from the grab-them-before-their-optimism-is-beaten-out dept.
Leaked emails show Amazon will only hire students and recent graduates:
Amazon is only hiring current students or newly graduated people for its entry level software developer positions.
According to an internal memo obtained by Insider, starting on January 25, 2023, Amazon limited new job openings for SDE-1s — the lowest software development engineering position — to what it calls "campus" hires, or students in Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD program alongside recent graduates. The memo said those in part-time or executive programs with years of work experience can apply too.
The change will mean that those that have been out of school for more than 12 months, or candidates for more senior SDE-2 positions who might be a better fit for an SDE-1 position would not be considered for the latter.
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.
The change is "global and Amazon-wide," the note said, indicating it's applied across the company. Amazon's S-team, a group of over two dozen most senior executives, and top HR leaders made the decision, and exceptions will be made only with a VP or higher approval, it added.
[...] Overhauling Amazon's engineering culture has been a priority for Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy. At an internal staff meeting in 2021, Jassy told employees that he was aware of developer complaints at the company and that the engineering culture needed to be "meaningfully better than what it is today," as Insider previously reported. It also created a new team called "Amazon Software Builder Experience" to address those concerns.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday February 08, @12:40AM (4 children)
I started my career in the 90's and it was already like that: most companies back then looked for cheap, inexperienced graduates they could easily convince to work overtime for free. 28 years later, whoever hires me has to pay me top dollar for my very specialized skills and for my experience, and I'm not doing a single extra hour without getting paid for it. As far as I can tell, my career is completely typical.
So what's new? It's been the same career path for everybody ever since programming stopped being something a select few convinced their bosses only they could do the job, and universities started churning out code monkeys by the hundreds of thousands.
Amazon is just doing more of the same: they hire some freshly graduated programmers, squeeze the life out of them for a few years, the programmers gain experience and learn to hate - and be wary of - employers that take advantage of them and move on to a better employer. Amazon gets some bad programming work on the cheap, the employers gain experience and a few line on their resumes. This is exactly how things should go.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 08, @02:54AM
>most companies back then looked for cheap, inexperienced graduates they could easily convince to work overtime for free.
>but the memo nor Amazon's spokesperson clarified why the company believes campus hires are better than experienced industry candidates for entry-level positions.
Shhh... don't put that in any "discoverable communications."
I worked in a town that paid $60K tops for software, usually closer to $30K (University town...) I came in with unique experience that a particular startup valued so they paid me $120K, then, being a startup, that one got relocated somewhere I didn't want to follow, but convinced another startup to take me at 120 - being a startup, the usual "Well, you delivered the software we asked for, now we don't need you (and can't afford you) anymore" happened, and I scrounged around and convinced one of the $45K fior software engineer shops to hire me - being a small town / tight community, we didn't even discuss salary, they knew what I was making before and decided to "try me" at near 3x their usual rate. I believe the talk behind my back was something to the effect of "best hiring decision I ever made."
Yeah, I started at $30K in the early 1990s. By the mid 2000s I really was worth 120, but that's not the "culture" at a lot of shops, and they really don't want employees who are that valuable - it would change the whole high turnover dynamic they've got going on which has made them reliable profits so far...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08, @08:06AM (1 child)
This may be the status quo, but that doesn't mean that's how the system should work. This is bordering on age discrimination, explicitly indicating that senior employees will not be considered. What you describe is exploitation, where people are treated poorly, then move on when they can. Those experiences as entry-level employees may well influence what these employees do when they get promoted into management, exploiting others when the opportunity presents itself. A toxic work environment is "exactly how things should go." I agree with you that it's typical, but that doesn't make it right.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Dr Spin on Wednesday February 08, @09:11AM
I started in the 1970's, about the same time my mother left the industry.
The computer industry does not like to employ older people: They might know what they are talking about, which is terrible news for MBAs.
This is why most software is bug-infested crap.
But "ship it anyway, its not like the customer expects it to work."
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Opportunist on Wednesday February 08, @09:16AM
As a pentester, I can only agree. This is exactly how it should be. Inexperienced people writing crappy code where I then get hired for a pentest and can easily spot the security flaws and won't have to dig deep to get a multi page report out of it, being able to goof off for a week of the two week pentest because you find a load of flaws with the usual tools and without even wasting a single moment of manual, grueling digging through their festering code pus.
It's just so win-win... well, except for Amazon, but who gives a shit about them?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 08, @12:00PM
For whatever it's worth, I was fairly recently hired into Amazon at an age where I'm starting to experience age discrimination by the companies looking for young hot-shot developers. And it's true they had zero interest in hiring me as an SDE-1: They instead hired me as an SDE-2 (paying significantly more than they would an SDE-1), and promotion to the next grade is a distinct possibility soon.
That's because the SDE-1 position is indeed intended for the developer who just got their degree and is just starting out in the industry. It's aiming to be one rung above intern - they want those who know their way around if-else, for, while, switch, etc, who have some decent knowledge of algorithms and design, but will make rookie mistakes and need to be fairly closely supervised and guided. I and other more senior people spend some time every week coaching our SDE-1s, often covering fairly basic things like important Unix commands and pipes as well as topics like code maintainability.
So yes, it's true that if you have a few years' experience, you probably won't be considered for an SDE-1 role. And yes, if you have some industry experience but it looks like you haven't learned anything at all from that experience, they're probably not going to be excited about hiring you, not because you're "non-traditional" but because they don't think you're good enough to be part of the company. And I could be wrong but I believe there are probably more SDE-2 positions than SDE-1s, or at least there are on the teams I've interacted with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Thursday February 09, @11:01PM