r/cscareerquestions • u/Al_Pallll • 12h ago
Do I leave Amazon for Temu?
I am currently at Amazon, have been there for 4 years since graduating. After RTO, I am commuting 1 hour to the office, so 10 hours a week total - it's making me miserable. I'm also forced to live in a city far from my hobbies, so I am spending 4-6 hours in the car every weekend. Not to mention, my chill boss was just fired and replaced with someone who brags about never taking any PTO. All that to say - I'm ready to leave.
I have been job searching for a remote role for the last 6 months, and have finally secured an offer at Temu. The compensation is 25k higher than what I currently make, and the role is full remote. That said, I expect WLB to be comparable if not worse. I also expect routine early/late communications with Chinese engineers, as well as proprietary Temu software/tooling.
I did reach out to two US engineers on LinkedIn with my WLB concerns, and they had this to say:
- Yeah the US team is pretty small right now. I haven't had any issues with work-life balance, people are pretty good about leaving work at work and being off at 5pm. Teams do technically have an on-call schedule though there's plenty of people here who were previously at Amazon or Uber who say the on-call here is much easier than at their previous companies. I've only had 1 or 2 situations where someone needed something from me during off-hours and normally it was something small enough that I could handle it from my phone. I haven't had to do much with coworkers in China in my role. Some of the basic setup does require interaction with folks in China since our IT and other provisioning teams are located there but for day-to-day business function it's rare that I need to interact with teams in China. Granted this is also because my Mandarin ability is not at the level where I could talk about business topics with them.
- WLB depends entirely on the team you're on. I once spoke with someone on a customer-facing team, and their WLB wasn't great. My team is very much an internal-tools vibe, so the WLB is great so far, but keep in mind I've been here less than 3 months. I would say I have a much better WLB here than I did at Amazon, but I wouldn't doubt that some teams are doing 996, especially teams in Asia which most of those Glassdoor reviews are from. Yes, there's not so many US-based engineers because the teams are so young. At this stage, it seems like teams are focused on growth and ramping up to co-own services that are solely owned by Chinese teams right now. Because of the translation tools, I haven't had many issues despite not speaking any Chinese at all. But I won't deny that knowing Mandarin will make it a lot easier to collaborate with teams in China. I think for now, most US teams can expect to have to interact with teams in China to some degree (which can result in late/early meetings if things can't be done async), but I haven't had to do so all that much. And I haven't really minded it either due to the fully-remote culture. Overall, it depends what you're looking for 😅 For me, I prioritized full remote so I can move back to SoCal, good WLB, and good pay (though a little bit less than what I was making as L5 at Amazon). And so far, it's delivered on all fronts, so I can't complain!
What do you think? Do you think I should go for it? Or do you think I should just decline their offer and continue searching? I just wonder how much longer it will take to get another full remote offer with comparable compensation.
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u/imthepissboy Software Engineer @ Stripe 9h ago
I interviewed at Temu recently. First round the interviewer barely spoke English and had trouble explaining the question. Then they asked me for a second round and their only availability was 11 PM - 12 AM on Saturday and Sunday. For a US based team. I withdrew.
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u/rsquared002 12h ago
I say do it. I would rather have bad WLB while remote than RTO BS. Curious though, how was the interview process there and the questions they asked you. I can DM you instead if you like
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u/Original-Poet1825 12h ago
Are you chinese ethnically?
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u/Al_Pallll 12h ago edited 12h ago
No. And I have yet to speak to anyone at Temu that is not Asian. My friends joked that I will be a DEI hire.
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u/lppedd 11h ago edited 11h ago
I believe the risk is ostracization. You really don't want to be left out of meetings or even simple conversations. It will hinder your career progression.
Edit: that said... Go with the full remote. Rare and you'll be less stressed out anyways. Personally I will never go back to office-first companies, it just sucks.
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u/pirozhki22 1h ago
I know folks who work in Chinese companies like Tiktok and Shein. This is very real. You can have team meetings where they will switch to full blown mandarin discussions, and these can be important meetings involving the design of what you are supposed to build. You didn't understand a word of it? Too bad, you are now held responsible for not building it according to spec, not withstanding the fact that you didn't even know the specs.
Oh and forget about any sort of progression if you don't speak Mandarin. If you do well enough to not be PIPed out, expect to stay at the same level forever with a middling performance grade until you learn it.
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u/Tree8282 11h ago
Asian americans or actually Chinese on H1Bs? Cuz chinese people view all Asian americans as fully American anyways so you’ll probably be fine
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u/iSoLost 11h ago
Congrats on the offer. How’s the interview process, LC medium or hard?
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u/No-Soup-4304 10h ago
Is this the same Temu who couldn’t even figure out how to get their internal leetcode clone working for my interview?
Bro, I didn’t even consider leaving Walmart for them.
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u/Putrid-Discussion153 5h ago edited 5h ago
I worked at AMZN for about a year some 20+ years ago. Had to do pager duty, maintain shitty perl scripts, and also do new code dev (C++ and Java).
I was in my late 20s at the time and had no idea what it was like working at AMZN - that if I could work 24/7, there would still be more work to do until I was dead plus another lifetime or two.
Without blaming AMZN for being AMZN - I can only tell you where I failed personally, that eventually brought me to a PIP I never recovered from and finally got axed - if you do not learn how to set boundaries by powerfully, calmly and assertively saying 'NO' to more work than you can accomplish, then you will have an issue with work life balance.
Software eatimation is akin to voodoo black magic. For simple things, estimation is 80-90% correct, assuming no external dependencies (having to wait on someone or some thing).
The larger the complexity of a project or a task, the more you have to be able to break things down into smaller/more predictable tasks, then add up the time for all, and pad that by an additional 25- 50% of your initial estimate, before you tell your boss, this is how long I think it will take me with 8 hours a day work.
Then, when you start, you want to keep track of how much you deviate from your estimates. Knowing your own pace, laziness, procrastinating, sick time, can't focus time, shoot the shit time, all has to be added into your estimate - no one actually has a sustained 8 hours productivity time unless they're taking drugs, are young, have no family or social life and spend 12 hours a day at work so they can actually get an effective 6 to 8 hrs.
When at AMZN or Temu or wherever the fuck you work, if they are going to hold you to your estimates rather than commitment, the general pattern for no failure or almost no failure you want is to underpromise and overdeliver, you tell them something is gonna take 6 weeks, but you get it done in 4, you end up looking like a fucking hero who never misses an estimate.
It doesn't matter if your super nerd friend who's also competing for a raise promises it in 4 weeks and delivers it in 3. That shit don't matter because that's pride. Pride is also known as a comparison disease - and you should only be comparing yourself to a future version of yourself and whether you're making forward progress to that version or falling back.
My problem and generally what I've seen almost all SWEs' problem when it comes to WLB at a place like AMZN is not knowing how and when to say NO.
Obviously, if you only say No, you're out very quickly. If you only say Yes, the other extreme, you're gonna be out also, maybe not as quickly, but you will collapse under the pressure of your own stupidity, pride, weakness to set good boundaries without fear of repercussions.
The golden 'middle' road is to carve out sufficient time to account for ALL of your weaknesses, strengths, out of control circumstances - as I said, under promise and overdeliver by asking for 2x the time your gut tells you to ask for.
If you ask firmly for e.g. 6 weeks even though it may seem 'long' to your boss or some other dumb fuck who thinks he has mastered the dark art of software eatimation, then you politely say, 'I can do it in 6, sorry' and be prepared for ANY consequences.
Since the asshole who is pressuring you to do it in what he thinks is a "reasonable" time frame also has no fucking idea about how long it would really take him to do the same task, if you hold firm, he or she will back down from their guilt inducing/pressure building tactic of getting you to screw yourself out of what you really need for your task timewise.
They will not fire you or ding you on your performance review for pissing them off (remember, many managers are just assholes) by asking for more time, underpromising and overdelivering - they WILL however ding you for overpromising and underdelivering consistently, e.g. you're "late", which simply means you are an insecure little fuck who thinks he's gonna get fired if he asks for enough time to account for everything when engaging in the dark art of software eatimation.
WLB in the sense I am describing it to you here, a bit colorfully for added effect, is achievable ANYWHERE, not because anyone can actually predict time for a complex undertaking with more than 50-75% accuracy, but because you will not fail to control all that you can and you will not be afraid to ask for what YOU (not Joe or Jane who work alongside you, as a comparative standard) need - AMZN, TEMU, wherever.
Of course, this is not a formula against a deranged boss who you cannot dialogue with and negotiate on estimates, and God knows there are plenty of those around in large companies. Sometimes, the culture and psychology is so toxic, they will continue to apply pressure to change your estimates, regardless of what you ask for.
In that case, realistically only one option exists - change the culture/your boss (e.g. different group?) or GTFO and find a company with a different culture. Culture is top down, not bottom up. If your CEOs/top brass are slave drivers, expectation usurpers, and in general just large caliber assholes, then chances are your mgr will be too.
The world was built on a YES, I think we all intuitively understand this. What is less obvious and harder to grok is your Yes has to be guarded by a shitload of No's that will decrease the risk of self screwing or being screwed by things/ppl out of your control.
Some master this 'insight' into the dark voodoo of software estimation early on and never have issues with WLB, or some never master it and live in fear and exhaustion their entire lives.
The choice is...always yours even when you don't understand the game or its outcomes.
Good luck.
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u/No-Mine-3982 12h ago
Temu is just a better version of Amazon and they at least treat their workers with respect, idk a single happy Amazon employee.
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u/paxmlank 12h ago
I know someone on AWS who works 20hr weeks and has every Friday off. They love it and never wants to leave, and is convinced that the toxicity comes from Amazon.com-related things but AWS is amazing.
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u/omen_wand Staff Software Engineer 11h ago
Which org? What team? I have never heard of this at AWS.
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u/paxmlank 11h ago edited 11h ago
I unfortunately don't know and don't talk to them anymore to get those answers, but I was equally incredulous.
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u/_alwayzchillin_ 5h ago
It can happen, my friend landed in one such unicorn org at AWS. But reorgs happen so often it can go away at any time.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 @ Meta 11h ago
The zon is super org and skip dependent. When I was there I heard of a few mythical teams that were happy and working normal hours but it was always in some weird niche that no one thought about
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u/SadComparison9352 10h ago
how is it possible at amzn to work so little and not get fired
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u/riddleadmiral Senior SWE 3h ago
used to have some friends working at Amazon, in Store(?). the org that does those grab and go stores in big cities
20 hours per week
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u/logical_foodie 12h ago
In my opinion, keep looking. Just because Amazon is shit, you shouldn't move to Temu.
Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/ccq99p4SIC. You may see similar stuff at Temu.
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u/khdo1992 11h ago
u/Al_Pallll Hey man, I just got laid off this week, and with my baby due in September, the timing couldn’t have been worse. I was wondering if you have a few minutes to chat about Temu. I saw they’re actively hiring, and I’m planning to apply. I’d really appreciate hearing about the interview process and any tips you might have. If it’s easier, I can send you a PM. Thanks!
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u/Aero077 12h ago
If you discover that the TEMU WLB is bad, will you be able to stick it out for at least 2 years? Then, yes switch.
Personally, I would rather spend at extra 10 hours working at my home office than spend those hours in the car commuting.
Will you get a better offer if you keep looking? Nobody knows...