Not the OP, but I worked at amazon for a year. I didn't want to pay back the signing bonus and relocation fees, or I would have quit earlier. Seattle has tons of way better opportunities for software developers.
Honestly, the stress originates from both. There was a lot of pressure to work ridiculous hours during the week and come in during the weekends (wtf??)
On top of that, the tools sucked. They give you a shitty laptop (frugality) that would go to the "locked" screen after x minutes if you were idle, and logging in could take 10 minutes because it was attached to an AD network and sometimes decided to use the server in China for authentication (seriously?)
If your keyboard broke or something of the sort you had to wait in line for hours to get another (crappy) working one.
They force you to use homegrown tools and plugins that are crashy and frustrating. I was soo tempted to just spend all the time fixing the tools, but I'm sure that would have gotten me into trouble, though it would have probably improved every software engineer's productivity.
This was a few years ago. Maybe someone has fixed all this by now :)
I think you can specify the VPN server. I do it all the time and never let it auto-pick.
Keyboard and other minor equipment acquiring process is also fixed/streamlined now. Its much more self-service and does not require standing in queue or getting manager approval.
And on top of all, the one thing I really respect/revere at Amazon are the builder tools. They are probably the best I've seen so far! And yeah, this is probably today and I've heard it was bad a few years back.
But I can relate to working on weekends though. That still remains.
As a kid who wasn't so poor, but did have a few poor friends, I can point out some anecdotal differences:
My parents had time to show interest in my school activities, discuss what we were learning, and find out if I needed help. When I couldn't understand centripetal force to my satisfaction for my 5th grade science fair project about the yoyo, they invited their NASA friend over for dinner so he could talk about it with me.
I never wondered if my parents could afford to buy school items. I never worried about my parents being in a bad mood because they lost their jobs or couldn't afford to put food on the table and go to a relative's funeral. (I remember being at a friend's house while his parents were fighting about this.)
I had a friend whose parents were very poor when her father lost his job, he was in a horrible mood for weeks and then turned to alcohol. Growing up in that kind of environment is incredibly stressful.
I didn't understand it so much as a little kid, just later. For me, getting a B was a horribly stressful event. My parents might be disappointed and I might be stupid. For my friend being home was a horribly stressful event. Grades never mattered at all to her. Her parents didn't have time to pay attention to her schoolwork, they had other more important things to worry about.
Honestly, the stress originates from both. There was a lot of pressure to work ridiculous hours during the week and come in during the weekends (wtf??)
On top of that, the tools sucked. They give you a shitty laptop (frugality) that would go to the "locked" screen after x minutes if you were idle, and logging in could take 10 minutes because it was attached to an AD network and sometimes decided to use the server in China for authentication (seriously?) If your keyboard broke or something of the sort you had to wait in line for hours to get another (crappy) working one. They force you to use homegrown tools and plugins that are crashy and frustrating. I was soo tempted to just spend all the time fixing the tools, but I'm sure that would have gotten me into trouble, though it would have probably improved every software engineer's productivity. This was a few years ago. Maybe someone has fixed all this by now :)