[HN Gopher] Reduced-Hours Software Development Engineer Position...
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Reduced-Hours Software Development Engineer Position at Amazon
Author : mooreds
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-02-02 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.amazon.jobs)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.amazon.jobs)
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| So I guess "reduced hours" at Amazon means 40 hours/week?
| m00x wrote:
| Probably just reduced pay with the same expectations.
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah my first thought was wondering what happens when "reduced
| hours" comes up against deadlines, stack-ranking (or similar),
| and game theory.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| The same thing that happens when normal hours come up against
| a deadline. If most weeks are 32 and then occasionally they
| are 40 that is still reduced hours compared to most at 40 and
| an occasional 48.
| addaon wrote:
| I'd be extremely interested in other companies offering similar
| positions.
| mooreds wrote:
| This came up last time reduced hour workweeks were discussed:
| https://4dayweek.io/ (never used them, have no idea how
| effective it is).
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I believe Google offers 80% time (4 day work weeks), but I'm
| not sure if they post positions like that, or if you need to be
| hired full time and then transition to 80% time.
| lrem wrote:
| Everyone I know in Google on 80% (which is surprisingly many
| people) has started full time. I imagine some full week
| trainings you might want to start with would be quite awkward
| if part of participants would be skipping a random day of the
| week. Or, awkward if you've been promised you can keep
| spending your Wednesdays with your kids, but then suddenly
| need to stay in the office.
| dejv wrote:
| Maybe thats European thing, but this is quite common offer for
| developers. I guess companies do not advertise this option, but
| more often than not they will accept it. When thinking about my
| team (8 developers) I think there are maybe two people with 9
| to 5 x 5 days a week arrangememt.
| flatiron wrote:
| My guess is it's easier in Europe. My guess is if you only
| work 29 hours you won't get health insurance where in Europe
| you still would qualify. Many people (myself included) are
| the "health insurance breadwinner" with a wife and kids that
| has no option other than a 40+ hour gig.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Are you in Netherlands or something like that? Here in Poland
| I only know junior developers that are doing 1/2 or 3/5 time
| and finishing bachelors or doing masters simultaneously.
| rektide wrote:
| It's happening. Imo this is the best, easiest way to keep
| employees happy & engaged. This should be just a huge huge win.
| jb1991 wrote:
| There's either a dark pattern or a crazy bug on the cookie popup
| -- to turn _off_ analytics cookies, you actually have to press
| the _on_ part of the switch to toggle it off. Totally backwards
| and misleading. If you press Off, it stays On.
| m463 wrote:
| don't not turn off analytics for more privacy.
| tornato7 wrote:
| I have seen this a few times before. One-click to enable
| cookies, multiple clicks where you have to understand the
| double-negatives to disable. Definitely a dark pattern.
|
| "Disabling cookies is not recommended for the best experience.
| Don't disable do not track?" CANCEL/CONTINUE
| comprev wrote:
| It's amazon - so expect it to behave like that by design.
| jedberg wrote:
| In their defense, this is the kind of thing Amazon
| outsources, so they probably didn't build this.
|
| Same with the re:invent portal --- it's outsourced and
| terrible.
| 0x002A wrote:
| The question is how will you be oncall. "Oh you are working less
| days but you will be oncall on those days"
| darzu wrote:
| > Our team is a Seattle-based reduced-hours team. We don't work
| Fridays!
|
| FYI, in case anyone else has a hard time finding what exactly the
| hours reduction is.
| dheera wrote:
| Is the salary also reduced or only the hours? Too bad they
| don't give a probability distribution of salaries for the
| position ...
| softwarebeware wrote:
| We know that Amazon has a max salary of $160,000 or some such
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Technically true, in Seattle, but a large portion of comp
| comes in RSUs above that mark. You can see on levels.fyi
| that new hires in the 5-10 YOE range are getting total
| comps in the 3 or 400s pretty consistently.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Yes, which is a problem. Amazon employees have been
| watching themselves get steady, significant raises via
| stock vesting for years, but AMZN flattened out in
| mid-2020 and the company's done very little to account
| for that, so everybody's raises have started to dry up.
| petilon wrote:
| Amazon employees get RSUs. The difference between stock
| options and RSUs is that options are worthless if the
| stock price doesn't go up, but RSUs are worth the stock
| price, so it doesn't have to go up, it just needs to not
| drop.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| I'm definitely aware of that. Amazon's comp was never
| competitive, and stagnant (or even declining) stock over
| a multi-year period exacerbates the issue for sure. I say
| this as someone who recently left AWS, in large part for
| comp related issues (actually kinda loved the job I
| eventually fell into, alas).
| civilized wrote:
| The salary is reduced but the actual hours you put in stay
| the same.
| [deleted]
| smashem wrote:
| 4 weeks of primary on-call.
| hwers wrote:
| Hey that's not too bad really. Less than a 4 day work week and
| things might get boring.
| synergy20 wrote:
| nay Amazon SW is very demanding as far as I can tell(many
| friends work there), yes it has higher pay but if you divide it
| by hours, it's not standing out above other companies at all.
| have a life.
| ar_lan wrote:
| From what I've heard of working at Amazon, this sounds like
| most likely you are expected to still put in the standard
| 80hrs/week, just cram it into Mo-Thurs (or maybe Sat-Thurs).
|
| I find it _reallllly_ hard to trust Amazon when it comes to
| working _less_. This really just sounds like a way to get
| someone to work the same amount for less pay (I assume the
| position has a paycut).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Sounds like a trap to me - in theory, most programming jobs
| "don't" work Saturdays or Sundays or after 6 PM either. On
| paper, anyway.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Rather cynical. You're basically just assuming everything
| they say about the job must be a lie.
| chana_masala wrote:
| I'd say it's evidence based skepticism
| femto113 wrote:
| I'm guessing you haven't worked for Amazon.
| drunkpotato wrote:
| Sounds more like experienced than cynical to me. In my
| experience, job descriptions and even the answers you get
| during interviews are not so much outright lies, as
| aspirational fabrications you have to take with a grain of
| salt.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Having worked for Amazon before I'd say that's a fairly
| safe assumption.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I know that's the popular cynical view, but I'd think with
| such a position (especially given that it was advertised as
| reduced hours), there would be 20% lower expectations as to
| what you'll accomplish. In other words, they'd expect it
| would take five weeks for you to do what someone else can do
| in four.
|
| I mean, that's all they have to determine/enforce how much
| you time you put in currently... general expectations.
|
| Some people say you work the hours needed to get the job
| done, but that doesn't really make sense. Somehow the work
| the company needs to get accomplished gets divided up and
| distributed to employees. And ultimately you've got to think
| of how much is reasonable to accomplish. Here, that
| expectation of reasonableness is going to get reduced by
| about 20% if they are hired to work that many less hours.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Who works on Fridays anyway?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Very common in Oil & Gas companies to offer 9/80 schedule where
| you work 9 hrs Monday - Thursday, 8 hrs Friday and this way every
| other friday can be off. There was another co offering 4/10 where
| every friday is off
| deadbunny wrote:
| There are multiple studies that claim working longer doesn't
| increase productivity so why would 9/40 or 4 _10 make any sense
| over 4_ 8?
| strken wrote:
| Without seeing those studies and knowing how they define
| "longer" it's hard to say.
| gundmc wrote:
| I think this has become less prevalent in Oil and Gas - it's my
| understanding that both BP and Chevron have gotten rid of this
| relatively recently.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| I dont know about BP, but I was with Chevron till last month.
| Its definitely around and no plans to drop
| chasd00 wrote:
| i like my company where you work 5 10hr days then two days off
| then another 5 10hr days and two days off and so on. ;)
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| LMAO
|
| I had a different reply lined up, then I read the comment
| again and did a doubletake
| sokoloff wrote:
| Do you have the option to work 4 or 5 hours on the 2 days
| part of the schedule as well?
| chasd00 wrote:
| oh yes! that idea was so great they made it mandatory.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Unless they correct the wording of their comment, the 2
| days part of the schedule is Saturday and Sunday, and this
| result in a 0 days off schedule.
| flatiron wrote:
| Their comment was that they also got to work weekends.
| franczesko wrote:
| Reduced hours at the #1 sweat shop. That's a good one to start
| February.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I checked of it was April. What is time these days?
| [deleted]
| vr46 wrote:
| Precisely where is the reduction? This just looks like flexible
| working.
| ceras wrote:
| The team doesn't work Fridays.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| "Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will
| consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and
| conviction records"
|
| Can't resist puns related to marketing "reduced hours" even for
| those who've done serious time. /s
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| there must be some trap, if it's amazon. I think that the trap
| requirement must be somewhere as part of the 'leadership
| principles'... https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-
| principles
| Mandatum wrote:
| Salesforce globally does 1 Friday off a month (adopted during
| Slack acquisition). However it's not enforced and the expectation
| is if you're meeting with someone external (eg customers) you
| move that date.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I work for a super awesome fully remote startup that does this.
| First Friday of every month.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Doesn't really seem meaningful when you can get a remote position
| at pretty much any company right now. As long as you're high
| performing you can work well below 40 hours, work pretty much
| whatever schedule you want, and everyone's happy.
| ceras wrote:
| The team doesn't work Fridays. Even if in other roles you can
| get by with < 40 hours, you'll be hard pressed to fully
| disconnect from work on Fridays. Having clear 3-days weekends
| every week is much nicer than just trying to take it easy but
| being available all 5 days, IMO.
|
| That said, in the nominally-40hr roles you won't get paid less,
| so YMMV on what's better
| rxhernandez wrote:
| It's incredibly rare for someone to bug me on a Friday in my
| 5+ years of remote work across 3 companies (medical devices,
| scientific devices, and blockchain) in 3 completely separate
| stages of their life (early startup, mature startup, and 60+
| year old established company).
| ui4jd73bdj wrote:
| Definitely an easier to apologize than to ask for permission
| kind of thing.
| trhway wrote:
| nice way for the companies to hit back at the compensation
| growth. I knew they would find a way :) . Reduced hours ->
| reduced pay. While pushing the required
| responsibilities/deliveries up, not initially of course, yet
| slowly after the "honeymoon" back to the pre-reduced level and
| may be further up as the reduced hours at various places were
| anecdotally associated with higher performance.
|
| >As an Engineer on the Developer Platform team, you will be
| contributing to the design and development of the end-to-end
| developer experience across all 50+ teams and be the key
| technical advocate with partner teams. You will work with senior
| leaders across Amazon, finding solutions to multi-dimensional
| problems and driving a consistent tooling experience across the
| different parts of the Amazon.com product portfolio.
|
| and the requirement is just 2 years of experience! May be it is
| just a team which can get away with anything - like either a pet
| project of a high VP or/and just a project pretty irrelevant to
| anything serious, ie. it doesn't look to me like a typical AMZN
| dev sweatshop.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no, you misunderstand. You must have only two years experience
| prirun wrote:
| "The mission of the Amazon Developer Platform team is to
| accelerate Amazon.com shopping experience development via
| empowering and delighting developers."
|
| Ugh. I hate that everything has to be delightful now.
| clem wrote:
| "How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure."
|
| - Charles Crumb
| [deleted]
| mason55 wrote:
| As a... developer
|
| I want... the development experience to be delightful
|
| So I can... be delighted
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| how do your jobs delight you? My experience - back from when
| jobs only wanted you to have fun but it seems to be the same
| thing - is they give you foosball and ping pong and maybe a
| gym membership - ok also some times free soft drinks and good
| cafeterias?
|
| So I guess I like some of that stuff now that I've listed it
| all but I was never really delighted, maybe just happy I
| could get a coke with my burger.
|
| I guess to delight me I need magic doorways and 1920s era
| Santa Claus (none of this post modern stuff where Santa is a
| trained killer who enslaves elves or stuff, I don't like it)
| chihuahua wrote:
| If they aim for "delightful", but achieve "pretty good",
| that's still a success and worth the effort.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Agreed it completely dreadful. (No sarcasm intended)
| hyperdunc wrote:
| This kind of hyberbolic language is everywhere now. 30 years
| ago this phrase might have captured attention in a non-cynical
| way.
|
| There's too much content now, and it's a race to the bottom as
| every piece tries to gain attention.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| "Product Spec: Surprise and delight users by displaying their
| birthday on the settings page"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ&t=95s
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Yep. Everything is delightful but nothing works.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I'm delighted to have an excuse not to work!
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(page generated 2022-02-02 23:00 UTC)