JulianRaphael

Hm. I will obviously appear to be biased, but isn't the collection of anecdotes that you've gathered a manifestation of some kind of inverse survivorship bias? Within the total population of people who work or have worked at AWS, the largest group of people with a negative experience will be in the subset of the population that has left the company? I really believe that companies the size of Amazon will inevitably have a certain percentage of people who had negative experiences - just like the company has negative experiences with individuals.

Like I said in my other comment in this thread, I'm sure that there are some teams that don't have a good culture but it also comes down to the individual in many cases. I guess it comes down to individual preferences, some folks really don't want to work at Google, others dislike Facebook, some don't like AWS, etc.. But at the end of the day, all of these companies still attract a ton of incredibly talented people and I personally don't see that trend ending soon.

I'm an individual contributor in product management, so not in people management. Amazon / AWS is a challenging work environment, just like most other tech companies. In my opinion, that is also why so many people want to work for FAANG & Co, as you generally get to work on really interesting but also challenging things. I'd say that bursts of intense working periods are par for the course in FAANG & Co, but it also depends on your own ability to handle our self-service culture (which I find empowering). The culture is certainly peculiar but each large tech company has their own culture that works really well for some and doesn't jive with others. Just speaking for myself here, but I have learned a ton professionally and personally, work(ed) with inspiring people and had the best work-life balance of my career so far. Don't want to sound like a shill here - I'm certainly aware that in a company the size of Amazon there will be good and bad pockets, I just happened to work with good teams so far.

Listening/observing and writing.

Listening/observing because you really need to understand why you build what you build and depending on what you are building you'll only figure out the "why?" if you listen / observe deeply without preconceived notions. I've tried to improve this skill for years and still struggle with it!

Writing because once you've absorbed the information, you need to synthesise it and there is no better way to challenge your own thinking than writing. I always thought I was good at writing until I read a few books about writing skills and then read a few books (both fiction and non-fiction) and assessed the quality of writing with these basic ideas in mind. Only then did I realise that I suck at writing. It's really hard to write well, but if you can write well you have the most powerful tool at your disposal as it can scale the thoughts and ideas of one individual to millions or even billions of people. It might also just convince a bunch of teammates to follow your lead :)

I've been working for AWS across different teams for some time now and can't confirm that. There are a LOT of folks with +5 years tenure. In the US, the average tenure of workers aged 25-34 is 2.8 years, so you'll obviously see some turnover and some teams might see more than others - but the attrition rate is not really high across the company. In my opinion, we're hiring mainly because we are still growing really fast!

Agreed, at the end of the day all technology is but a tool. Technological progress also requires human progress, i.e. we have to upgrade our mental models and values as technology allows us to engage at unprecedented scale. Critical thinking and empathy seem to be the two key missing skills in the 21st century and modern society doesn't place a lot of emphasis on developing these skills. That's where I'm fully with you: the key is to educate, educate and educate. But we also need to upgrade our education system accordingly!

My strongest criticism of the cryptocurrency movement is that there are very few genuine educators. Hackers who truly believe in decentralisation and self-empowerment and are able to communicate the basic concepts in a way that kids and older people can get it. OG Whales who have made a fortune and now could invest into tools and services to make cryptocurrencies accessible to everyone. Or even seed some of the crypto funds that could help drive upward mobility for people from lower income strata. The idea behind cryptocurrencies and the values are so much more important than their price and getting rich quick. But instead of educating and sharing some of their wealth, most prominent cryptocurrency advocates just talk about the price of Bitcoin, engage in ad hominem attacks on folks who don't get it and boast with their wealth.

Imagine what all these millions and billions of wealth could achieve in terms of educating the masses and winning them over for the cause!

I like the spirit of your comment - that's the actual hacker mindset. Way too many comments on Bitcoin/Crypto-related submissions on HN are just knee-jerk reactions that don't really contribute to a constructive conversation. When I started lurking on HN in 2010, it was a very different culture. I miss these days!

Regarding your concern around economic inequality: why do you think that people would fall further behind? I'd argue that cryptocurrencies have had a positive effect on inequality, particularly in countries like Argentina, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc. Without cryptocurrencies, people in these countries - particularly the ones who don't have assets in other countries - would have lost a lot of wealth due to the financial instability of their respective economies. As cryptocurrencies are here to stay, I'd even argue that they are currently still underpriced and hence provide many people from the lower income strata of society in 1st world countries with an opportunity to improve their financial wellbeing. This might not be true for people who don't understand technology, but then I ask myself what the current system has to offer to improve inequality for those who lag behind economically and in terms of education.

A constructive idea how we could avoid further deterioration in terms of economic inequality: countries / communities could set up cryptocurrency trusts similar to Norway's Oil investment funds that are funded from cryptocurrency that was mined from e.g. excess energy in the grid from renewables. They could then invest a certain percentage of their cryptocurrency in trustworthy DeFi platforms to further increase yield. Returns from these trusts are invested into causes that benefit the public, e.g. education, health care, etc.

Pinged you an email!

In my case the question has often unearthed things about the team culture that may work well for some and not so well for others. One example: a person I had an interview with told me that he wouldn't recommend a candidate to join the team if said candidate e.g. wouldn't get along with the typical "tech bros" team culture, which obviously wasn't something mentioned in the job description. For me that was clearly a no-go, for others this wouldn't be much a problem because the job in general was a very interesting one and very well compensated, too. OTOH, I've also heard non-trivial things in other interviews which were not mentioned in the job description but weren't a show stopper for me.

I also use the questions to learn more about the person and culture: if all people say "there is NOTHING I would change, this is a dream job" there is a very high likelihood that this is an environment where you don't speak openly about ways to improve and where individuals keep their criticism for themselves.

I've been asking the following two questions for many years now and they have always been a great tool for me: "Can you tell me why I should NOT work here?" "If you had a magic stick, what would you change about this company?"

Read the class action lawsuit, I found one example for this on page 44, lines 14-16, of the document.

Unfortunately, for a large group of people this seems to be true. When I see these products, I often remember a talk of a Buddhist teacher titled "Loneliness is the ill being of our time." [1] I do believe that one of the next waves of technological innovations will evolve exactly around this topic: how can we make people feel less lonely?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1x9bzl2Ww

I fully agree that the signal-to-noise ratio on HN is better than elsewhere on the web, which is why I love coming here. HN shines when people share their sharp thinking, creativity and ability to reflect and adjust their strong, factually based opinions. That is exactly what led me to post my comment, because I've noticed that this community has grown in the past few years and with the growth the quality of discussions (sometimes) has become less informative and occasionally resembles a "typical" comment section on the internet.

I realised that I can influence this trend by participating more actively in the discussions. Hence, my resolution for 2018 is to more often post questions, rather than arguments to hopefully drive forward our collective creativity and intelligence. HN is a truly special place on the web!

Very revealing discussion. Most of the participants just argue about Amazon vs. Google here, some fear surveillance, some consider the devices useless, a few want to understand if the HN crowd finds it useful. This is something I notice here on HN in product-related discussions more and more: people just say what THEY think about product X (typically a negative opinion or complaint), rather being creative, constructive or inquisitive.

Why do you think millions of people bought an Echo Dot or a Google Home? Not from YOUR perspective, but from the perspective of millions of people that seem to see value in this product?

The seed was planted when Estonia realized that they need a government that can continue to operate even if a foreign power would seize their territory. By now, they realized that a small country can build itself a disproportionately big lever by embracing technology and new concepts of governance. Hence, cryptography is an essential part of their bigger vision. It’s amazing to see Estonia pursue its vision and I for one hope that they’ll become a role model for future governments.

Solid post and long due.

However, judging from a recent Y Combinator post (https://blog.ycombinator.com/13-startup-ideas/) on 13 startup ideas from YC alumni and staff for startup ideas that they wish would exist, Sam should start right in front of his own door regarding "working on less ideas for the 1%".

Great resume in general. However, you don't list a single quantifiable achievement in your work experience. You state what you did, but in no way provide data to describe the impact of what you did. If you'd include that, your resume would be outstanding.

Not blaming you at all, Radim - it's not easy to stay on top of the latest developments in this fast-moving space. This was great work and I hope you will continue running these benchmark test. Also, feel free to ping me via sameting@amazon.com if you need any help with anything AWS.

Hi Radim, I understand that it is hard to stay on top of things in this fast-evolving market, but you omitted a few important things.

1. "Softlayer is also the only platform that allows the provisioning of bare metal[...]": so does AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/11/announcin...

2. "Softlayer and AWS charge in hourly increments." AWS offers per-second billing: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-per-second-billing-for-...

3. Echoing @tedivm's comment, for a real comparison you'd really have to include GPUs. Do you plan to write a follow-up? (Disclaimer: I work for AWS)

Regarding Spanner, AWS now provides Global Tables for Dynamo DB and a Multi-Master feature for Aurora. Very interesting move. https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/29/aws-cloud-databases-go-se...

Thanks for doing this! I've created a meetup for Munich, feel free to add it to your list: https://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-Munich/

I can highly recommend Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com/) for Mac. Best system-wide search that I've used and you can even create workflows!

You are right, the pricing models are hard to compare 1:1. However, most Flixbus' customers can't afford (or don't want to afford) a Bahncard 50 and are very price sensitive. I've been travelling with Flixbus throughout Europe and the crowd is typically either very young or comes from the low-income strata of society. Anecdote ain't data, but that's what I also hear from the folks working there. Also, it has cost DB €10 billion to build the new connection, so they'll have to recoup that investment. Imho and as mschuster91 indicated, they will mainly steal customers from airlines.

I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't lose much business at all. With Flixbus, people pay 22€ for a 7:15h bus ride from Munich to Berlin. With DB, people will have to pay 150€ for a 4h train ride from Munich to Berlin (without a Bahncard). This is not affordable for the typical customer of Flixbus.

They also seem to run on AWS, so not necessarily a problem. http://fortune.com/2017/02/09/snap-inc-signs-big-aws-deal/

They claim that they could be profitable in 2018 in this article: https://www.recode.net/2017/10/19/16503628/alphabet-lyft-rid...

Could you please share the link to the podcast?

I guess most comments in this thread already show you the general perception you'll have to deal with. Here's my take at the three key issues as someone with deep roots in India:

First of all, excel at communications with potential and existing clients. Have at least one person on the team to speak English on a native level. In your description, there are already quite a few mistakes and when freelancers and agencies apply to my gigs, I filter the initial messages out brutally. I don't even look at applications that feature spelling and grammatical mistakes and miss details I specifically asked for. Also, have a person on the team who has been exposed to the culture(s) of the region you want to sell to the most, in order to be able to e.g. say "no" more often and to also admit when you messed up.

Second, never approach a client with an opening line like: "Trust me Sir we are best developers we will do best work and give you cheapest price." You have no idea how many of these I get on a daily basis. You simply don't get the best people at the cheapest price. Define your target group and either sell yourself as a cheap, low-quality sweatshop or continuously invest in great people and training and sell yourself as one of the few exceptional agencies in India that actually delivers great quality.

Third, stop chasing short term profits. This is the worst aspect of doing business in India - most freelancers and agencies rather deliver bad work and get some money, then really putting hard work into in and building great relationships that will create lasting value.

Happy to give you more feedback, just ping me via the e-mail in my profile.

These guys from Israel have a very promising approach: https://www.osapublishing.org/boe/fulltext.cfm?uri=boe-5-6-1...

Is someone else in here besides me working on self-made tracking tools for logging your metrics beyond glucose? Would love to chat!

Even if you would only have passively invested funds, you'd still have the pricing mechanism. Each index fund has an individual portfolio distribution and different rules of how to adjust it to market changes. Passive investing doesn't mean that there is no "active" part to it. Furthermore, a great number of stocks won't be part of any index fund, hence you'd still have active investors (humans and/or machines).

How can I contact you the best?