Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
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Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
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Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#2This is the quote that stands out to me:
> You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion.
Well, yeah. That's how it is in a lot of companies, especially big ones. Doing what is expected of you in your current position is proof that you are well suited for your current position. Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.
If the company has a documented promotion process, (and it seems like Amazon does based on the article), then focusing on that process is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! They went to the trouble of spelling it out for you because that's what they want you to do!
It seems like the author's idea of "doing your job" was different than his employer's, so of course he had a bad time.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#3Stories like this make me even more sure that my path is not to join a tech giant as an engineer. The money would be great, but at what cost?
I think the best option for me is to not derive all of my happiness from the amount coming in to my bank, and instead work on things that I have a clear impact on.
When I graduate this spring I’m going to be looking at medium-sized companies with a bright future, not the shadowy giants.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#4I think this is getting upvoted because everybody likes to dogpile on Amazon. But nothing this guy says seems to reflect especially poorly on Amazon. If the author is going through another job search now I might recommend taking the piece down; it's not doing you a ton of favors.
The summary: guy interviews and accepts an SDE1 role at Amazon, guy resists building alliances with those holding power in the org, guy is surprised that his work is boring and nobody trusts him to make big decisions, guy quits.
Reality: No large company is going to let newbie junior hires call the shots. Everything in this piece was completely foreseeable and does not reflect poorly on Amazon. You have to earn trust in any company, especially when hired into a low-level role.
I also don't understand why the candidate with 10 years of industry experience decided to move forward with interviewing after being told it was for an SDE1 position. It seems like he missed a big opportunity to realign expectations at that early stage of the interview process.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#5> Supposedly, every employee should be guided by the leadership principles during their day-to-day routine. The principles actually make a lot of sense, when used appropriately. As time went, I discovered that the most common application of the principles was to creatively find a leadership principle that best supports the situation.
Bryan Cantrill has a sometimes hilarious takedown of Amazon's "leadership principles" here, which definitely corroborates this blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#6> You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion.
You aren't recognized for doing your job, you are recognized for worrying about your job.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#7This is the quote that stands out to me: > You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion. Well, yeah. That's how it is in a lot of companies, especially big ones. Doing what is expected of you in your current position is proof that you are well suited for your current position. Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. If the company has a…
Agree 100% it’s part of your job. You need to manage your promotion rhythm in any company or you will be left just to the context or interest of your manager.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#8This is how every big tech company operates.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#9I was super happy with Amazon for 6 years or so. Compensated well, worked hard but fairly (and rarely more than 40-45 hours a week), great peers, good managers, and plenty of interesting work to do.
I eventually left because Amazon restricted building games in my spare time with my friends. I just wanted to jam on the weekends on something that would never ship as a creative outlet. Turns out they have a policy that says you cannot make games (even in your spare time) with people who are not Amazon employees and you have to be willing to give up a license (or ownership) of all games related IP you develop while employed.
The policy was separate from the open source policy, and applied specifically to games. I tried everything I could think of to change it, and ultimately made the choice to walk away.
Reading through this post, I see some stuff that I agree with from my six years, and some things I disagree with (or were likely just the result of landing on a bad team). But I'd still be there if I could make some stupid games side projects.
Re: Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started
#10I think this is getting upvoted because everybody likes to dogpile on Amazon. But nothing this guy says seems to reflect especially poorly on Amazon. If the author is going through another job search now I might recommend taking the piece down; it's not doing you a ton of favors. The summary: guy interviews and accepts an SDE1 role at Amazon, guy resists building alliances with those holding power in the org, guy is…
Most of your points are good but SDE1 may be all the sycophant recruiters would let him in the door at for a variety of reasons that are a dystopian caricature of "values" and misaligned incentives. If his intentions were to quickly try his luck at a tech giant like Amazon, he probably did so the only way possible.