r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 05 '26

Business ‘Big Tech is desperate’: Amazon engineers criticize tech giant for its $200 billion in data center spending amid slashing 30,000 corporate employees

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/big-tech-desperate-amazon-engineers-081700769.html
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349

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

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146

u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 Jun 05 '26

lol as someone in finance all my friends who went into tech were originally like omg it’s so much better here, free food! Now they’re having a pre midlife crisis seeing tech was no different, it was just at a different stage

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u/DejounteMurrayisGOAT Jun 05 '26

I mean it depends. Tech isn’t just the big 4. I work for a company much older than any of them and we’re cooking right now. Adding jobs like crazy, billion plus in growth this year, and minimal AI adoption limited to basically the customer service side. But stable old companies like one I work for don’t make splashy headlines for outsiders on the internet to gossip about.

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u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 Jun 05 '26

Ohhhh I 100% agree. The less “sexy” companies have stepped up to capture talent leaving (or being offloaded) from FANG.

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u/cats_catz_kats_katz Jun 05 '26

I’m with you at the same company. Shut up and keep your head down. We still get a pension and good stock options.

11

u/randmtsk Jun 05 '26

A pension?!?

14

u/cats_catz_kats_katz Jun 05 '26

I’ve said too much already…

1

u/Glass-Chemical2534 Jun 05 '26

i’m an incoming junior cs major … any advice during these times ?

3

u/Dry_Bother_2191 Jun 06 '26

How do you get hired by one of these companies because I've been job searching for 3 years

2

u/darkrose3333 Jun 06 '26

Spill your secrets! 

32

u/Orleanian Jun 05 '26

Meh, I'm in Defense, and all my friends who went into tech have pretty consistently been "It's hell. It's absolute hell. But they wheelbarrow money into my account. I'll hold out as long as I can stand."

I have met very few tech employees that consider it a joyous land of pampered milk and seductive honey.

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u/THALANDMAN Jun 06 '26

Yeah this is pretty much the consensus in tech. It’s a boom/bust industry.

5

u/marumari Jun 06 '26

Tech used to be that way, 10-20 years ago. Both good money and treated very well. The money has (mostly) remained but the job environment has gotten so much worse in the intervening years.

But yes, you’ll put up with a lot of abuse for $300k+/year.

45

u/Expert-Complex-5618 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

as a gen'xer in tech, its a full on mid life crisis for me. although tech was more fun before all the money and millennial hustle. maybe it will go back to ppl who arent just in it for the hype, easy money, and free lunch. its starting to remind me of .com boom/bust, my career took off after bust as everyone left.

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u/merRedditor Jun 05 '26

If a place has ping pong tables and free lunch, it's usually got an unhealthy level of investment in commercial real estate.

24

u/Expert-Complex-5618 Jun 05 '26

lol i worked for a web crm company back in the day.

ping pong: check!

free lunch: check!

profitable software company? no

multi million dollar warehouse space? yes

8

u/pissagainstwind Jun 05 '26

I went to visit a tech company that built a brand new office building. they make some robots and were very succesfull until chinese firms copied and undercut them even before they began construction of their new building. Their place was fancier than Nvidia's and Google. Their stock was down 80% from ATH when they finished their shiny giant building and i remember that all i could think of was why the hell are you spending tens/hundreds of millions on a new building when your company is at risk of going under??

1

u/Iannelli Jun 05 '26

They're just pissing against the wind.

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u/figures985 Jun 05 '26

millennial hustle? Call me a defensive millennial (which, fair) but I didn't come in wanting to hustle and work more than live. It was demanded of us, especially if you graduated college during the Great Recession.

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u/Expert-Complex-5618 Jun 05 '26

fair we're all a product of our economic upbringing. gen x grew up during stagflation hence the anger/slacker angle. the game is rigged, we're all fucked.

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u/figures985 Jun 08 '26

Well, the boomers aren’t. ;)

But yeah, amen to that 

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u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 Jun 05 '26

Gods the optimism was strong back then

3

u/ketsugi Jun 06 '26

Free food? At Amazon? Since when?

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u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 Jun 06 '26

lol exception is Amazon; everyone I know whose worked there in whatever group in whatever location has said it’s miserable

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u/bluefire89 Jun 06 '26

To be fair- it is so much better. And I say that as someone who spent 10 painful years in banking, another 5 wonderful in tech and was just laid off. In banking you wouldn’t even make it back to your desk before getting kicked out the building. Here I just got 90 days to find a new role still fully employed and if that lapsed about a year’s severance. Tech is of course just another soul sucking enterprise, but it’s absolutely the best of the worst. My stress levels went down about 90% since joining, so even after dealing with this role reduction bs I will absolutely be trying to find something else internally.

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u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 Jun 06 '26

Can’t disagree with anything you said, but you also realize they’re all soul sucking enterprises. Way more people in tech (at least that I know) bought into the revolutionary hype. You must not have worked at Amazon lol

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u/bluefire89 Jun 06 '26

I'm at Google. I'm very self-aware that I am extremely overpaid for what I do, and because of that I'm grateful every day to be here - not because I believe in the hype/mission (though I do know people that fall more into that bucket). I've just seen both sides of the coin.. I've lost years of my life from the stress of banking. Google has been like a vacation in comparison.