Ramblings of a Martian

So, by now you know that I'm planning to start a job search on my 5th Amazoniversary. That's 2.5 weeks away. I was talking to L.B. the other day, and she mentioned that I do this a lot. "I'm leaving, looking for a job elsewhere!", that is. Even with the "And this time I mean it!". Tho, in my defense, I /have/ looked elsewhere in the past. You may remember that the only thing that kept me from taking the Crown College job was the lack of health insurance. Mind you, in retrospect I'm damned glad I didn't.



So, by now you know how little I think Amazon, as a company, gives a damn about its employees. The pay rate is generally agreed to be substandard compared to the industry... Tho, I admit, I hear less about that these days than I once did, perhaps the industry has sunk to our levels? No, more likely we've merely out-lived most comparables in our industry. I've gone through my rants about the annual review system, pay raises, and the insult that is the Total Compensation Statement. I don't care to repeat them right now. I'm pretty sure I've bitched at at least SOME of you about the expense reporting system and how it could ONLY have been chosen to discourage its use - paranoia, perhaps, but when they're really out to piss you off... Suffice to say, Amazon does its level best to do the absolute minimum to keep employees around.



So, by now you're wondering why the hell I'm still there after five years. Well, that's really complicated.

I'm rather addicted to my medical coverage, if you must know. With all that's wrong with me, I can't afford to be without it.

The golden handcuffs are, let's be honest, well-named. Though they do chafe from time to time.

I remember what things were like at Microsoft. I remember what things were like at Loudeye, in the last months. At least at Amazon I have a boss who's competent and even if I'm frequently unsure of the higher-ups. I've got coworkers I enjoy working with - I had that at Loudeye too, mind. But I haven't had any really bad managers at Amazon, which I can't say for my previous jobs.

I get to work on projects that affect millions of people. Literally, my code is used by /millions of people/. grymor, is that a fair assessment? How much of wishlist is still my original code? I'm willing to bet PI::Registry is still 80% mine. PI::CFSAB is mostly one big martian fingerprint. Good catch on the config stuff tho. And now I'm up to my elbows (neck, in some cases) in Your Account. Order History? I've touched most of it in the past year, and have a semi-significant refactoring ready to commit. Order Summary? Ditto. Gotta finish that refactor tomorrow; I've got a meeting scheduled with my boss to show it to him. The new Order Editor app? I pushed for that structure, I masterminded it. Had help defining the final data structures, mind you. The new combine orders? Hasn't launched yet, don't go looking for it. My content pulls together OH, OS, /and/ OE.

I've been doing web development pretty much exclusively for 6 years. I've got a BSCS, I've written C, C++, and Java in my time, but /never/ professionally. I've READ quite a bit of C++ and Java, digging through our codebase, debugging systems, suggesting fixes to SDEs; I'm doing a LITTLE Java work - and realizing how rusty I am - with this new test framework I'm playing with; but I've not done any professional software development, /ever/.



So, why am I still here? Fear and Ego, I think it boils down to. What if I leave and find out it sucks even more out there in the real world? irgth knows what I mean. Tho, you at least have the camera to fall back to. Outside of web development and whining about things, I don't have that many marketable skills. And I'm not really willing to go into journalism. ;;)

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On the other pseudopod: B.M. wants me badly. He hasn't resorted to begging me to come work for him yet, but I occasionally get the impression it's a fine line away. Gifting seems to be interested, tho I haven't spoken to W.K. directly about it. If I left, I could almost certainly get ONE of them to hire me back... right? E.K. was joking(?) about getting B.M. to hire me as a contractor.

One of the options that occurred to me is a Leave of Absence. With appropriate approvals, I could take up to 3 months off unpaid without losing anything (except /possibly/ my position in the group, but that's dealable, since I know there are groups that would have me). I tried to figure out whether it's kosher to work for someone else during that time, but the HR site wasn't explicit. I'll probably have to talk to an hr rep, meh. Medical coverage would discontinue after the 15th of the .. month.. after I leave? something like that. after a month, but on the 15th. Stock would all suspend vesting, which is better than going away completely.

Can I really find out if there's something better out there in 3 months? It took half a year for Loudeye to start really sucking.

Fret. Fret fret.

I'm *quite* drunk. I just finished off a 60 proof drink, and came upstairs. Thus, I'm drunker than I was when I started up the stairs. jodawi is sitting in my lovesac spelling his ljname for me. He's so cute. I'm.. VERY drunk. sorry.

So. Still confused, but for different reasons. "I can X, I can't Y". Ok, but even the OED didn't help us clarify Y. Heh. It's okay tho. Heh. Tho, more time to talk, less time in hot tub, would have been appreciated. Sokay tho. Some day, there will be enough time to talk. And it's not like it'll lead anywhere, because of the Y limitation. But that's cool. She wasn't invited here for either X /or/ Y, which has been explained. Those they'd both be nice.

Ok. Yawning and defocusing at keyboard. Bye Bye..


BTW: I haven't actually /realy/ lj in about a month, so I'm a little behind. Sorry.

My cellphone has been stolen. I had it at the gas station, then went to safeway, then home. I lost it somewhere around there. Four calls have been made from it since then.

It is now suspended, and the girl would have been happen to talk about pricing for a new one, but I'm pissed off and have been drinking for three hours, and this is really not the time. I called it. several times. ONE of the times, I got a person. and asked for their number. and they gave it. I should have written it down. It was, I'm sure, fake, but who knows. Then I called tmobile.

Then I yelled, 'cause lights were on and the bedroom door was open, so I thought loree was home. BUT, I'm stupid, and charles is over. oops. Sorry kids.

:sighs.

I'm really ticked off.
It's a damned good thing I went on a slight bender this evening, or I'd be /really/ frothing at the mouth.




and I miss randomdreams. Not that he'd neccessarily make me feel better, but I'm really /not/ above emotional blackmail in these situations. COME BACK WE MISS YOU Plus: I bet he could make me a steam-powered nuclear cell-phone with first-strike capabilities.

Most of the stuff I read on the internet (that isn't job related) is news, usually pointed to by somebody. Mostly meaningless drivel.

The rest are usually stories about something some geek has done, which makes him her or it much much cooler than I. That's not what the article is about of course, never have I seen the headline "Geek makes self much cooler than Marty", but none the less, these stories make it very clear to me that, despite appearances to the contrary, my geek cred is sorely lacking.

There aren't very many things I've done that nobody's ever done before. What there are either nobody knows about or nobody cares about. Nothing groundshaking. Nothing world-changing. Nothing that would ever getting written up on slashdot.

My most stunning achievement of code-never-written-before? An SMTP server in moocode, complete with an in-db DNS client. Big fucking whoop. I believe there are two sites in existance in the world that use it.

The coolest generally-geeky thing I've done in the past year? Road trip to mojave. Like several hundred other geeks. And it wasn't even my idea.



Yeah, life definitely leaving a bit to be desired right now.

I can't write what I want to write without putting it under heavy filters. I refuse to post under filters, so I won't be posting this. I thought about posting it Private, just to have it there, but that seems to fall under the same heading.

I still want to be him.
How sick is that?

I'm never going to be Jamie Zawinski, am I?

I just discovered that my bug-self has an STD. So, a digestive parasite AND an infertility STD. Plus I have only one grandchild, and most of my children are either dead or comatose (they never log in). I'm tempted to just kill myself.

That wasn't the most unpleasant meeting I've ever been in. But I'm not sure we actually got anywhere. We discussed the team issues, lack of resources, need for SE support, the fact that nobody really signed on to be a deployment engineer, the feeling that we've become the bucket for the unwanted legacy features...

They recognize the need for deployment support, and are working on that. A team has agreed to put resources of that type towards our needs. We aren't the only people with legacy crap to deal with, perhaps not even the worst. These are the rebuttals, by the way.

We don't have enough internally-initiated innovation, the core of what a two-pizza-team should be.

For the division planning meetings this year, michael had to write up everything and submit them. Next year, he wants werner to write them up, and werner wants the team to contribute, we'll have meetings to figure out where we should allocate our resources. The team will get its input. Nevermind that michael didn't inquire with the engineers directly about this year's goals. Why are we doing things that come from above, like GiftyThingy? We need to do inline gifting, it's one of the things we are resourced for from the planning meetings. The GiftyThingy is just an idea, if we have a better one, do that instead.

We need a realistic plan for eliminating our operational burden. We think we have one. It's taken 6 months of engineers calling for it, ignoring the fact that we've been calling for it as a department for years, to get here.

Schedules and deadlines should be driven by projects, features, and resources, NOT the other way around. Some projects, there's no choice. Other projects, they are, you just need to push back appropriately. We can't /not/ set deadlines, or nothing would get done.

We discussed how we don't feel the engineers' input on planning and decision making is really listened to, and how this is one of the things that makes me feel undervalued. Didn't really get much from that.

After all of this, we finally transitioned to what it'll take to keep me. I don't know. They seem to feel that they've addressed all of the issues I've brought up. Those that they can't really change are company-wide, so moving groups won't help any. We got to the topic of money. After a few jokes involving large numbers, michael asked what amount I thought would be fair. I can't really say that I don't think my pay is /fair/, is the problem. At the time at least, I felt that I was fairly well paid for a web dev. Those others whose salaries I know are paid notably less than I. It's been pointed out since then that I don't know the pay rate for any other webdev 3s, and that, from what they knew, I was at the low end. My problem with the pay isn't so much the number itself, but the way it's changed.. I'm still - it turns out - angry about the cut last year. My take-home is still less than it was two years ago. Michael reiterated that he's working on making an adjustment but that it will take some time.


So, where are we? I closed with something to the effect of "Let us assume, for now, that my decision to leave is unchanged, but I will think about this". Which I shall do.

What are your thoughts?

And now I just had a chat with Werner. We discussed some of my problems, and I was a little more open about my issues with prioritization of problems and how long it takes people to come around and what not. And we discussed the things I think we should do and when and how and ... honestly, I think we ended up back where we started... He agrees with my priorities and what we should do... But, damnit, it took HOW LONG to get here? How many MONTHS have we been saying this is what we should do?.. After going over the things we need to do, and me agreeing that it was the right plan, he says, "So you'll stay, right?" "No." "Fuck.".. heh. Have I mentioned that I respect people who'll swear at work more than those that won't?