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Comment by tstrimple | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this is the perception of Amazon warehouse workers being transferred over to Amazon technology workers. I've heard a ton of bad things about the former, but the folks I personally know who work at Amazon / AWS as tech workers all seem to be happy with it. Of course, how Amazon treats its warehouse workers is an indictment on the overall company, so I think I'd have a difficult time choosing to work there.

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I don't think it started with warehouse workers, there was a famous NYT article talking about office workers at Amazon where entire teams would leave a meeting in tears:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

Among folks I know in Seattle, Amazon had a bad reputation as a burnout factory before those stories about the warehouses ever really came out.

I know two acquaintances that are SDEs that worked at Amazon and hated it. One of them was "forced" to work until 3-4 AM. His manager said to him, "How can you even think of sleeping right now?". Fortunately he found a new position at Microsoft. The other SDE feels like a cog in a machine and hates it so much he's going back to his home country.

You’re always a cog in the machine. If you think otherwise you’re being naive. No matter where you work, if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, your company would send “thoughts and prayers” to your family and have an open req for you before your body got cold.

I definitely can’t imagine “being forced” to do anything at a job too often before I’m looking for another job.

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