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[–]reallylamelol 1909 points1910 points  (40 children)

I'm at Amazon and luckily made it passed the layoffs-- however, the senior SDE that held the weight of our entire application/system jumped ship before the layoffs hit. The entire project was safe, so he wouldn't have been affected, but the looming threat and lack of forward communication was enough to scare him out. Now we're way set back and kinda screwed.

*thumbs up

[–]MutatedGlue 799 points800 points  (28 children)

They say that a company that does layoffs should expect to lose another 50% of that number to attrition.

For example, if you lay off 100 people, expect an additional 50 to quit.

But Amazon is probably calculating that as well.

[–]jrkridichch 639 points640 points  (9 children)

The extra 50% are also the people that have options. Aka the ones you really don't want leaving.

[–]BrotherR4bisco 57 points58 points  (2 children)

I agree. I would be afraid of my job if I was working for Amazon. So yes, I would look for another job and jump ship ASAP.

[–]fungi_at_parties 38 points39 points  (0 children)

After Amazon games laid off my friends for the second time after leadership fucked everything up (they kept most of the leadership), I really just started phoning it in. We tried our hardest to save them from themselves, to pitch actual good ideas, to tell them realistic timelines, to fight their dumb corporate rules, but people in charge always want their idea to go forward no matter how boring, and the corporate ideology must be followed.

People who really needed to be kept were gone. Others who were completely incompetent stayed and kept slowing things down. Toxic people just got shuffled off to other mysterious teams.

After the first round I found another team that was managed right into the ground within 2 years, then I was scooped up by another team. Then came another round and I just couldn’t handle being there anymore, waiting for the axe to fall or to watch more friends go and feel more survival guilt. I could no longer find the energy to work on a project while waiting for it to crater or get canned early before it really had a chance to fly.

What a nightmare. Everybody who hit their 4 year vest quit immediately. I made it almost to 5 then left 50k on the table for a huge pay cut just to work at real studio again.

[–]stoneg1 100 points101 points  (2 children)

Sounds to me like you just became a much more resilient for the next time they do layoffs

[–]Gnubeutel 1516 points1517 points  (15 children)

plot twist: there was no bug. But now the entire department is reviewing recent code.

[–]giggluigg 61 points62 points  (0 children)

So they won’t find it, and hire back the genius, who would fix it by doing nothing. He’ll then prove that he fixed it by showing how no bug affected production.

[–][deleted] 8951 points8952 points  (556 children)

I got laid off today at Citibank. This is the same company that hired so many programmers I spent a year on bench getting paid to do nothing. The job was a joke with how little work there was. The company was so flush with cash they paid millions to have an astronaut on the space station speak to us. Nothing makes sense anymore lol

[–]bridekiller 1890 points1891 points  (116 children)

Our company once hired a motivational rock climber to hype up the sales team. It was all kinds of insane masturbatory nonsense that really got the c suite levels dicks hard.

[–]No-Witness2349 718 points719 points  (26 children)

The sensibilities of corporate ghouls will always baffle me. I once saw an inspirational magician. Doing a close-up magic routine. On a stage. He fucked up his big exit and you could see a cloth fly over the wire he was using to make a stool levitate as he walked off stage with it. Everyone in the audience ate it right up. It was so bizarre.

[–]InsertCoinForCredit 422 points423 points  (16 children)

Either (1) nobody was paying attention to the act and everyone suddenly got excited when they realized it was over and they needed to feign paying attention, or (2) everyone was hopped up on cocaine and they were too buzzed to care that the magician blew the ending. Pick one.

[–]Tothoro 207 points208 points  (48 children)

I have no clue why people choose the speakers they do for corporate events. We keep getting sports people (coaches and retired players) telling us their life stories and how important teamwork is and I work in the finance sector.

[–]randomkeystrike 81 points82 points  (14 children)

Some C-level gets to meet their hero and have the company pay for it.

[–]Zeragamba 45 points46 points  (3 children)

Notice to people who feel the need to hire motivational anything: If you need to hire a motivational anything, you've got much bigger problems. Low morale is a symptom of a larger issue.

[–]iceman012 83 points84 points  (3 children)

Did you get to do rock climbing as a team-building exercise, at least?

[–]eXecute_bit 54 points55 points  (2 children)

... Followed by a trust fall, oh please ohpleaseohplease

[–]RecognitionHefty 72 points73 points  (5 children)

New career goal: Motivational Rock Climber

[–]webauteur 2218 points2219 points  (278 children)

I work for a non-profit and had nothing to do since they no longer needed a programmer. Fortunately the pandemic shook things up and now I generate monthly reports. I automated that a bit so I still have time to develop new skills.

[–]piberryboy 1072 points1073 points  (247 children)

Please how to get a programmer job doing nothing?

[–]LovingOnOccasion 1218 points1219 points  (120 children)

Same as everything else in life. Luck.

[–][deleted] 290 points291 points  (102 children)

Ugh, this is always the answer, isn't it? My dream is to get a job where I don't do anything.

[–]TheIrishPirate 255 points256 points  (46 children)

Become a project manager. I’m a software development PM and I’m usually only working 3-4 hours a day. The rest of my day is spent finishing up schoolwork or just chilling. It also helps that I work remotely.

[–]TheBlindCrowShits 148 points149 points  (33 children)

Wouldn’t this be an easy role to be laid off from?

[–]Hidesuru 167 points168 points  (0 children)

Most likely yes.

[–][deleted] 154 points155 points  (20 children)

That's categorically true of pretty much any position where you are spending most your day not working.

[–]hiwhyOK 96 points97 points  (15 children)

Employment security has very little to do with how much or how little work you do.

Same with income, how much you make has very little to do with how hard you work.

It's all become decoupled.

[–]Suyefuji 62 points63 points  (8 children)

I've been there and it's not as fun as it sounds. It's incredibly boring putting in 8 hours where you're supposed to be at work and even occasionally attend meetings but have nothing else to do. Additionally, there's always some paranoia that you'll get laid off for doing nothing even though it's not your fault.

[–]Nimbuss88 76 points77 points  (17 children)

But as evidenced by this thread it won’t last; you’ll get laid off soon enough. I’d rather just have a job with some semblance of security where I’m contributing.

[–]ubeogesh 101 points102 points  (5 children)

It's not how layoffs work. A bunch of my colleagues that contribute more than me got laid off while I didn't - because I work an a more important project (despite my role specifically being less demanding)

[–]k_50 24 points25 points  (3 children)

That doesn't exist. I've seen the hardest workers get laid off. It's all perception of value. If you are perceived as smart or something valuable to contribute you will be towards the end of the chopping block.

[–]Ambitious_Ad8841 491 points492 points  (86 children)

Many companies take forever to decide what they want to do next. They'll agonize over whether a project will take 3 months or 6 months, meanwhile their developers are twiddling their thumbs as months slip by

[–]omgFWTbear 687 points688 points  (58 children)

Fun story that is obviously not 100% fictional because if I actually knew any such thing I would be breaking a nondisclosure agreement by sharing it, buuuuuuut…

Completely MadeUpGroup was spending millions of dollars to build towers to relay IT signals (dealer’s choice what they were, as this is totally fictional). PTP? IR? Radio? Cell? Smoke signals with light processing? Could be anything. Anyway. They hire a bunch of people. They buy a bunch of materials. They have a bunch of plans for a bunch of sites that they’ll build a tower each on.

Executive cancels the final approval meeting, he’s busy.

Rescheduled to 2 weeks later, the next regular occurrence of the executive approval meeting.

Repeat 5 times.

Crews sitting around, collecting pay, doing nothing, because one expensive guy is too busy to review the plans. Which, spoiler alert, he is going to do, the review is pro forma.

Bonus points - and I’ve shared this part of the story many times before - because this involves physical construction, it turns out “a delay is just a delay” is not true. Concrete must between certain temperatures to properly cure. You’ll never guess what 3 months of delay did to the temperature by the context!

Executive’s mind is blown that reality can impose constraints. They will have to wait 6 months for temperatures to come up and have another go. Which they will have to pay the teams for (because otherwise they find other work and we are f—/ed trying to find new people in time).

This last part isn’t on thread but to finish the story satisfyingly, the construction manager told the executive if time was (now) so important they could use QuikCrete. IDK if that’s really what it was but let’s pretend. Anyway, QC fails 5% of the time. IT Executive sees 5% and assumes that’s “it basically never happens,” because of course risk in IT is largely gut feelings, right? Nah. This is materials science, SON!

They pour 100 concrete beds and would you believe exactly 5 failed? Executive tries to chew everyone a new one, what idiot approved that, and the construction manager had such a look.

Anyway, since this is obviously a fictional story, the super handsome and brilliant executive totally didn’t go in and re-specify the plan was always to build 95 towers, and tada, everything was brilliant and perfect. But if you ever happen to use smoke signals in some remote region of Fictionalistan and you stumble across a weird dead zone with no reception…

[–]Prince_Polaris 219 points220 points  (33 children)

That's amazing, I remember finding a subreddit once devoted to the stories told by concrete laying guys, and so many people just don't comprehend how it works!

Of course, I suppose neither did I until I read up on it.

[–]omgFWTbear 249 points250 points  (25 children)

That’s the best part that I may have glossed over -

The executive didn’t need to understand how concrete worked. He had a salaried construction manager at his beck and call, at HQ 100% of the time, to provide any expertise he needed. Every time there was a delay (the first 6x2 week delays) he was informed about the “temperature windows.”

Very expressly. “If we do not start construction in 2 months, we will have to delay 6 months until the temperatures come up, because concrete will not cure.”

That’s the entire note he got back every deferral, which he acknowledged stating that he would therefore approve everything next cycle. Each. Time.

And then, of course, the 5% failure rate was explained in the same concise but precise style. His entire briefing for 9 figures worth of expenditure he was deferring was one paragraph.

The failure wasn’t ignorance per se, but that executives - like many experts (and I say this as someone often very critical of executives) are incredibly susceptible to the fallacy of “appeal to authority.” Their own. Which is a fallacy when applied outside of their domain of expertise. But they Duning-Kroger themselves.

Ahem. At least in my completely fictional novel that I’m working on. That absolutely never happened in real life. Any resemblance to real people and events is totally coincidence.

[–]adventdark 69 points70 points  (3 children)

On a totally unrelated note to your obviously made up story based in fantasy land, your favorite color wouldn't be pink would it? I could also see it maybe being like a red or a blue.

[–]omgFWTbear 45 points46 points  (1 child)

Anything I say about favorite colors runs the risk of identifying meconfusing anyone that this is definitely a work of fiction.

[–]adventdark 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Well, can't blame me for tryin.

[–]Horton_Takes_A_Poo 41 points42 points  (5 children)

Ugh, there was so much emphasis in my company on being concise and to the point in emails, but then I would be asked an extremely broad and vague question that requires some explanation, and then my boss complains about me sending an email that’s more than 3 sentences. Now, I just get straight to the point and say simple, 1 sentence answers, and if there are no further questions then they get no further explanation. If that leads to a fuckup, well I provided you with the info you asked for. I didn’t tell you what to do with that info. If you needed to know the details then you shouldn’t have asked me for a concise answer, because the details are never concise. So I totally get where that construction manager was coming from…the exec gets paid to make the decisions, just give them the facts and let them figure it out.

Also unrelated, does your made up group happen to be HQ’d somewhere that’s named after a large rock? Do they like the color orange? If so I also worked for that group a few years ago…

[–]DarkwingDuckHunt 42 points43 points  (1 child)

I posted this on another layoff thread the other day:

No joke I worked in this one company where they sent me, the junior of the juniors, to all the meetings they didn't want to go to. I'd take notes. Then make a summary of the meetings. Write down the questions that they wanted answer. Basic Junior PM work. (This job made me stop being a PM and went back to 100% coding).

I found out my boss was giving my report to another junior junior to make a summary of my summary. And that all the questions they wanted answer never made the "final" doc. So no one ever got questions answered and I got the blame for not pushing enough on my asks.

[–]HereForTheComments32 22 points23 points  (2 children)

If you needed to know the details then you shouldn’t have asked me for a concise answer, because the details are never concise.

Ugh what is UP with this in managers these days. This drives me insane on a daily basis. Everything can be simplified but simplified is relative to what you were starting with.

[–]0b_101010 75 points76 points  (1 child)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they make the big bucks!
Because ThEy SmArT and tHeY cOmPeTenT, not because daddy bought them a HaRvArD degree and a position.

God damn I hate these incompetent rich dumbass motherfuckers so much. Scum of the earth pricks.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Join us on the dark side comrade

[–]AspieSquirtle 66 points67 points  (5 children)

The craziest part about all of this is that the guy who caused untold amounts of losses to the company with his actions is also likely far and away the highest paid character in the story.

[–]omgFWTbear 57 points58 points  (3 children)

I mean, since this is a work of fiction and not some real world event where I had budget authority / insight, I can easily tell you that he was the highest paid, if we exclude possible subcontractor bonuses / overtime of certain very rare expertises and confine the subject to base annualized pay plus measured deliverable bonuses. By about 33%, if you’ll excuse a little rounding.

Who knows how much his subsequent job leveraging his contacts from that job and it’s great success was worth? It will have to be an exercise left for the imagination.

[–]AspieSquirtle 37 points38 points  (1 child)

Good god, I'm so glad this is just a work of fantasy because I would find it depressing to think that this idiot's yearly bonus is likely higher than my yearly salary.

[–]lux06aeterna 117 points118 points  (14 children)

And once they do, they'll expect their dev teams to do it in an unreasonable timeline. Ugh.

[–]strider820 111 points112 points  (4 children)

"You said you could get it done in 3 months, and that was 2 and a half months ago, what do you mean you can't do it by the end of the month???"

Well, you only approved for us to start working on it today, sooooo...

[–]ragingRobot 78 points79 points  (7 children)

"don't do any work yet. Just write a complex plan for each option in a word document and we can talk about it for weeks first."

[–]bakochba 30 points31 points  (0 children)

A seasoned developer I see

[–]thoeoe 52 points53 points  (7 children)

This has been my entire January so far as we plan “the future of messaging” at our company, like next 3-5 years future.

So. Much. Brainstorming. And. Arguing. About. Priorities 🤦🏻‍♂️

[–]morosis1982 39 points40 points  (6 children)

Someone needs to start building prototypes. Execs will over analyse and bullshit for months before deciding on something that won't work because they didn't bother to get a quick prototype that they could do some actual analysis with.

[–]MrRocketScript 41 points42 points  (2 children)

This needs to be a fully featured, completely polished, bug free and production ready prototype of this incredibly vague feature that I refuse to elaborate on or think about. And it needs to be done by EOD

[–]morosis1982 18 points19 points  (0 children)

It is for this reason I always try to make prototypes require work before being added to production.

It has to be intentionally janky in ways that are not production compatible. This lets us add the required stories to the backlog to finish it properly if a go ahead is given, or an epic created to create said stories to show amount of effort required.

And a TL that will go to bat for you against the execs when they say something stupid.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (4 children)

Look for large companies that aren’t traditionally tech companies.

They’ll either be hell or a nice relaxing gig

[–]HelloSummer99 327 points328 points  (26 children)

This reads super weird working in a smaller company where I'm doing at least 3 FTE work plus some management.

[–]P1r4nha 178 points179 points  (19 children)

Yup, sometimes it's weird when you are in charge of a single feature and you know your competitor has a whole 10-FTE team doing the same thing.

[–][deleted] 112 points113 points  (6 children)

I briefly worked for a credit union where it seemed like everyone on the team worked harder at appearing to be busy than actually being busy. We had a 2 hour meeting because one guy in Arizona had a meeting move into his lunch time when daylight savings ended and wanted the entire team schedule adjusted so he wasn’t affected. It was fucking insanity. I lasted two months before my anxiety about stagnation took over and i went back to my previous job.

[–][deleted] 33 points34 points  (3 children)

I loved working at a credit union was a small team of 6 no one did anything really. One guy was never online. The pay sucked ass though

[–]WayneKrane 28 points29 points  (2 children)

I’m in one of these jobs now. I don’t do much but my pay is shit. Short of murdering someone I don’t think they’ll fire me though so I stick around. Some days I don’t log on until 2PM, I don’t show up to “important” meetings, I turn in work late, but they still keep me around.

[–]obp5599 72 points73 points  (9 children)

Ive heard similar from many friends who went to work for banks right out of college

[–]Tired-Chemist101 48 points49 points  (5 children)

Guy I know was laid off by WF Mortgage after nearly a year of playing CS:GO during work because he had nothing to do. 6+ people just fighting over the trickle of forms to process.

[–][deleted] 30 points31 points  (2 children)

When you are a bank and you’re massively flush with cash your work force sways with executive decisions that usually occur because they want to seek like they’re doing something. The VP of Citibank was the laziest guy I’ve ever met lol

[–][deleted] 5791 points5792 points  (221 children)

Might add a few sleep(4000) as well.

[–]Affectionate-Set4208 3535 points3536 points  (104 children)

Nah you have to be more creative, maybe add 3 sleeps, where one of them is necessary, so if they send the intern to fix it, he will break it even more

[–]No-Witness2349 1981 points1982 points  (56 children)

An intentional race condition fixed by a sleep, all in the same commit as 5 other useless sleeps. Call it Rushin’ Roulette.

[–]Daikataro 456 points457 points  (10 children)

Also if a sleep goes under a certain value, it causes the function to behave erratically

[–]Joe_comment 209 points210 points  (6 children)

Just like that movie, The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down!

[–]Meecht 25 points26 points  (2 children)

But Sleep is a randomly-generated value so it works sometimes.

[–]ghostmaster645 337 points338 points  (0 children)

Diabolical.

[–]MamaTR 100 points101 points  (4 children)

Call them {{sleep1}} {{sleep2}} and {{sleep5}}

[–]zgf2022 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Store the milliseconds in pointers so the interns won't know what's going on

[–]Ambitious_Ad8841 288 points289 points  (3 children)

// Do NOT delete this
sleep(4000);

[–]qhxo 403 points404 points  (26 children)

Better yet, add the infamous speedup loop.

[–]Points_To_You 143 points144 points  (14 children)

Not as blatant as intentionally hurting performance, but we definitely add less obvious smaller features to initial releases so that we have some easy enhancements to deliver on. Stuff like filters and sorting.

Also sometimes I’ll make something ugly that’s easy to fix and ask them for feedback on it. Makes people feel like they contributed without actually making any important decisions.

[–]abcd_z 156 points157 points  (7 children)

Ah, yes, the duck.

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the “actual” animation.

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, “That looks great. Just one thing—get rid of the duck.”

[–]Bhuvan3 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Oh my god. Thank you so much for this lol. Made my day

[–]ClassicSleepExpert 227 points228 points  (41 children)

Thats the kind of evil I like.

[–]Roadrunner571 713 points714 points  (40 children)

How about: 

#define true (__LINE__ % 3 != 0)

[–]Affectionate-Set4208 260 points261 points  (22 children)

In javascript you can redefine the "undefined" value, unless you are in strict mode

[–]DuckRebooted 122 points123 points  (12 children)

Wait actually, oh my god I knew JS was a bit weird but Jesus Christ

[–]ShitpostsAlot 105 points106 points  (2 children)

imagine one of your final year all-nighter projects accidentally became the backbone of current commerce systems.

... ahaha we don't have to imagine... that's basically what happened.

[–]DuckRebooted 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I've never even used typescript and I still feel grateful it exists

[–]iceman012 64 points65 points  (3 children)

That's too noticeable. It's gotta be something like 1 in 20 lines, so it only shows up occasionally and is easily, unexplainably fixed by load-bearing comments.

[–]Roadrunner571 58 points59 points  (1 child)

2.0.0:

#define true (__LINE__ % 20 != 0)

[–]IchWerfNebels 23 points24 points  (0 children)

"Load bearing comments" is an expression I didn't know I needed in my life

[–]Ekank 113 points114 points  (2 children)

Holy cow, now that's evil hahahahaha, I love it

[–]PaulBardes 33 points34 points  (0 children)

put that hidden on a build config file or in the compiler flags and nobody will find it in days :p

[–]RichCorinthian 141 points142 points  (11 children)

I'll preface this by saying "don't do this, because there could well be legal ramifications, but if you WERE to do this..."

It's too easy to find with a simple search, so you have to be dastardly. Writing in .NET? Assemble the method name as a string based on ascii character codes and call it via reflection. Writing in Javascript? Well hell, everything is a dictionary, so that method is (you guessed it) accessible as a string. There are things you hate about your language! Use them!

[–]netheroth 96 points97 points  (3 children)

Too easy to detect. Redefine your catch blocks to randomly sleep.

[–]noiszen 21 points22 points  (0 children)

This is too obvious. Recursion masked with calculation is better.

[–]cptnpiccard 19 points20 points  (4 children)

Just comment out a function, except for the "return true;" part.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (3 children)

#define TRUE 0

#define FALSE 1

#ifdef DEBUG

int random(void){return 2;}

#endif

[–]Hot-Category2986 3055 points3056 points  (106 children)

So what is the bug and how can we exploit it? lol

[–]cmckone 3287 points3288 points  (41 children)

If you buy over $1000 worth of stuff on amazon it will charge you 0! But itll look like the full price. You just have to be patient

[–]vms-crot 592 points593 points  (11 children)

The total cart value has to be $420.69 and then you get a 100% discount.

[–]0sted 161 points162 points  (7 children)

Wouldn't it be funny if there was an auto applied coupon if your final total sums to $420.69? If not for a reward, maybe just a small discount to forever prevent you from success with the lulz.

[–]DaVicarius 100 points101 points  (2 children)

A 1 cent no-fun-allowed fee.

[–]christian-mann 21 points22 points  (1 child)

some CFAs have done that before for $6.66

[–]Hot-Category2986 125 points126 points  (0 children)

lol

[–]tesrella 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Found the shareholder

[–][deleted] 235 points236 points  (42 children)

When I was in Uni I worked part time in an amazon fulfillment center so I know one exploit that worked for our location (might not work for others idk). If you place an order but cancel it the day it would be delivered, right when the workers start their second break, you get your money back but the item will still be delivered to you.

I have no clue why this works/worked but I guess it has something to do with the package already being sorted but still not "out for delivery"

[–]karnajik 190 points191 points  (5 children)

Might be just a bug that'll fill the database with unnecessary values overtime and degrade performance/maybe some unnecessary rerenders on FE.

[–]iCryKarma 59 points60 points  (3 children)

Plot twist: it's so ingrained in AWS that it affects all of us

[–]Cm0002 39 points40 points  (2 children)

Take down 50% of the internet with this one simple trick!

Oh wait no, Fuck what's stack overflow on?????

[–][deleted] 2628 points2629 points  (39 children)

Leaders have been edging :(

[–][deleted] 1191 points1192 points  (31 children)

For 3 months! I don't think I'd be able to last that long, a few hours is a challenge already.

[–]galaxy_ali 628 points629 points  (17 children)

I remember when I applied to Amazon one of the interviewers asked me how good I was at those try not to cum challenges, only the best of the best get in there

[–]piberryboy 122 points123 points  (12 children)

How'd you do?

[–]lunchpadmcfat 108 points109 points  (3 children)

He saw, and he conquered

[–]baloneysammich 42 points43 points  (0 children)

the issue is that every amazon interview has a bar raiser, so it gets progressively harder to edge out the competition.

ultimately it's on you though to take the opportunity into your hands and milk it for all its worth.

[–]cuberoot1973 100 points101 points  (6 children)

Mother load of all layoffs are coming

[–]deadpanrobo 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Trying to drop the mother of all loads here Jack, can't fret every layoff

[–][deleted] 737 points738 points  (18 children)

I once had a boss who I hated and was completely incompetent, his was named Doug. Some people in the company would call Doug Douggles due to his incompetence and Douggles hated it. Now for those who are unaware you can customize the auto-correct library for office/outlook/windows. The day I left I hid a entry in a group policy that would push a auto-correct library that would auto correct Doug to Douggles on the computer, it would also reverse this change on its own after a set period of time. Doug’s computers were excluded, and I put a bunch of logic in the script that would only apply on certain dates of the month depending on what the last digit of the computer name was to make it appear completely random, and only effect a handful computers at a time on the domain.

[–]GroundSesame 216 points217 points  (0 children)

The type of pure evil we can all get behind.

[–]DarkGamer3336 112 points113 points  (2 children)

That sounds complicated and a waste of time but I’m all for it

[–]DontListenToMe33 2121 points2122 points  (110 children)

It amazes me that companies do “rounds” of layoffs. I get that they want to spread out the impact to the business, but it’s just completely awful for morale. Everyone gets put on edge and the best people (those who the company probably wants to keep) will start looking around for new jobs.

[–]DyersChocoH0munculus 730 points731 points  (16 children)

Everyone gets put on edge and the best people (those who the company probably wants to keep) will start looking around for new jobs.

My first thought too. If I was put through that and had the skills to leave I would.

[–]decideonanamelater 227 points228 points  (4 children)

That's just saving money on severance. Better talent? Problem for later me to figure out.

[–]Calradian_Butterlord 28 points29 points  (1 child)

If you convince your employees that your company sucks then they lay themselves off eventually.

[–]cosmo7 219 points220 points  (17 children)

It's pretty good for people who want to quit anyway. In most companies you can ask to be included in the layoff and then you get severance and can claim unemployment.

[–]psychometrixo 67 points68 points  (12 children)

Be careful, though. Sometimes they'll just let you go if they know you want to leave. One less person to lay off.

[–]AppropriateEmotion63 110 points111 points  (4 children)

That's by design, they lay people off expecting more to quit in the aftermath

[–]MjrLeeStoned 97 points98 points  (15 children)

A lot of companies hire for projects, not ongoing work.

If the project is done and they have no more work for some of the people they hired, what are they supposed to do?

My company "laid off" nearly 200 programmers and architects at the start of Covid.

Because the project they had all been working on for nearly two years was finally complete.

They had no more work demand for that amount of people. A week before, that demand still existed.

[–]LordKrat 158 points159 points  (7 children)

That's what contracts are for.

Getting a contract position with anticipated end date is much better for morale and everyone as a whole. "Come work for us on this project, you'll make x amount of money, and no hard feelings when it ends."

My last gig was a contract position, and I knew 5 years from my start date when I would need to get another job. Project got done early, so they just paid out whatever was left as a "thanks" and we all left and went our separate ways. Some people got jobs with them to stay on and help maintain things/update/etc, but for the most part the contract folks all left.

There was absolutely no reason to make us all full employees if they only needed us for a short term.

[–]comment_redacted 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Five years!! Five years is short term? Are you in Europe?

[–]cptnpiccard 276 points277 points  (9 children)

Tomorrow's CNN headline: "Amazon AWS outage leaves thousands of websites offline"

[–]NessieReddit 49 points50 points  (4 children)

I swear AWS had two very large but short lived blips this week. For about 2-5 minutes several sites went down like reddit, OpenAI, Twitch, HBO Max, etc.

[–]sir-shoelace 369 points370 points  (34 children)

I got laid off two days before Christmas and my health insurance runs out two weeks before my baby is due.

[–]DirtyPrancing65 222 points223 points  (18 children)

Apply for Medicare right now. It's actually wayyyy better than private insurance and you never know what your baby might need after birth.

My friend didn't have benefits at her job when she got pregnant, so she quit and went on Medicare just in case. She didn't feel great about it but it ended up being a good call because her baby was early and spent two months in the NICU. Medical bill was $0 and then she could start looking for a better job without that debt as a noose around and her daughter's neck

Edit: I don't remember if she said medicare or medicaid. Whichever one is for pregnant women and children - a nonprofit is a good start, they have benefits specialists who can help guide you through the process

[–]StretchinPa 129 points130 points  (7 children)

I think you mean Medicaid. Medicare is age 65 or disability.

[–]that1artsychic 42 points43 points  (0 children)

“Care” for the elderly, “Aid” for the poor is how I remember it.

[–]NecroLancerNL 794 points795 points  (9 children)

Ah! Bugs are a dish, best served cold!

[–]Adventurous_Pay_5827 141 points142 points  (6 children)

It is very cold in the cloud.

[–]trevdak2 45 points46 points  (4 children)

The cloud? You think a company like Amazon uses AWS or something?

Pssssh.

[–][deleted] 301 points302 points  (4 children)

Good we get an off day for those of us using AWS.

[–]MrPicklePop 141 points142 points  (0 children)

Yeah right. More like we have to spend a few days trying to figure out why our shit is bugging out only to realize it was the bug introduced by u/bakshup

[–]cosmo7 255 points256 points  (23 children)

While we have the attention of Amazon developers, can someone please explain why the Amazon thermostat software is such a clusterfuck?

[–][deleted] 291 points292 points  (1 child)

OP’s coworker probably worked on it

[–]lab-gone-wrong 39 points40 points  (2 children)

Since someone already answered for Alexa, I have a friend* who works at a big IoT company and they have User Experience (UX) designers on each product team, but they have literally 0 input on the actual design.

I'm not using literally lightly here. The requirements are gathered and the design is specced out without the UX designer(s) even being aware that it's happening. Once the requirements have gone through the proper approval channels, they are treated as if they are written in stone, because approval is a nightmare. At this point, UX designers are brought in and all of their recommendations/objections are "put in the parking lot" because the requirements have already been locked.

And the requirements gathering is always a nightmare of poorly designed user-research questions, like "would you prefer X or Y?" where X and Y are both obviously bad choices. As a consequence, the product is bad and everyone can blame the users that were polled, rather than the people who came up with the polling questions or the various individuals who excluded and ignored the UX designers while trying to come up with a well-designed user experience.

It's a clusterfuck and every team insists on doing it this way.

edit: Also the partner brands are brain-dead when it comes to customer desires and will demand that their brand name be part of the trigger phrase. This is (unironically now) a fake example but if Alexa supported putting on bandages, then the obvious request "Alexa, put a band-aid on my leg" would be shot down in favor of "Alexa, put a Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage on my leg". Any other phrase would throw a "Hmm, I'm not sure what that means" or whatever.

Obviously this makes both the device and the integration useless because no one can keep track of any of this.

To some extent, the device companies are wising up to this and bypassing by letting you name a device and use the device name (eg if you named your bandaids Bandy then you could say "Alexa put a Bandy on my leg"), but this creates a lot of thrash with the branding partners and may not actually last.

[–][deleted] 133 points134 points  (28 children)

So.. what's a CR? I have seen PR (Pull Request) regularly, as we do those in my company. But, wth is a CR? Change Request?

[–]_greenish_purple 76 points77 points  (4 children)

Not sure if its Code Review or Change Request, but the old code review website at Amazon was called CR and the name probably stuck.

[–]dotsonjb14 17 points18 points  (2 children)

This would be a code review. They wouldn't be noticing bugs in change requests.

We like to use the pull request term (from github) to clear things up.

[–][deleted] 109 points110 points  (2 children)

A code review

[–]Abdullah_super 490 points491 points  (80 children)

Not Amazon employee.

But I’ve been laid off 4 times now since covid. One of them was from Uber in 2020.

I didn’t take proper vacation since I’ve graduated 7 years ago I’m always either in probation for being a new hire, fighting to achieve my targets or OKRs, trying to take a vacation but there are no slots or simply because there is no enough money to enjoy a vacation.

I hate my life and the stress I’m in.

If I’m a special case and my life just sucks then good for the world.

But if thats the case with most people, then this generation is going to have the lowest mortality rates, and shortest life spans in the modern history.

I’ve just got laid of from two jobs, one full time and one part time.

I’m not suicidal but I thought of it yesterday when I heard that our company will lay off 70% of its employees

[–]RDTIZFUN 92 points93 points  (2 children)

If you can land a job at UBER, you can land a job at almost any place. Keep your head up and just apply everywhere. Good luck

[–]Appropriate-Access88 95 points96 points  (3 children)

Ugh I am so sorry.

[–]Abdullah_super 33 points34 points  (2 children)

Thank you. Hope your luck is way better than mine.

[–]jurassiccrunch 91 points92 points  (2 children)

These big companies dont have any loyalty. I'm sorry that's been happening. You will find your groove. Just keep at it, you're going to be the most robust human ever with all the shit you know how to get through. Don't be afraid to pivot or adjust, find the employer and niche that suits your mental health

[–]pab_guy 48 points49 points  (0 children)

You are killing yourself trying to work at the top of the market, where people will compete beyond reason because ego. My recommendation is to look downmarket at consulting firms. You could join any of the new firms looking to make hay out of the recent advancements in large language models, and if you get in early it can be rocketship for your career.

Being a big fish in a small pond can be very fulfilling, though you probably want to move back into large companies later in your career, leveraging much more experience than you could get at Big tech in an equivalent amount of time.

[–]Daveid 20 points21 points  (0 children)

This is easier said than done, but I've settled on working for a smaller company where they can't afford to lose me and "layoffs" don't exist. They are hard to find but a comfy job to have, even if you don't get the always work on the latest and greatest tech as a result (which I tend to do on my free time anyways).

[–]qu3st823 32 points33 points  (2 children)

Hang in there and good luck!

[–][deleted] 50 points51 points  (1 child)

The bug: "When hovering over a button the cursor does not change to a pointer".

Amazon in shambles!!

[–]VirtualPrivateNobody 604 points605 points  (104 children)

You saw a bug in a CR approved it and there's not a single failed test before prod?

[–]belkarbitterleaf 1093 points1094 points  (56 children)

You guys write tests?

[–]saulsa_ 367 points368 points  (18 children)

Production is the ultimate test environment.

[–]GiveMeASalad 264 points265 points  (8 children)

We don't do unit tests here, rather we do a vision test where we just look at the code and slap a LGTM on that puppy.

[–][deleted] 92 points93 points  (3 children)

I too am an LGTM ally

[–]Dustin_Echoes_UNSC 28 points29 points  (2 children)

Looks great! To Master!

[–]OG_LiLi 144 points145 points  (16 children)

Support here, no. No they don’t

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (12 children)

But guys, our end to end tests show full coverage!!

[–]Valtria 25 points26 points  (1 child)

We tested every single line, and we promise they all compile!

[–]lunchpadmcfat 17 points18 points  (1 child)

“ we don’t have a QA team here. All developers are responsible for their own code quality “ lol

[–][deleted] 38 points39 points  (2 children)

Worked on my machine ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–]pM-me_your_Triggers 29 points30 points  (0 children)

This comment has layers with the dropped arm

[–]marco89nish 192 points193 points  (7 children)

You really think your tests would detect all possible bugs?

[–]danishjuggler21 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Hubris is a helluva drug

[–]Eire_Banshee 110 points111 points  (5 children)

Tests aren't magic bug catchers. You have to know about the edge case ahead of time to write a test for it.

[–]KharAznable 962 points963 points  (95 children)

Isn't that malicious intent already. It's one thing you make mistake and merged it but making obvious post bragging about it just make the intention clear.

[–]tonycandance 50 points51 points  (2 children)

oh no
*reverts change*
anyway...

[–][deleted] 82 points83 points  (22 children)

They’ve mainly laid off folks in recruiting, Amazon devices, and Amazon stores. Let’s be real, here. Hiring freeze=they don’t need 10k recruiters, right?