Amazon Work-Life Balance Defender: Prior Employer Nearly Killed Me and My Team

theodp writes: New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan questions whether her paper's portrayal of Amazon's brutal workplace was on target, citing a long, passionate response in disagreement from Nick Ciubotariu, a head of infrastructure development at Amazon. Interestingly, Ciubotariu — whose take on Amazon's work-life balance ("I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to") was used as Exhibit A by CEO Jeff Bezos to refute the NYT's report — wrote last December of regretting his role as an enabler of his team's "Death March" at a former employer (perhaps Microsoft, judging by Ciubotariu's LinkedIn profile and his essay's HiPo and Vegas references). "I asked if there were any questions," wrote Ciubotariu of a team meeting. "Nadia, one of my Engineers, had one: 'Nick, when will this finally end?' As I looked around the room, I saw 9 completely broken human beings. We had been working over 100 hours a week for the past 2 months. Two of my Engineers had tears on their faces. I did my best to keep from completely breaking down myself. With my voice choking, I looked at everyone, and said: 'This ends right now'." Ciubotariu added, "I hope they can forgive me for being an enabler of their death march, however unwilling, and that I ultimately didn't do enough to stop it. As a 'reward' for all this, I calibrated #1 overall in my organization, and received yet another HiPo nomination and induction, at the cost of a shattered family life, my health, and a broken team. I don't think I ever felt worse in my entire career. If I could give it all back, I would, in an instant, no questions asked. Physically and mentally, I took about a year to heal."

Comments

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Beeftopia]

Times I've wanted to work on the weekend:

1) When I'm doing work on the side and want to get it done. I'll work on the weekend.

2) When I'm being paid well and able to telecommute, and there's a task that needs to be done - I'll work on the weekend. Heck, in that situation, I've worked late nights too. The working environment couldn't get more comfortable, with my own kitchen and bathroom and climate control. And when my brain shuts down late at night, I'm a few feet from the bed.

When I'm on-site... and I'm eating from the vending machine, trying to avoid using the low-privacy, cesspool toilets, and it's too cold or too hot, and I can't take a few minutes off and relax on the couch or outside in peace - yeah, I have no interest in staying there longer than my 8 hours. I don't care how interesting the work is. I've done it of course, both late night and weekends, but under duress like the parent poster noted.

We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

Here's an interesting case for unionization in tech:
https://michaelochurch.wordpre...
Discuss.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[PopeRatzo]

I'm fortunate to have spent most of my career in times and places where developers had the upper hand over companies in negotiations. You got mistreated at one place, there was always a better job around the corner, and everyone knew it.

I'm not a developer, but I spent my 25 years in the workplace under similar circumstances of employees holding the balance of power (it's called "tenure").

I'm afraid the days when a large percentage of US workers had some leverage are over since the industrial unions imploded/were destroyed. I blame union leaders who were too cozy with the elite and Ronald Reagan, mostly, but it was a lot of things.

Either way, the pain is coming for a large percentage of US workers and their families. I'm just glad I retired before it got really bad. Now I just wait for my daughter to finish her Math PhD and then I can go lay in my hammock and play Monster Hunter 4 and let the world go to hell.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Pro923]

I agree with you, I do... But as a guy who has worked in tech for 20+ years now, there have been so many times where I realize that people can be so smart, yet so stupid at the same time. Specifically, tech people - suckers... So many time I've looked around the room for someone else to share a look of "what the fuck?" with me, but most of the time, no one dares. When they offer people "free pizza" to work past 8:00, I look around for people to say, "Yeah, thanks, but I'll go home now and buy my own $6.99 pizza thanks" - but no one does, and they work, and they eat the pizza like it's some incredible gift.

If everyone were like me, we'd probably get paid more than the sales guys, work less hours and have a hell of a lot more respect. The problem is that your average engineer is a moron. Since most are morons, we're all morons. If I'm the one guy that tells them to "shove the pizza up their ass cause I'm goin home on time", I'll get replaced with a fresh Chinese kid faster than you can say kung pao chicken.

I can say I'm a broken person now... I'm definitely not what I was 15 years ago when I was a smart mofo and ready to take on the world. THe tech industry has brought me to the ground - in so many ways. You can't win... We're all just cogs in a wheel... The industry has been turned into more of a manual labor type of gig, and it sucks.

Re:Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

> They always win "best place to work"

FYI, those "awards" are usually bought and paid for and have nothing to do with actual working conditions or voting. Just buy enough advertising from the publication and you are guaranteed to "win" the award.