked, only dates. Consider you could "work" at Amazon 2-5 years diligently putting in 40 hours a week and not one minute more, and your resume will be identical.
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u/lightninhopkins Feb 04 '23
TBH, I think Amazon would fire you if you only worked 40 hours a week. Another reason to never work there.
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u/Nekotronics Feb 04 '23
I should be fired every week if that’s the case. Idt I’ve ever worked more than 36 hours in a week there
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u/Slaphappydap Feb 04 '23
Yeah, I went to school a long time ago but when I was ready to enter the workforce any enterprise-sized company only wanted developers with 5+ years experience in specific languages or systems (sometimes in languages and systems that hadn't been around for 5 years...)
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u/AmazonWorkerDrone Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
that's what many (skilled) people do here, hop on board, build something cool, get promoted, leverage the new role in negotiations and jump ship after 2-3 years.
I personally wittnessed people that doubled their salary form 50k to 100k in a bit more than 2 years.
That being said, Amazon is really not a "meat grinder" for anybody but the picker and stower. In fact I'd say they care pretty well for everybody except the people on the floor. And even they are OKish paid, it's just that their contracts are always on fixed terms, sometimes as short as a month and since floor wokers are extremely replacable they replace you quick if your KPIs don't "fit".
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u/ComfortableProperty9 Feb 04 '23
The MSP industry loves these people, especially because they usually lack families or other outside responsibilities and are green enough to get told that it's completely normal to put in 55+ hours every week. Or even better, that desktop support and help desk level people are "vital employees" who have to work on projects over holidays to hit artificially created deadlines.
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u/rabidbot Feb 04 '23
Preach, run a field team for an MSP. Demands of the client are some how more stupid than the expectations of the MSP.
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u/Zhabba_Zheeba Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
That’s how I started my “big boy” I.T. career. Started in a NOC in a datacenter then moved over to the infrastructure team. Stayed there for six years then moved over to a VAR and joined their MS team. After a couple of years I became a deployment field engineer and left that job to become a field engineer at another VAR after 8 years at that company. Finally last year I quit all of that and went to work for one of my customers.
I will NEVER go back to coin-operated I.T. again. The pay was really good, and it put me in a good place financially, but it did a lot of harm mentally with all of the stress and anxiety. I’ve been out for just under a year and I’m just now feeling like I’m starting to recover.
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u/rabidbot Feb 04 '23
I’m 7 years into healthcare IT, all field services. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that has another option. Btw we’re hiring.
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u/Zhabba_Zheeba Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Yeah, I jumped over to a hospital so I guess I’m in healthcare I.T. too. The great thing though is I actually built our network when they were a client of mine, so I know that it’s well built infrastructure and I have been working with these guys for almost a decade prior to being hired on. My work-related stress is down 90% from where it used to be and I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work here.
It doesn’t pay nearly as much, but that’s not as important to me now as it once was. I was literally on the brink of a nervous breakdown when I finally realized that I had to get out of the vendor-side of I.T.
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u/kashmir1974 Feb 04 '23
So wait. The common trope is entry level positions need 15 years experience, so experienced people can be paid a lower salary. These positions are for new graduates and such. That's bad too?
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u/Calcutec_1 Feb 04 '23
but that's what you need when you are naive and anxious getting your first job; entry level job to give you real world experience so you can apply for a better one in a couple years or work yourself up in-house.
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u/doomgiver98 Feb 04 '23
Everyone knows the first year of experience is the hardest to get so it sounds like a good thing to me.
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u/cum_toast Feb 04 '23
Not saying it's good or bad but it's definitely worth it to suck it up for a few months to get your foot in the door and have some XP when looking for your next job " you lasted a year at Amazon!? Welcome aboard ! "
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u/anotherbozo Feb 04 '23
I believe the implication is that Amazon does not give a chance to anyone who who has been out of education for a while.
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u/Budget_Detective2639 Feb 04 '23
I uhh, call me crazy here, but I think they just want to pay people less.
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u/Xurbanite Feb 04 '23
And work them more
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u/geekygay Feb 04 '23
New people to the job market don't realise when they are being screwed. People with more experience are more likely to understand when they need to speak up/have things change.
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u/asdaaaaaaaa Feb 04 '23
That, but in general just want more malleable and inexperienced people who are easier to manipulate/abuse. People who have experience in certain industries generally have enough experience and confidence to keep some sort of standards for who they'll work for and aren't as easily pushed around.
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u/hellfae Feb 04 '23
My new 25 yr old upstairs neighbor works as support for Amazon. She's working on her computer 6 days a week, at least 48 hours a week, is super mean about "our porch staying quit" so she can work? (the fuck close your door I'm OUTSIDE and have lived here for 5 years) and orders all her groceries in and never leaves. After beginning work at 14, paying for my own education at 22 and again at 32 and now running my own business, I can see how much she's headed towards burn out, she sees herself as some kind of corporate hero though lmao.
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u/One-Statistician4885 Feb 04 '23
They insane thing is that these people probably think Amazon pays them a ton because relative to other jobs they do. Amazon is like yeah this is nothing, imagine if we had to pay people with families or who knew how to negotiate.
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u/Boring_Ad_3065 Feb 04 '23
Work life balance aside, entry level data scientist is 136k base, 160k total comp. That’s… a lot of money especially if they’re not in SF or a similar COL area.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/data-scientist
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u/anotherbozo Feb 04 '23
Data Science is not an entry level position in the traditional sense.
An entry level data scientist will have a few years experience in analytics, programming, stats, or similar.
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u/OnceInABlueMoon Feb 04 '23
And self taught developers who are making a career change.
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u/Whatsapokemon Feb 04 '23
If you're self-taught and starting your career by applying to one of the major tech giants then I think you need to manage your expectations somewhat.
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u/joequin Feb 04 '23
Their interviews are extremely difficult. I have hired some self taught engineers and interviewed many more. None of them are coming close to passing an Amazon interview. They aren’t looking for people who only know how to code. They’re looking for people who know computer science.
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u/medievalmachine Feb 04 '23
It’s age discrimination, which is illegal in the US.
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u/SmokeSerpent Feb 04 '23
Oh, it covers a lot of discrimination ground. Age, gender, race, pregnancy/parenthood, immigration status.
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u/Peaceandwholsomemes Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
It’s easier for them to get them to work for cheap if they’re just starting. My mum had a similar problem when she left her job and only a few companies wanted her for her knowledge. They don’t care they’d rather train someone up and make them believe thy have a good salary instead of some more experienced person who will want to dictate their salary
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u/edwwsw Feb 04 '23
Generally I agree with you, but I can also see how this policy is running afoul of age discrimination laws. Nearly all recent grads and students will be young and under 40 (the age you move into that protected class).
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u/NoAnybody7232 Feb 04 '23
I remember the 2008 recession. The "entry level jobs" were all flooded by people who were coming out of retirement, or getting a second jobs, or had been laid off. As a 17 year old, it was tough to compete against them. Not that it was their fault either though.
So, yeah, restricting entry level jobs to entry level applicants sound kinds of nice.
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u/shala0 Feb 04 '23
Cuz it’s cheaper. Don’t need to pay a level 2 or 3 salary, but those level 1s they hire will most likely doing more than level 1s that came before them
We did this at my previous conpany
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u/ESP-23 Feb 04 '23
Ditto
"Do more with less" is the tech executive theme
It means more wealth consolidation for investors and C-Suite
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u/Bodoblock Feb 04 '23
I don't really see what's nefarious here. They're paying L1s salaries for L1s. Just because you're old doesn't mean you warrant an L3 salary if you're a novice engineer.
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u/AirbagOff Feb 04 '23
And that’s saying a lot, given how much evil there is to choose from!
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u/lkodl Feb 04 '23
actually, a lot of the evil on amazon is the same stuff, just with different logos.
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u/donefukupped Feb 04 '23
And the news is?
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u/the_bear_paw Feb 04 '23
I work in software engineering. Amazon is an established business with established products. They don't need top tier veteran software engineers for the most part. The ones they do need, they have already. Why pay for top tier engineers to do bug fixes and operational enhancements on an existing product? You're right, there is no news here.
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u/malastare- Feb 04 '23
I also work in software engineering, for over twenty years.
You're right to say that they have a lot of maintenance work, but they also have a lot of very-high-volume and reasonably-low-latency software and that's not really work for entry level people... unless you also have experienced engineers to help teach those entry-level people how to get it done.
But, of course, you're also describing the vast majority of tech work. In fact, what you describe fits far better with the majority of non FAANG/MANGA/whatever-we-call-it-today. The bulk of the tech work outside MANGA/AI/Startups/Fintech/Gaming is maintenance work that doesn't require top-tier veterans. "XCorp wants a website." <eyeroll> "Oh. Okay." / "No, but they say its critical that the ads are randomized". "Dearie me. That'll take so much research. Is there a bonus?"
The "news" here isn't that Amazon is hiring entry level people. They've always done that. Its not that they're not hiring veteran people. They're still doing that, and doing a lot of that. I get an email a week from them and yesterday they sent me a damn mailing. A recruiting mailing. WTF.
No, the news here is that they're only considering those entry level jobs for people who recently left college, rather than people who are switching from other positions but just don't think they can rate a higher level, or people who are self-taught later in life, or people who are switching up from helpdesk/sysadmin/rackworker jobs into developer jobs.
So, my take on this is: Amazon is looking to restrict the people who apply to entry level jobs. This is likely to be motivated by some subset of:
- A desire to reduce recruitment effort, since they can focus on campus recruiting and ignore resume submissions for entry level jobs (except, hopefully, for referrals)
- A desire to reduce the number of candidates who have already had problems in their career (not a great motivation, but its not the first I've heard this one)
- A desire to have entry level jobs come directly out of "training" situations and reduce (they hope) the amount of post-hire training.
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u/Mbinguni Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
I think the explanation is even more simple: these types of candidates are cheaper to recruit, command cheaper salaries, and haven’t had exposure to companies with good work life balance and are thus easier to squeeze through PIP threats.
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u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Feb 04 '23
Yep. Engineering students are already accustomed to all nighters. Ppl who are 30+ years old need sleep or have kids
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u/GuyWithLag Feb 04 '23
They don't need top tier veteran software engineers for the most part
I work in a MANGA, and that is so true that it's not even funny. These corps need:
- entry-level folks that don't mind working many hours (because they're young with few attachments), and which don't mind the tools (which are sub-par, because of corporate NIH and first-mover disadvantage)
- mid-level folks that keep the systems running (ops/devops), and which pre-chew tasks for the entry-level folks to work on; these may have the freedom to pursue projects, but they need to toe the company line, and don't have enough autonomy to effect change on a technical level.
- Senior folks writing down designs, change docs, proposals of a technical nature, and which do the cross-team technical coordination work (because teams are super-specialized, and will send complaints up the management chain if you try to do anything in their turf)
- staff/principals are there more for business<->product<->technical fit and keeping the org relevant, and rarely have the chance/desire to get their hands dirty (the colloquialism is interesting from a social status perspective)
Sure, each team/org/corp is different, and maybe the names change, but the bands exist even is sometimes in this or that particular instance a title sits in the middle and straddles two bands.
Note that at no point above technical excellence is a thing; there's enough entry-level folks to throw grunt work at them, no desire to build higher abstractions (because then the entry level folks would need time to get onboarded), nor is the free time / allocated time to work on optimizing the technical side (there's a lot of talk on how to optimize a sprint, for some bloody reason), and there's the fact that you don't get promoted for creating something that needs _less_ people to work on it.
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u/sutterbutter Feb 04 '23
The sub par tooling point is so true. Tbf the tooling was usually written before modern tools existed as examples, but still some of it is so bad with steep learning curves.
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u/tippiedog Feb 04 '23
entry-level folks that don't mind working many hours (because they're young with few attachments)
Also, they don't feel as confident in pushing back against workplace abuses as more senior employees and/or don't understand as well that they're being abused.
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u/i-can-sleep-for-days Feb 04 '23
Woah. That’s a bad take.
You need to hire people who can navigate the enormous code base and the organization hierarchy to get their one line fix added and for that one line fix to not break something else. At Amazon knowing how to navigate the organization is also really important for just surviving never mind succeeding.
That’s the sort of environment that only a veteran or a very determined individual can have a chance of having success.
New hires either wash out or quit but that’s by design.
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u/StormPooper77 Feb 04 '23
The news is that they won’t hire people changing careers, only people who have had no careers. Because career changers tend to be older, it’s borderline ageism.
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u/Free_Dimension1459 Feb 04 '23
If this is for “entry level,” that’s exactly what entry level should mean in my opinion, EXCEPT in the case of a career change OR a serious recession where experienced people will take what they can get.
If you’ve 3+ years of experience, a more senior position is all you should be applying for, especially in the current job market. You get paid more, rookies don’t have to compete with experienced people for jobs meant for rookies, and everyone wins.
When I was a new grad, all the “entry level” jobs looking for 5+ years of experience stressed me out. The hiring manager wasn’t actually expecting that, but sometimes the great HR filter was. I’d ask career services “what jobs should I apply for?” “Entry level positions” and it was just asinine.
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u/urlang Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Some of the guesses are perhaps true to some extent but not major factors.
If you have years of experience and still are looking for an entry-level role, you are signaling that you grow slowly or not at all. Not only do tech companies want senior engineers out of their entry-level hires, but a person's growth rate itself is a predictor of talent, dedication, etc.
In some circles, it was shown that Google laid off engineers with 16+ years of experience because they had been the same level for many years. If two engineers are both L6, the engineer that got there 10 years ago as opposed to last year seems stalled at L6.
Many tech companies fire engineers who stay at entry-level beyond a certain number of months. They are taking too much senior engineer time to train and not getting better quickly enough.
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u/MedicalSchoolStudent
Feb 04 '23
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I think people are misunderstanding the problem.
They are actively removing people that may have self-taught themselves coding, people that switched careers, people that took a few years off to help family or people that have a gap due to mental health.
By definition, this leaked policy can be considered ageist.
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u/axionic Feb 04 '23
I was a programmer for 20 years, took three years off after major surgery, and when I started applying for jobs again people were like, "Sorry, we're looking for someone with recent experience".
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u/Matt_Tress Feb 04 '23
Jfc. I’m a lead data scientist and currently staffing a couple roles on my team, and I swear to fucking god my company’s recruiting dept acts as if they’re the reason we have jobs, and not vice versa. The dumbest people end up in recruiting.
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u/axionic Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Well, people were using APIs that had come out very recently, so they were all worried about that. But JFC most APIs don't take that long to figure out, especially modern ones that aren't loaded with technical debt (e.g. Tensorflow is a debt-laden mess with undeserved popularity like everything from Google, while Pytorch takes about an hour to figure out if you've seen numpy). They seem to think it's like a doctor or a lawyer going into a specialty.
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u/theth1rdchild Feb 04 '23
It's really insane to me that anyone views SWE roles as though if they're skilled in plumbing they can't do electrical - a good SWE is a person who has learned to learn. Sure, if I've never touched a language before it's going to take a few weeks before I produce anything brilliant, but if you like me as a candidate and we're measuring my employment with you in years, what's a couple weeks? They train call center employees longer than that.
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u/HumbledB4TheMasses Feb 04 '23
Yeah any SWE worth their salt can spin up a POC with a new API within a day going through 1 real usecase. It's not rocket science to implement an API, the procedure going from discovery to implementation is the same every time, the details are different.
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u/trynafigureitout444 Feb 04 '23
Ya that’s my thought too. When my region experienced a downturn I knew a lot of people with decades of professional experience trying to get any job in their industry. Those people are probably breadwinners for their respective families. It’s a great general policy during boom times, but after all the tech layoffs, if companies start adopting this policy it could do some damage, and for what? It doesn’t seem to have any benefits
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u/ShenmeNamaeSollich Feb 04 '23
For what? Costs less. Better quarterly earnings. That’s it.
The experienced breadwinners are less likely to work 50hrs/wk for only $75K. They need more pay w/fewer hours & better benefits because they have a mortgage & bills & kids to pay for.
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u/Lamacorn Feb 04 '23
What kills me, is that in the US, it’s perfectly OK to discriminate against young people. They are explicitly not protected until age 40.
And then people lose their minds when someone says maybe there should be a max age level to, at least for government elected jobs like president, congress, Supreme Court.
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u/purefabulousity Feb 04 '23
Yup. Went back to school and got my first SWE job at 28.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily an ageist policy but it seems like it can be short sighted
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u/HotTakeHaroldinho Feb 04 '23
Why is it problematic to prefer someone with a degree vs someone who's self taught?
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u/tman2damax11 Feb 04 '23
Guessing simply because they can pay them the least because of no experience?
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u/InvestigatorOk9354 Feb 04 '23
Sure, but here are a couple other reasons this benefits Amazon:
- New grads haven't been tainted by working at a better company... If all you know if PIP culture then you are more likely to accept it and work in that system.
- Part of the Amazon loop is evaluating if the candidate has growth potential. You don't hire people to stay in an entry level position for several years. You wouldn't hire someone who has been an SDE at another company for 2-3 years and would apply for an L4 SDE position at Amazon. If that person is any good they should be applying for an L5 position, whether they know it or not it can hurt their loop.
To be clear, this isn't good for the SDE at the end of the day, and isn't something I'd consider aligned with being "the world's best employer"
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u/izzzi Feb 04 '23
This is the crux of it. Amazon is very well known amongst the experienced as being a sweat shop and has one of the worst reputations amongst big employers in the industry. Students don't know this yet and are blindly attracted to the big name.
Slimy move by Amazon.
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u/GekkosGhost Feb 04 '23
It is, but somehow it's increasingly appealing as I near the end of my career. And I can't explain why at all.
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u/S7EFEN Feb 04 '23
amazon new grad pay and pay in general for engineers is excellent you can easily start at high 100k right out of college
its more how entry level works for software engineering. it's not just a company culture thing to treat entry level devs as 'up or out' - junior devs are huge cost sinks and if someone isnt able to perform at a mid level after time as a junior dev then theyre definitely not someone the company wants to hire. amazon also specifically targets pretty top % devs
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u/tehdamonkey Feb 04 '23
It is the retail store management philosophy adapted to tech: - You want the young and naive as new blood as they do not know any better and will drink the cool aid. Tell them if they work 70 hours a week they will be rich and burn them out before they vest... - Your mid level people are smart and experienced but do not have quality education or a deep resume. So they will do whatever to keep their job as they know they cannot move laterally to another company very easily at their position because of this. - You have your high level people and management that are at the top. They are paid really well and based on performance of the business. It is lucrative enough that they have no issue treating those below them poorly to get the job done and make the bottom line.
Tech is definitely not the job it was 20 years ago.
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u/Ikeeki Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
As a software engineer 10+ years in this field, this is the most stupid and neutral headline I’ve read in a long time, so stupid it has me commenting
“Students applying to med school must have recently graduated with a bachelors or equivalent to Good Will Huntings IQ”
????????
These headlines are clearly written by non engineers and/or journalists grasping for straws. No wonder why chatgpt3 are replacing these clowns.
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u/petesapai Feb 04 '23
I'm trying to understand what the issue is. What did some redditors think? That students with zero years of experience were going to be given senior leadership software engineering positions?
I still feel like perhaps I'm missing something that others caught in this story.
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u/GrunchWeefer Feb 04 '23
I think people want to be outraged that entry level SDE positions are going to people straight from college and not going to industry hires but that's what the non-entry-level roles are for.
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u/Hawk13424 Feb 04 '23
Well, assuming career changers are also fresh out of college I don’t see an issue. Are people just wanting then to hire folks without the education or maybe hire more experienced (overqualified?) people for entry positions?
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u/galileotechno Feb 04 '23
I know several second career doctors who just took the MCAT and applied in their thirties. None of them are particularly exceptional intellectually, but most of them proved their interest in medicine by previously being a nurse, EMT, Paramedic, etc.
There is a difference between most people applying for something falling into a certain category and a business choosing to completely ignore everyone who doesn’t fall into that category.
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u/SuitableSprinkles Feb 04 '23
This is pretty much the case for all tech companies. What’s the issue? New grad could mean a recent Master’s recipient.
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u/Limp-Technician-7646 Feb 04 '23
Amazon does this for all management positions as well. They make internal promotion candidates fight tooth and nail for even basic promotions that they should be getting automatically and they place external hires that just graduated with no work experience into those same promotions. I had a degree and had worked a department for years and my promotion was given away like this to green new hires multiple times who almost always burned out within a month and quit. I had to train them each time as well and they always treated me like their subordinate and with no respect. This is one of the reasons I quit.
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u/ahruss Feb 04 '23
I work at Amazon. We have 3 people on my direct team who did coding boot camps after having other jobs and were hired as SDE1. One of them started this month. This headline just plain false.
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u/JonPX Feb 04 '23
Has nobody told Amazon entry-level position means you need 10 years of experience in a three year old technology?
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u/leros Feb 04 '23
I'm not surprised. Amazon has a toxic culture. It's easier to incorporate someone who doesn't know better.
Every ex-Amazon employee we've hired at my company has to go through about a 6 month period of rehabilitation. It's nearly a constant thing as they pick up so many negative habits from working at Amazon.
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u/nobody-u-heard-of Feb 04 '23
I hear that recent medical school grads are forced to go thru residency and are not hired as attending physician.
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u/MikeSemicolonD Feb 04 '23
I believe this. After I graduated I kept getting emails and LinkedIn messages from Amazon recruiters. They only calmed down after around the 3 year mark. I honestly wonder if any of them were human beings given that a lot of them wouldn't even respond to me. There was one time I received the exact same email template from the exact same amazon email address twice. Don't I feel special? lol
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u/AbazabaYouMyOnlyFren Feb 04 '23
As someone who worked for a company that did this, it won't work out well.
You're paying more for experience. That includes all of the expensive mistakes they've made while working for someone else and on their dime.
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u/ArachnidUnusual7114 Feb 04 '23
Amazon seems like a crappy place to work from all the stories I’ve heard.
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u/ovirt001 Feb 04 '23
Which is why the employee approach has been "get in, get your stocks vested, get out".
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u/wpcodemonkey Feb 04 '23
I’ve known many people who have worked at Amazon as software engineers. Most don’t even last until their stock vests. The churn is insane and they work you until you hate your career choice. I’d never work there.
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Feb 04 '23
So? That's a good thing. Let the kids get some experience. I understand this could be considered as ageism but give youngsters a chance
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u/majolex1 Feb 04 '23
There whole structure is designed to make you either move up or move out. No getting cozy cause once that initial bonus is up your SOL.
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u/TechSalesTom Feb 04 '23
Pretty much how it’s been at any tech company. There is a large range of levels, lowest level is almost always new grads and some experience would slot you in the next level up.
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u/BroForceOne Feb 04 '23
So should they be hiring senior developers with years of experience for entry level positions? What’s the story here?
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u/blipsman Feb 05 '23
I mean, isn’t that better than demanding entry level worker have years of experience?
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u/ThePortfolio Feb 05 '23
A lot of companies do this. It’s easier to indoctrinate them while their young. I was pulled in right after grad school. I drank the cool-aid. I woke up eventually. Looking back I was overworked and underpaid but they made me think I was making a difference and part of the “family”. It’s all bullshit but companies are smart at taking advantage of the young and nieve.
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u/Different-Produce870 Feb 04 '23
The internal note said Amazon is making the change because of the "pipeline" of candidates available through student programs, but the memo nor Amazon's spokesperson clarified why the company believes campus hires are better than experienced industry candidates for entry-level positions.
Because they're easier to control and they'll complain about hours less probably
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u/thePsychonautDad Feb 04 '23
Makes sense.
It's easier to abuse and exploit your employees if they've never been exposed to a healthy workplace before.
I think it's mentioned in the first chapter in "How to run a sociopathic business 101"
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u/infodawg Feb 04 '23
So basically they won't hire self taught talent into entry level positions, only college graduates. Many companies say this but don't prescribe it, because it's elitist, foolhardy and discriminatory. So if Amazon is really practicing this, then they stand alone.
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u/S7EFEN Feb 04 '23
there are plenty of self taught devs at amazon. what they are not hiring is people who have multiple years as junior without transitioning to mid level which is an extremely smart thing to do. junior devs are huge cost centers and the inability to move past a job that requires hand holding is a huge huge red flag.
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u/redbrick5 Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 05 '23
exactly. doesn't matter the reasons why you are still entry level after 5 years. its not worth their time to figure out if its valid or not. big companies, small will. it just looks different than what they are trained to search for.
you are way better not even listing the old job on your resume. cut everything and make it look the same as a college grad. resume should only contain info for the role, not a biography or your history. only your relevant history FOR THIS JOB (without gaps from present). I made this mistake for years, jamming in everything because I was proud that I did A,B,C but the job req is C, D, E.
and the 1000 lawyers that work there would not accidentally structure their policy into something that violates the age discrimination laws. no chance.
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u/asshatastic Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
In some respects it’s requiring their staff to have been born into certain circumstances
Edit: I’d really love to hear a counter-argument
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u/astonaidan Feb 04 '23
Hmmm is this bad, like it doesnt sound bad, in fact it sounds like how it should be
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u/yogfthagen Feb 04 '23
There's an old joke that the most useless thing in the world is an engineer fresh out of college.
The reason is that they haven't been around long enough to make all the mistakes that it takes to learn how to actually be a GOOD engineer. Any engineer who says, "It works in the model!" needs to be put on the assembly line with a wrench in his hand and be punished by trying to BUILD and USE their design.
I am making the assumption that comp sci has similar issues and a similar learning curve.
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u/jaydaba Feb 04 '23
So the recruiters on LinkedIn were just wasting my time glad I always declined.
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u/veritaszak Feb 04 '23
When I worked for Amazon I was staff, then they laid me off to save money. Then they hired me back as a contractor so that they wouldn’t have to pay health and benefits, but if you have a contractor for 9 months you have to hire them as staff or fire them. So they fired me again. And then hired me back 3 months later. They called it our “annual time out” Then they walked me through how to start me own business and work under my own LLC as a “vendor” even though I never changed what I do with them that way I wouldn’t have to be fired every 9 months.
I worked for them for 6 years. I can’t believe the abuse I put up with.
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u/Dangerous_Play8787 Feb 04 '23
They do it because they know the fresh grads can go through the grinder
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u/robert_burgers Feb 04 '23
This has been the default policy for much of amazon for years.