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Good stuff Agrikk, thanks!
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Jul 7, 2019 07:50
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I applied to a handful of AWS jobs and even had a friend put in a resume for me. Never heard back. That turned me off pretty hard, as I'm at the point in my career where I'm at least worth a conversation for something like a TAM role.
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Jul 7, 2019 07:53
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Agrikk posted:AWS compensation packages are based around a low base salary and a healthy stock issue that vests over four years. Does your cash income drop each year? I’m missing something here. 
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Jul 7, 2019 13:08
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Schadenboner posted:Does your cash income drop each year? I’m missing something here. In the first three years a new employee receives additional cash to compensate for the fact that their stocks have not vested yet. At year four all stock plans have vested and are rolling merrily along so there is no longer any need for additional cash supplementation. Obviously I wish I coulda had the cash AND the stock, but since AMZN has been soaring for the last five years I’m not really complaining. What I do think about is that AMZN is not valued in anything based on reality and buying this stock feels a bit like a Ponzi scheme and at some point someone is going to be left holding the bag when the bubble bursts.
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Jul 7, 2019 14:44
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Internet Explorer posted:I applied to a handful of AWS jobs and even had a friend put in a resume for me. Never heard back. That turned me off pretty hard, as I'm at the point in my career where I'm at least worth a conversation for something like a TAM role. That stinks and I’m sorry that happened to you. Based on my experience I always recommend that people who really want to work at AWS to apply for jobs over and over and over again. We won’t punish you for applying for the same job once a week forever... If you want to send me your resume we can start a convo about what you’d like to do at AWS and what would be a good fit.
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Jul 7, 2019 14:47
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Thanks for all the effort posts. It's something I am interested in, but curious just how technical it is. I've been working at a MSSP for a little over 4 years now, primarily working on firewalls, steadily promoted to more senior roles where I'm consulting on and implementing bigger deployments. I enjoy all the hands on work but wouldn't mind a change of pace as long as I can still keep my skills up and expanding. The recruiter's initial message made it sound like that's the case.
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Jul 7, 2019 14:57
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Agrikk posted:What I do think about is that AMZN is not valued in anything based on reality and buying this stock feels a bit like a Ponzi scheme and at some point someone is going to be left holding the bag when the bubble bursts. Is there a lot of koolaid chugging at Amazon or is this a common concern?
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Jul 7, 2019 14:59
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Agrikk posted:That stinks and I’m sorry that happened to you. Definitely appreciated, but I've found a place I'm happy at for now. When you say you apply for the same job over and over again, I'm not sure what that looks like in practice. At the Amazon jobs site, from what I could tell, something like a TAM role has one job posted and it remains open for quite some time. You can only apply to the job once, so unless you're withdrawing your application and then re-applying I'm not sure how you can keep applying to the same job? One of the other odd things was that my friend couldn't "recommend" me or "put my resume in" or whatever you want to call it if I had already applied to a job. I had to withdraw my resume so he could submit it. Seems odd. I'm sure a lot of that is just big company stuff. I'm not personally offended that I didn't get called in for an interview. Just bummed that I had time to go through the process and think I would have made a good TAM. Thanks for all the work you put into helping folks with AWS, Agrikk. It's cool of you.
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Jul 7, 2019 15:32
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CLAM DOWN posted:Is there a lot of koolaid chugging at Amazon or is this a common concern? Amazon culture is very strong and people believe in the mission and growth, so I don’t think my fear is very common. But I am a nervous investor so even though my stocks have gone from $150 to $1900 and I live well, I still feel like the sky can fall at any moment.
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Jul 7, 2019 15:49
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Yeah, some of what you’re talking about sounds really good, but the golden handcuffs thing puts me off. I like the idea of knowing I can walk away from a job to another if I want to, big commitments haven’t been working all that well for me the past year or so  OTOH, that is a lot of money compared to what I’m looking at right now. And working effectively less than 40 hours per week once you remove training on job-related personal development stuff is attractive. And since where I work uses AWS I could study it on my downtime. And as a divorced guy still in his 20s walking away from future stocks for a job that I like better wouldn’t be the worst thing. Does having TAM on your resume do as much for your job prospects outside of Amazon as I would expect? Does AWS have DBA positions as well? I’m just wondering on behalf of a coworker that wants out of his current job even worse than I do, he’s got a M.S. in database administration. Don’t know if he has DynamoDB, but he does have some other NoSQL stuff.
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Jul 7, 2019 16:23
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Amazon interviewing people for a specific team kind of bums me out. I interviewed for a position in intelligent cloud control recently, but the hiring manager was really unpleasant, so I wasted two days flying six hours to seattle and interviewing for 7 hours. This is something that I feel like Facebook does super well: at least for my role, you'd go to boot camp for six weeks, and during that time you're able to try out different teams. At the end of boot camp you choose to join a team that has available headcount after you've already met them and worked with them. Unfortunately they didn't want to hire me because I bombed the networking interview, but I still liked their process the best of the FAANG companies.
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Jul 7, 2019 16:29
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The NYT article on Amazon corporate work life and some 2nd/3rd hand reports I heard from friends had scared me off from Amazon but Agrikk makes it sound not terrible. It didn't help that the AWS recruiter that a friend pointed at me a few years ago sounded like he had full-on drank the kool-aid.
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Jul 7, 2019 16:43
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Comradephate posted:Amazon interviewing people for a specific team kind of bums me out. I misrepresented the hiring process a little bit. When you get invited to an interview loop it is for a specific role, yes. But during the loop there is definitely movement into different roles depending on the feedback from the interviewers. When I originally got invited to interview it was as a cloud support engineer. My first phone interview was for a senior CSE. My second phone interview was for a TAM. My on-site loop ended up being for a senior TAM. I kept talking about me and they kept changing the role and my attitude was, “I wanna work here. Put me wherever you think I’d be the best fit.” And they did. It was pretty funny: as I was interviewing people kept asking me “do you know what the role does?” And I kept responding “I don’t know what the role is even called anymore.”
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Jul 7, 2019 16:59
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Yeah, some of what you’re talking about sounds really good, but the golden handcuffs thing puts me off. I like the idea of knowing I can walk away from a job to another if I want to, big commitments haven’t been working all that well for me the past year or so Eh, you get used to the pay structure. Because the stick is doing well. I’ve read analysts hot takes that put AMZN north of $5000 in 2-3 years so I’m good with getting stock for my work. Ask me again if/when the price drops... And having AWS on my resume? I get legit interview requests from primaries every day via LinkedIn and I have the phone numbers of folks at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, F5, etc. who have been calling me once a quarter for the last three years asking if I’m ready to make a move. If I get bored I could have a new role within AWS tomorrow and a job with another firm by Friday. And yes, AWS has shitloads of positions of all stripes. DBA, networking, data science, development- AWS is a talent farm more than anything else. It recruits and retains all kinds of talent.
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Jul 7, 2019 17:08
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fordan posted:The NYT article on Amazon corporate work life and some 2nd/3rd hand reports I heard from friends had scared me off from Amazon but Agrikk makes it sound not terrible. It didn't help that the AWS recruiter that a friend pointed at me a few years ago sounded like he had full-on drank the kool-aid. I’ll be honest: like I said before Amazon will suck you dry and people let it. The closer you are to Jeff Bezos, the worse your work/life balance is and the more valid those articles are. But since AWS is the hugely profitable red-headed stepchild of the Amazon world we get pretty much left alone. And I know no one who has ever cried at their desk.
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Jul 7, 2019 17:16
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Thanks for all the informative posts about AWS, Agrikk! Great timing since I have this 3 day premium support event done by AWS engineers/tam's coming up. I had no clue what this entailed and was pleasantly surprised upon seeing the details: quote:What to expect:
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Jul 7, 2019 17:40
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Sounds interesting/up my alley (as the kids say these days). I put in for an Associate Technical Account Manager thing based on these posts. I eagerly await the deafening silence!
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Jul 7, 2019 18:31
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Agrikk posted:I’ll be honest: like I said before Amazon will suck you dry and people let it. How serious are they about the 6 years technical experience + an additional 8 if you don't have a BS? If I have an AWS cert does that become less important? I've only been working in IT for 5 years and only have an AS and that's not likely to change until I'm already making a lot more money. I'll look for stuff that's not TAM too I guess, although the TAM sounds like a really interesting position. Most of my experience outside of standard helldesk is ERP support and SQL, no cloud work aside from supporting client installations on Windows VMs. I've done a tiny bit of Docker training but my Linux command line is weak enough that I feel like I need to get a bit better at that before I can really get deep into Docker. Since even though Docker can run on Windows, it uses Bash.
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Jul 7, 2019 20:12
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22 Eargesplitten posted:How serious are they about the 6 years technical experience + an additional 8 if you don't have a BS? If I have an AWS cert does that become less important? I've only been working in IT for 5 years and only have an AS and that's not likely to change until I'm already making a lot more money. I'll look for stuff that's not TAM too I guess, although the TAM sounds like a really interesting position. Most of my experience outside of standard helldesk is ERP support and SQL, no cloud work aside from supporting client installations on Windows VMs. I've done a tiny bit of Docker training but my Linux command line is weak enough that I feel like I need to get a bit better at that before I can really get deep into Docker. Since even though Docker can run on Windows, it uses Bash. The point of the experience requirement is to ensure a baseline of technical knowledge and critical thinking ability, the ability to exercise good judgement, the presence of good IT instincts, and a proven track record of being able to learn independently and on the fly. If your resume shows this and your interviews verify this, then you can be a four year old who has never touched a computer for all we care. You’d be surprised how many “IT professionals” can’t meet thus seemingly rudimentary bar.
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Jul 7, 2019 23:39
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Good judgement comes from experience... Experience? Well, that comes from bad judgement
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Jul 7, 2019 23:43
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Agrikk posted:The point of the experience requirement is to ensure a baseline of technical knowledge and critical thinking ability, the ability to exercise good judgement, the presence of good IT instincts, and a proven track record of being able to learn independently and on the fly. Okay, I wasn’t sure if this was one of those situations where HR will trash your application if you don’t meet those requirements.
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Jul 8, 2019 00:00
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This whole thread is going to be all AWS employees by the end of the month
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Jul 8, 2019 11:03
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Sepist posted:This whole thread is going to be all AWS employees by the end of the month I was thinking the exact same thing. Agrikk spreading the kool aid (not really, you’re explaining the up and downsides perfectly). Working in IT 3.1: Awful Web Services
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Jul 8, 2019 11:08
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Sepist posted:This whole thread is going to be all AWS employees by the end of the month Lol definitely not. I couldn't stand working for a horrific company like Amazon from an ethical and moral standpoint. That said, it's nice to see someone like Agrikk so open and honest about both the positives and negatives to such a hyped job.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:14
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Sepist posted:This whole thread is going to be all AWS employees by the end of the month The ones in the US will anyway  Do they offer any remote jobs? I'm a US citizen living in Ontario.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:40
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Agrikk is doing an amazing job of selling it, but I can't get past that NYT article. My life is just not going to be defined by my job. You give me the rest of my lifetime's salary right now and you'll never see me in this thread again. I don't need this crap. Amazon seems to want people who live and die by their job. I work just enough to have money to do things, nothing more.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:41
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Agrikk is doing an amazing job of selling it, but I can't get past that NYT article. My life is just not going to be defined by my job. You give me the rest of my lifetime's salary right now and you'll never see me in this thread again. I don't need this crap. Amazon seems to want people who live and die by their job. I work just enough to have money to do things, nothing more. Same. Wasn't always this way for me, but as I get older, yup.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:56
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I have a feeling agrikk is very good at his job and is a high performer. I don’t think a middle of the road employee would get 3 weeks off straight or only be putting in 35-40 hours a week. After 5 years of working there and getting a few solid accounts it can probably get that easy, I expect there’s a lot of dues to pay to get there though.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:01
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AWS TAM sounds like a neat job, but I have no interest in relocating on the vague "no official policy" promise of being able to work remotely after "prooving myself"
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Jul 8, 2019 17:11
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One thing I'm wondering (and maybe Agrikk can answer), when you have your income split like that: 60% salary, 40% vested stock, does that affect taxation? That is, one income is taxed at a certain rate (maybe lower since is not that much) and the stock you sold is taxed at a completely different rate?
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Jul 8, 2019 17:11
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RSUs: https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/investments-and-taxes/how-to-report-rsus-or-stock-grants-on-your-tax-return/L55yZieu0 Edit: In short, no the RSUs are taxed as regular income upon vest. Then there is a capital gains aspect depending on stock performance and length of holding.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:17
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You should basically regard stock-heavy compensation as a negative, not part of your compensation. You can always end up on the hook for a decent chunk of taxes, but have no guarantee that you can ever sell it at a price suitable to cover that. Even when it's one of the hugest companies in the world and isn't likely to drop to 0 or anything, it's still extra risk compared to small grants and larger regular pay. (of course when you're on the "we're going to grant you millions of dollars worth per year, every year" level this changes, but I doubt most anyone here is getting that level of compensation)
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Jul 8, 2019 17:25
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fishmech posted:You can always end up on the hook for a decent chunk of taxes, but have no guarantee that you can ever sell it at a price suitable to cover that. I agree that this is technically true, but in practice this is why the sell to cover mechanism exists at vest.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:52
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fishmech posted:You should basically regard stock-heavy compensation as a negative, not part of your compensation. You can always end up on the hook for a decent chunk of taxes, but have no guarantee that you can ever sell it at a price suitable to cover that. This is extremely true for stock options, but I don't think it really applies to RSU's. For tax purposes, if you vest $50k worth of stock, it's basically the same as if they gave you $50k in cash on your vesting date. I guess there's an edge case where the stock value totally tanks to being worthless between vesting date and when you're allowed to sell the shares (companies can have blackout dates where you can't sell due to insider trading laws, around quarterly earnings announcements etc). But if that happens you have other problems because you're about to lose your job anyway. It's stock options where you can end up getting utterly destroyed by taxes if the stars align. Depending on your personal desires and risk tolerance, all-cash isn't strictly better than cash + stock or vice versa. Telling most employers you demand 100% cash comp is not going to work out for you past a certain point. If you want to insist on the stability of being paid strictly in cash that's your prerogative, but it's going to severely cap out how much you can earn. The engineers you hear about making $300k+ aren't getting all or even most of that in base salary (I'm sure some are, but it's not the norm). You do have to consider it case by case. I don't think any FAANG employee who has only ever known insane stock appreciation is mad about being compensated that way. For others it's not as easy of a call. But again if you wish to be paid more than a certain amount, you may not have much choice.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:58
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Happy Monday! In celebration of the long weekend the 2inch water line that runs over one of our server rooms decided to start leaking sometime over the weekend.
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Jul 8, 2019 18:49
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I'm watching a course from Pluralsite and the instructor keeps saying "COWn-sol" instead of Console.
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Jul 8, 2019 19:11
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Defenestrategy posted:Happy Monday! In celebration of the long weekend the 2inch water line that runs over one of our server rooms decided to start leaking sometime over the weekend. Going to bet right now that it will get patched up rather than relocated
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Jul 8, 2019 20:12
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We switched our monitoring from cool and good LogicMonitor to what appears to be a very unintuitive PRTG and I hate it.
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Jul 8, 2019 21:49
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 telling my boss at Morgan Stanley that I was leaving, it looked like I kicked his dog. At least I'm giving them 3 weeks as I have a lot of projects i need to unload properly. A few hours before this he was telling me he didnt think I had enough going on and wanted to put more work on my plate (I'm plenty busy we're just under-staffed) so this is great timing for me. Now I have to learn kubernetes and re-learn python to jump into the wonderful world of DevOps
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Jul 8, 2019 21:53
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What is a good book for learning "k8s"?
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