At one (Intel from 2010-2015), I was on the hardware and manufacturing side. I was one of the hamsters keeping the Moore's Law Treadmill spinning. It was a great place to work. Almost without exception, my colleagues and managers were smart, well-intentioned, hard-working, good communicators, conscientious. We were "extracting value" as you put it, but we were doing rational and systematic things to produce great products: lower energy consumption, more capabilities, and more reliable with each new generation of semiconductor process.
At the other (Amazon 2020-2024), I was working on cloud service software. The internal processes were a mess, and the quality of the products--particularly in terms of reliability and documentation--was frankly horrible. AWS seemed to be coasting on its existing near-monopoly status in a lot of areas. With a few exceptions, I found the managers to be terrible. It was difficult to develop new things and to advance career-wise, and everything got tangled up in internal politics and poor communication even though Amazon claims to be averse to such things unlike "legacy" companies.
At one (Intel from 2010-2015), I was on the hardware and manufacturing side. I was one of the hamsters keeping the Moore's Law Treadmill spinning. It was a great place to work. Almost without exception, my colleagues and managers were smart, well-intentioned, hard-working, good communicators, conscientious. We were "extracting value" as you put it, but we were doing rational and systematic things to produce great products: lower energy consumption, more capabilities, and more reliable with each new generation of semiconductor process.
At the other (Amazon 2020-2024), I was working on cloud service software. The internal processes were a mess, and the quality of the products--particularly in terms of reliability and documentation--was frankly horrible. AWS seemed to be coasting on its existing near-monopoly status in a lot of areas. With a few exceptions, I found the managers to be terrible. It was difficult to develop new things and to advance career-wise, and everything got tangled up in internal politics and poor communication even though Amazon claims to be averse to such things unlike "legacy" companies.