Amazon Web Services vs Mercedes Benz SA

[TechHim]

Hi everyone, I have a choice of working for either AWS or MBSA on a graduate role. Both seem to be great companies with great pay for graduates however I feel like Amazon stands out but the role offered by AWS is Cloud Support associate for 6 months, after which I can become a cloud support engineer. The MBSA program is 2years and I get to change different roles where I will be programming as a software developer but 2 years stuck in a grad role seems like a lot, Also I feel that AWS will pay more after the 6months then someone coming out of the 2 year MBSA grad program but I dont like the role offered. Can someone please advice on what would be a better decision?

 

[netstrider]

Both sound great to me.

Go with your hunch and not what people tell you.

 

[Corelli]

You want to work like a slave, throw your colleagues under the bus, trample on them, and get ahead. Or get trampled yourself.

Then AWS is the job for you.

Want a long fulfilling career, then Mercedes it better.

There are companies thats great on paper, lots of opportunities, but you will maybe get more but be under the microscope for everything you do. AWS is one of them.

I've been there, done that, and left. My colleague actually emigrated and they offered him a job in his new country, and he just quit his job straight and went to work for someone else and is much happier.

Sure money can buy a lot, but when youre on the edge of suicide, its not worth it. You decide. Of the 15 people I knew that all worked at Amazon. All 15 now work elsewhere.

Currently the future of tech is in cars. They will just get more and more advanced.

I do freelancing for Jaguar in regards to their driving automation systems. Its amazing where its all moving to.

 

[SextinaAquafina]

Firstly, congrats on the grad offers!

As someone who has worked at MBSA as a graduate, I strongly suggest going for AWS instead. In the long run, it will be much better for your career, especially since you mentioned you will get promoted after 6 months.

At MBSA, you can technically apply for permanent roles in the company after just 6 months; I know many who got better roles (2 year contracts/perm roles) after 12 months of the grad program, but that was because they were doing a lot of hiring when they first started the IT HUB. But I also know many who got stuck in the same grad role for 2 years or even longer (they had a 1 year grad extension option as well lol) and many who left the company for better opportunities. MBSA sounds good on paper (the best or nothing!) but in reality it's pretty "meh" IMO. East London is also not the best place to be living, especially when you are young, although I guess that depends on your interests/hobbies.

I think it's a really tough choice when it comes to grad programs though; I mean you could end up loving MBSA and getting a fast promotion, but I personally think it's too much of a risk compared to AWS.
My advice: get AWS experience and evaluate your next career move after working a few months as a Cloud Support Engineer.

 

[Gnome]

You want to work like a slave, throw your colleagues under the bus, trample on them, and get ahead. Or get trampled yourself.

Then AWS is the job for you.

Want a long fulfilling career, then Mercedes it better.

There are companies thats great on paper, lots of opportunities, but you will maybe get more but be under the microscope for everything you do. AWS is one of them.

I've been there, done that, and left. My colleague actually emigrated and they offered him a job in his new country, and he just quit his job straight and went to work for someone else and is much happier.

Sure money can buy a lot, but when youre on the edge of suicide, its not worth it. You decide. Of the 15 people I knew that all worked at Amazon. All 15 now work elsewhere.

Currently the future of tech is in cars. They will just get more and more advanced.

I do freelancing for Jaguar in regards to their driving automation systems. Its amazing where its all moving to.

Which division did you work for? (aws support, ec2, ?)
What was your "title" and "level" if you don't mind my asking?

 

[MagNorthDigital]

You want to work like a slave, throw your colleagues under the bus, trample on them, and get ahead. Or get trampled yourself.

Then AWS is the job for you.

Want a long fulfilling career, then Mercedes it better.

There are companies thats great on paper, lots of opportunities, but you will maybe get more but be under the microscope for everything you do. AWS is one of them.

I've been there, done that, and left. My colleague actually emigrated and they offered him a job in his new country, and he just quit his job straight and went to work for someone else and is much happier.

Sure money can buy a lot, but when youre on the edge of suicide, its not worth it. You decide. Of the 15 people I knew that all worked at Amazon. All 15 now work elsewhere.

Currently the future of tech is in cars. They will just get more and more advanced.

I do freelancing for Jaguar in regards to their driving automation systems. Its amazing where its all moving to.

This, this x 100. I've literally had to talk friends back into software dev because of mfs at Amazon. The churn rate is google levels.

Mercedes Benz ZA sales and support is erm, not always pc literate. But their dev guys that I've been in convo with, seem ultra bright, and if nothing else, work at mbsa cause they choose to. Not only cause it's name.

Respect counts for so much, mbsa will give you much more of that.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Looking at the amount of people interviewing with me coming from AWS backgrounds I wouldn’t get too excited about that longer term prospect and getting more money.

Most seem to move away from AWS because of salary adjustments not being what they expected.

 

[Dan C]

This, this x 100. I've literally had to talk friends back into software dev because of mfs at Amazon. The churn rate is google levels.

Mercedes Benz ZA sales and support is erm, not always pc literate. But their dev guys that I've been in convo with, seem ultra bright, and if nothing else, work at mbsa cause they choose to. Not only cause it's name.

Respect counts for so much, mbsa will give you much more of that.

Thanks

 

[shadow_man]

You want to work like a slave, throw your colleagues under the bus, trample on them, and get ahead. Or get trampled yourself.

Then AWS is the job for you.

Want a long fulfilling career, then Mercedes it better.

There are companies thats great on paper, lots of opportunities, but you will maybe get more but be under the microscope for everything you do. AWS is one of them.

I've been there, done that, and left. My colleague actually emigrated and they offered him a job in his new country, and he just quit his job straight and went to work for someone else and is much happier.

Sure money can buy a lot, but when youre on the edge of suicide, its not worth it. You decide. Of the 15 people I knew that all worked at Amazon. All 15 now work elsewhere.

Currently the future of tech is in cars. They will just get more and more advanced.

I do freelancing for Jaguar in regards to their driving automation systems. Its amazing where its all moving to.

+1000 AWS premium support is a **** show. Trampling on colleagues is encouraged, work is often menial and brown nosing is the order of the day.

Do it if you need a) a salary bump b) emigration c) name on CV - but other than that what Corelli said is accurate.

I left a million rand in shares on the table, it wasn’t worth my mental well being to stay.

I had colleagues suffer mental breakdowns and just burn out. I wasn’t going to hang around and have that happen to me.

 

[Frankie23]

Can confirm.

I left AWS Premium Support after 3.5y as a Cloud Support Engineer, as my mental wellbeing was simply just worth more to me.

Sure, you get to learn a huge amount in a very short space of time but even that isnt worth your sanity.

As mentioned, its the same story over and over, day after day. Unless you're in the top 10-15% of engineers, you'll inevitably find yourself stressing over achieving your weekly and monthly targets (or "metrics" as its called), week after week, month after month, non stop.

If you're battling to make your weekly/monthly goals the only option is to put in extra hours, work on your off days, respond to customers/monitor your cases outside of your shift hours, and cling to your cases in hopes that you get the case resolve to add it to your monthly goal count.

During my time there I've worked with numerous brilliant engineers across all profiles who simply became fed up with the "normal"/expected way of working and operating in PS, who just packed up and exited the company as their health/mental state/family/work-life balance was simply more important to them.

And as much as it gets denied, PS turned into a call centre setup. Engineers are "encouraged" to take the incoming calls or web chats (you get measured on this as well), and inbetween calls/chats they're encouraged to take email cases to work. The ultimate function of a CSE/CSA is to resolve a specific number of customer cases per week/month and this is one of the 3 core metrics they're measured on.

Simply put, if you like a high-pressure call centre style job where you're monitored 24/7 and where your salary decreases after the first 2 years, AWS is the place for you.

 

[Dylan_G]

Can confirm.

I left AWS Premium Support after 3.5y as a Cloud Support Engineer, as my mental wellbeing was simply just worth more to me.

Sure, you get to learn a huge amount in a very short space of time but even that isnt worth your sanity.

As mentioned, its the same repetitive crap over and over, day after day. Unless you're in the top 10-15% of engineers, you'll inevitably find yourself stressing over achieving your weekly and monthly targets (or "metrics" as its called), week after week, month after month, non stop. It gets to you, man.

If you're battling to make your weekly/monthly goals the only option is to put in extra hours, work 12, 14, 16 hour shifts, work on your off days, respond to customers/monitor your cases outside of your shift hours, and cling to your cases in hopes that you get the case resolve to add it to your monthly goal count.

During my time there I've worked with numerous brilliant engineers across all profiles who simply became fed up with the "normal"/expected way of working and operating in PS, who just packed up and exited the company as their health/mental state/family/work-life balance was simply more important to them.

And as much as it gets denied, PS just simply turned into a call centre setup. Engineers are "encouraged" (/forced) to grab/fight over the incoming calls or web chats (you get measured on this as well), and inbetween calls/chats they're told to take email cases to work. The ultimate function of a CSE/CSA is to resolve a specific number of customer cases per week/month and this is one of the 3 core metrics they're measured on.

Simply put, if you like a high-pressure call centre style job where you're monitored 24/7 and where your salary decreases after the first 2 years, AWS is the place for you.

Wow. Had no idea CSE at AWS was that bad.

Are the SDE roles similar?

 

[Tinuva]

Wow. Had no idea CSE at AWS was that bad.

Are the SDE roles similar?

CSE role is not really that bad. Been in the role for almost 7 to 8 years now. You will however find that we need permission to talk about details and so I guess thats why no one defends anything here. I will say however I am happy in the role without doing any of the listed things above. I also have a bunch of colleagues the same as me, happy in the role. I might even have talked to some of the above individuals at work and from what I remember, they see many things negative as most south africans do and the views here seem to reflect that.

 

[shadow_man]

CSE role is not really that bad. Been in the role for almost 7 to 8 years now. You will however find that we need permission to talk about details and so I guess thats why no one defends anything here. I will say however I am happy in the role without doing any of the listed things above. I also have a bunch of colleagues the same as me, happy in the role. I might even have talked to some of the above individuals at work and from what I remember, they see many things negative as most south africans do and the views here seem to reflect that.

After 8 years you're most likely a CSEIII or principal support engineer who doesn't touch case work.

That's a far cry from the rest of your colleagues who have to deal with Atul in India who's kicking and screaming because he lost his SSH key for the 1000th time, or when he abuses the rating system to get application level support (that is out of scope, but management make you do it anyhow).

You also probably have 250+ shares having joined then, which means you'd eat a hell of a lot more **** than a CSEI-II colleague who joins with 30-40 nowadays.

It's a toxic work environment for anyone who isn't an old timer - and got in good early.

 

[Tinuva]

After 8 years you're most likely a CSEIII or principal support engineer who doesn't touch case work.

That's a far cry from the rest of your colleagues who have to deal with Atul in India who's kicking and screaming because he lost his SSH key for the 1000th time, or when he abuses the rating system to get application level support (that is out of scope, but management make you do it anyhow).

You also probably have 250+ shares having joined then, which means you'd eat a hell of a lot more **** than a CSEI-II colleague who joins with 30-40 nowadays.

It's a toxic work environment for anyone who isn't an old timer - and got in good early.

Not a CSE3 yet. Work cases, but it takes like 2 hours of my day after which I can spend time on projects. Its easy working cases.