My Amazon Burnout Experience

Yeah, that was the bit that struck out for me. Fundamentally, an organization is impossible to manage if everyone thinks that they know best. If you argue to your line that you think that the company should do X (or more precisely, the company should pay you to do X), and lose, then you have three options:

a) Do it anyway. The company will judge you as incapable of being managed correctly and will leave you with no responsibility because you haven't displayed it.

b) Don't do it. Everyone will be happy. You may be right, but people won't care. If you want it done in the future, bring more evidence and suggest it again. Work out what people's objections are. Bring it up without implying everyone was stupid for not doing it in the first place.

c) Leave. If you really do know best, why aren't you running your own business?

FTA: I always prioritized my work based on a cost/benefit estimate. Amazon culture always places higher priority on work that direct-line superiors consider higher priority. If I had a billion dollar project in the backlog, I could still have my time redirected towards a Senior Manager's pet project or a Director's pet peeve.

i.e. the managers goals are not in line with Amazons goals. If we believe the OP. this dissonance is costing Amazon billions of dollars.

I know corporate politics are bad, but that takes the cake.

> Over generalized and inane comment. He/She clearly states that their progress was objective and benefitted the company.

Which is utter bullshit.

All progress is subjective. You can make up all the charts and numbers you like, but its not necessarily his / her job to decide on the priorities.

Honestly, there's no real point developing metrics if you can't convince upper management that the metrics you've developed are in fact superior. Selling metrics is part of your job.

It sounds to me like the anonymous github post assumed that everyone would agree with his/her math, and was pissed off that they didn't. Even if we _assume_ this "self-made" learner who couldn't work with PH.Ds or whatever did his/her math correctly... part of the job is indeed making sure everyone is on the same page and understands exactly what you're doing.

Lets look at the github post.

>> I am an autodidact (my formal education only tangentially describes what I can do), and a polymath (capable of holding my own amongst PhD-level Operations Researchers, Statisticians, Econometricians, Data Scientists, Computer Scientists, as well as Software Engineers).

That is factually false. If he/she was truly holding his own against the other researchers, then upper management would trust his/her numbers and metrics.

There's almost no point to "winning" hypothetical chatter debates by the water cooler. The important battle is convincing everyone else (such as upper management)

"Amazon hires intelligent people, and they retain the sociopaths"

That is a damning statement that unfortunately has the ring of truth to me.

I get

"Whoa there! You have triggered an abuse detection mechanism. Please wait a few minutes before you try again."

When trying to visit the page. Can anyone post it in the comments?