General Business Updates and News

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I have a lot of friends who used to work for Amazon, in white collar coding jobs.  They pretty much universally said that the job was grueling. They were extremely well paid, but the emotional cost was not worth it.

This was generally ~4 years ago, so it's plausible that the company culture has changed since then.

Yes. However, I'm not sure that Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are that different in that respect. Work/life balance can be hard to find in these jobs.

Knowing multiple people at all four companies, I think Markster is pretty accurate. Amazon definitely has a reputation for being the worst, while Google has the opposite reputation, with most friends there working pretty consistent 40 hour weeks.

That said, I'll still be pretty happy if Amazon HQ2 goes to Toronto (or KW, but I see that as much less likely). It'll put significant upward pressure on Canadian salaries, which compare very poorly against American ones even accounting for cost of living. That will go a long ways to reducing the current Canadian brain drain. Most friends would prefer to stay in Canada, but feel the career opportunities just aren't there and the salaries are too low to ignore the gap.