Amazon jobs…

 In life, there are many things that you can learn for free and get paid very little for. At the same time there 

are many things that you can learn for free and get paid a lot for.For example, anyone can learn to play 

guitar for free. If you play well enough or write a hit song that gets famous, you can make a lot of money.

In fact, most hit songs involve 4 chords that you can learn in an afternoon of goofing around on YouTube with a cheap guitar you buy at a pawn shop for $20.You can just as easily learn to work to grow a garden for free and get paid nothing to do it. Most people call activities like this a hobby.

Even still, you can spend a lot off money to learn things that make you no money whatsoever.For example, you could spend $150,000 to go to a private school and get a degree in philosophy. Then turn around and make minimum wage and never be able to pay for your college loans (which probably would cost north of $200,000 to pay off including interest)

You also could spend the same amount of money and become a doctor or lawyer earning $500,000 a year.What you spend on education and the salary you get paid are not related at all.

In fact, a person needs nothing more than an 8th grade education to make over $100,000 a year in America.Actually, you might need no formal education at all to make that kind of money.Allow me to explain…

In business, to make money you need to be able to sell things. Sales is a career field where formal training doesn’t matter at all. You don’t go tocollege to get a degree in sales.

College is the least useful place in the world tolearn how to sell anything.

The best salesmen I’ve met are either naturally persuasive or they have a history of working in door to door sales at some point in their lives. And here is a secret - you don’t need any education tosell door to door (they let Girl Scouts do it and they sell a ton of cookies with no training).

People in sales have the best opportunity to make $100,000 or more a year of anyone. If they are good and are selling a product that is in demand, they can get to $100,000 selling cars, insurance, software, pharmaceuticals, real estate, and so on.

There is zero correlation in the amount of money spent on education and how much someone sells.

And thus there is zero correlation in how much money is spent on education and how much money people get paid. Sure, there are some outliers where a great credential from an expensive school makes some difference, but usually the market is setting prices (indirectly) forsalary.

Which leads back to the issue of software engineering salaries…

The salary someone makes for programming software is driven mostly by demand and competition in the marketplace.

Right now, the demand is far higher than the supply of talent. Companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are making billions of dollars by investing in software.

So long as they are making that kind of money, they will pay a premium to those who create the software. It has nothing to do with how much it costs to learn to program software.

The other part of this dynamic situation is the issue of talent.

While anyone can learn to code, not everyone will be good at it. Most people don’t practice their craft enough to get really good. Less than 10% who start programming will end up sticking with it 15 or 20 years later.

Those people who stick with it for decades getpaid a lot more than those who quit. At the upper end of the spectrum there is a premium for talent and experience.

You could argue that the cost in education and training after decades of experience is actually quite high. The best programmers often have spent thousands of hours practicing, building, and learning that some might call “sweat equity” in their careers.

For them, programming isn’t free at all. It’s a skill they invested heavily with time and money and they get rewarded for that.

I’ve personally invested thousands of hours of my life to become good at programming. I’m now a Senior Software Engineer at a successful and growing software company.I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money on something others learn for “free”. In general, I’m rewarded well for my effort.

But, I don’t kid myself…

What I get paid is not a direct correlation with anything other than market prices and my ability to sell my skills in the marketplace.

Training helps. Education helps. Investing in and practicing my craft helps.

If I was born 50 years earlier, I wouldn’t get paidwhat I do. In 50 more years, I have no idea what any of this will be worth salary-wise. (and neither does anyone else!)

What you get paid and what it cost to develop your skill in any field is not the same thing. No need to conflate those two ideas in your head.

get a job at one of the companies that are paying high salaries. Like if you really think you are that hot, try to get a job at the top tier companies.

I’ve worked in the software industry for the past 20 years. I came from a no-name college in India. I moved to the US 2 years out of college. My first job was in Kodak, and I stayed there for 6 years toget my GC. AFter that I worked in various startup and mid sized companies. Last year, I joined Amazon.

I am getting paid a lot more at Amazon than I was getting paid outside. I do know that people with half my experience here are getting paid more than I was getting paid outside. And know what? They deserve it. It seems unfair that someone with 7–10 years experience in Amazon gets paidthe same as someone with 20 years experience outside. Or seeing someone fresh out of college to make the same as someone with 7–10 years of experience outside. That is until you actually meet these people. When you meet the people who work here at Amazon, it doesn’t see unfair. These guys are really smart guys who come from a much better education background than mine.

It would be hypocritical of me, as someone who truly believes that compensation should reflect merit to begrudge them. People who do earn more than average in the industry do so because they are really really smart. 

More importantly, they get it.. right off the bat. A big challenge in any software project is getting the development teams in alignment with the business. Companies spend an extraordinary effort in making sure that the developers get what is being built. The big difference between highly paid programmers and the ones who don’t is that highly paidprogrammers have a worldview that isn’t fixated on technology. They are interested in learning things outside the programming domain,. WHen they have to solve problems in non-technical domains using technology, it’s easier for them be aligned.

If anything needs to be “blamed”, it has to be my own background. I didn’t get into Amazon 15 years ago, because I was not ready. If I had gone to a better college, I might have been. If I was born in the US, and didn’t have to waste 6 years in Kodak, I might have been. If I had a more rounded education, I might have.

Besides, begrudging someone else or making more money than you is just not a good way tolive. You are never going to be happy if you do that, because there’s always going to be someone else who makes more money than you.Yes, people make more money than you. If you want to make more money, try to get the same job as them. And if you don’t get the job, realize that there is something that you need to work on and try to work on the thing. That’s all there is to it.

Amazon has to fight a little harder for each new Prime member. But Amazon continues to grow and innovate, and is still chock full of smart and motivated people. 

Many of my peers from 2014 have returned to the company with me. Many never left. Contrasting our experiences has helped me validate my conclusions about the company’s culture.

Most of this answer will focus on what’s changed since 2013, but for those unfamiliar: I still think Amazon is one of the best places to work if you like working on difficult problems at scale, and are motivated by accomplishing things, but not foryou if you value work/life balance, consistency, or respect for cultural norms.

The empowered manager

Amazon’s greatest strength as a management organization is also its greatest weakness: individuals are still empowered to a startling degree. 

I once said that Amazon cares a lot about scaling employee impact to keep headcount low, and that power is a happy side effect. At the time I was describing the magnitude of my impact as an individual contributor in marketing, impact that was only possible because of Amazon’s tools, systems, and culture. But I could just as easily have been describing the magnitude of impact that Amazon managers can have on their employees and their careers.

A well-known tenet among Amazonians is that you should prioritize good management as much as—or perhaps more than—the position or product or team. This is partly due to how much control your manager has over your working life.

It’s my job as a manager to dictate, at some level, what my directs work on. But I also have near-complete control over how much work they have and how that work is evaluated. 

If I am a responsible manager with ideal conditions, then I will develop my team into independent decision-makers with meaningful projects that advance the business and their careers. I will seek out responsibility and challenge to enable that, but shield my team from crushing workloads.

 I will get to know each person so I can learn how best to deploy and enable them. I will evaluate them fairly by using as much information as possible, being generous when appropriate and critical when necessary.

Then reality hits: Amazon runs famously lean and conditions are rarely ideal. Amazon hires and develops highly-motivated people who may be interested in responsible management, but are also interested in hitting aggressive business goals and developing a career in a competitive environment.

1. Amazon is products based
2. Thoughtworks is service based company
1. (long back they had few products, open sourced, still in use, but no more products)
1. Friendly engineers:
1. Software engineers are very friendly in both companies
2. In Amazon, these are Software Engineers, in TW these are Application Developers.
2. Interview environment:
1. Thoughtworks: Though not in all, slight overconfidence, reject your idea, etc. exists, however all interviewers are friendly at the same time however.
2. Amazon: No assumptions, they write the interview notes, always typing while you talk, these are very cool & calm in interview. We get a nice feeling.
3. Interview rounds:
1. Thoughtworks
1. First round: Coding, more focused on design (OOPS), wont care on algorithms much, depending on interviewer its ok your program does not run at all, though it should compile. Good OOPS design is must: Mainly classes, any inheritance between them, any containment of objects of one class in other class, what are things that need to be in base class, in derived class, etc.. They give ample time, 3 hours for one problem, i used 1st hour to understand it, 2nd hour to write code, in 3rd hour after receiving feedback i modified to make it design oriented. Result: optimal code & optimal design, so if you prepare OOPS and don’t waste time, its easy pass.
2. Next round was what is in previous project, architecture of it, if you know your last project very well then easy pass.
3. Next round is social economic justice related questions by senior most guy, very cool head, understands your point of view, if you are simple, genuine & kind person in general then easy pass.
4. Last round, no comments on this. (At this time, I chose an offer from another client in my own company over Thoughtworks, this all is a few months back)
2. Amazon:
1. It’s a whole different level, what matters most is, your intelligence in doing everything, even simple things that you do on job, for example, when you search on google how do you analyze the results. This would depend on what position you are applying.
2. Second is, if you are data driven, if you talk something, there needs to be basis to it, say how do you measure if server is doing good? say its metrics of RAM, etc. also do you believe that it is right thing to do, etc.
3. If you not doing well, you will be helped with ‘ok i will help you on this’ or similar statement, best is to be 100% focused, all the time.
4. In general, time consuming interview process: For me, they call only a few days after I join another project so I wont attend, when I apply they don’t call soon.
4. On job travel options:
1. In both, you have travel options in an year time frame, sometimes based on if you ask or not. Same with most other companies.
5. Help from Talent acquisition before interviews:
1. Thoughtworks: they intend good for you but understanding differs, so you might better if you on your own.
2. Amazon: If you carefully hear suggestions from talent acquisition guys, its only going to be better.

Both are not very similar, based on your needs one is clearly better than the other, both are good though.