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My Amazon Burnout Experience

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Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#51

Post by DannyBee »

adekok wrote: post #34
richardwhiuk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> c) Leave. If you really do know best, why aren't you running your own business? That's not a good answer. A person staffing an assembly line making widgets may know how to double through-put. They do not know how to sell widgets. It's unreasonable to expect them to "start their own business" because they're competent at their job, which is probably one out of 100 jobs in the company. As for (a) and (b), I also find…

"As for (a) and (b), I also find those outcomes unsatisfactory."

That's great. It's not your company :) Seriously.

It seems you don't want to accept that it's someone else's choice what work should be happening and that you don't want to start your own business so it can be your choice.

You want some magical third option where your intrinsic brilliance is magically recognized.

This will never happen, and surprise, the average person thinks they are above average :)

Everyone thinks they know better. That doesn't make them right, despite how much they really want to believe they understand everything. Maybe some of them do. But you can't help those who don't want to be helped, and you should just go where you are actually appreciated

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#52

Post by dragontamer »

x0x0 wrote: post #44
adekok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to put a positive spin on it, this person was hired to do a job, was good at it, but was prevented from doing so by internal corporate politics. I've worked at companies where meeting major customer deliverables fell through the cracks. The managers simply didn't notice, and didn't care that the software was late and/or non-functional. What is an engineer to do? a) say he knows better, and get called "difficult to…

yeah, difficult people always scream politics after reading that post, my prob that the author is a very difficult person is 0.995. Or maybe higher. And the managers at amazon appear not to be running the company into the ground by, say, measures like company success.

> yeah, difficult people always scream politics

True, but the converse is not necessarily true either.

Not necessarily. My sister is in a position with horrible office politics. Honestly, office politics is often much lower to the ground than you'd think and is maybe only related to one boss or two bosses above you. (Affecting ~50 to ~200 people).

Middle Managers have a tough job, and too many middle managers fail to do their job at all. A completely epic fail middle-boss can break a team apart.

Even just an "adequate" middle manager will fail to reward the proper behaviors consistently (or punish poor behaviors consistently).

Honestly, if you're in a dire situation... its best to GTFO. But not necessarily out of the company... maybe out to another management chain is enough to get away from toxic team politics.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#54

Post by gotrecruit »

dragontamer wrote: post #15
shrineOfLies wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over generalized and inane comment. He/She clearly states that their progress was objective and benefitted the company. Every knows that in any workplace, corporate politics is expected, but not to an extent where someone gets sick, or frustrated after contributing so much. There is a reason meritocracy is needed, and amazon is an extreme case where meritocracy is not present, and will lead to its own collapse if not…

> 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 a…

yeah about that last line you quoted, something rubbed me in the wrong way. OP was articulate and does come across as intelligent but people who say shit like they are autodidacts, polymaths who can hold their own amongst PhDs, etc... the people in real life whom i've heard say similar hot air stuff often ends up not as good as they claim, when challenged by someone who is truly an expert.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#55

Post by SiVal »

I had to laugh at how familiar this all sounded. I've observed again and again how there was an inherent conflict of interest in a hierarchy of ambitious people trying to climb the ever-narrowing tree between serving the company and serving those few who are responsible for your own promotion.

The bigger the company gets, the bigger the conflict, because as a company grows, your contribution is known to a shrinking subset of the company and your distance from the people at the top (whose compensation is most benefited by overall company success) increases to the point that you become invisible to them.

Your promotion will almost always be determined by your immediate subtree of superiors. If you want your contribution to the company overall to count for more, you have to work for a company where your personal subtree and the company itself differ less, e.g., a smaller company.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#56

Post by dragontamer »

adekok wrote: post #34
richardwhiuk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> c) Leave. If you really do know best, why aren't you running your own business? That's not a good answer. A person staffing an assembly line making widgets may know how to double through-put. They do not know how to sell widgets. It's unreasonable to expect them to "start their own business" because they're competent at their job, which is probably one out of 100 jobs in the company. As for (a) and (b), I also find…

Honestly, c) should read

c) Leave: there are plenty of good middle managers who protect you from toxic politics from above. Find one, and stick with them.

In fact, that is almost explicitly the job of a middle manager. They provide you (and the rest of the team) clear direction when upper-level politics get toxic, and weather the storm by providing a good "face" for your project. The middle manager worries about the politics while you the engineer work your ass so that the middle manager doesn't have to take a fall.

As I've stated in other posts in this topic, you don't necessarily have to leave the company. And its often very possible to find another manager close by who can be a positive influence on the team. It may take a few tries though...

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#57

Post by calbear81 »

shoyer wrote: post #48
adekok wrote: post #13

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 disso…

As a lower level employee, you often lack the context to understand what the most important priority is. Even if you do have that context, you need to be able to convince management. Simply doing "what you think is right" is not a path to success in any company. So I'm not surprised that this turned out poorly for the OP.

The author definitely did not consider that there are goals outside of saving Amazon money that could be important from a strategic perspective that they would have appreciated his/her help on.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#58

Post by enraged_camel »

tsunamifury wrote: post #26

It seems obvious that this person is aware they don't work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot. He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that 'got in his way' were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospe…

Your post is a prime example of what is wrong with Amazon - I'm not sure if you were aware of the irony when you wrote it.

If the author is capable of developing systems that save the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year, why the fuck does it matter if they are a "great person to work with"?

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#59

Post by dantillberg »

erickhill wrote: post #50

What a shame that someone flagged this article (who knows why?). I was finding the comments rather interesting enlightening. Then 'poof!'

Aye, this is the second time today a post that's interested me has gotten tanked.

The silence with which moderation on HN is wielded has been frustrating me of late.

Re: My Amazon Burnout Experience

#60

Post by mildbow »

tsunamifury wrote: post #26

It seems obvious that this person is aware they don't work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot. He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that 'got in his way' were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospe…

Surely I'm not the only one who can see that section for what it was? That is: letting us know that pure competence wasn't the issue? FOllowing from that: if pure competence isn't what works in a meritocracy, then what does? Maybe your answer is: "team work", whatever that is?

Since we are saying "this person isn't a great person to work with", let me say the same about you. If you can't read someone else's accomplishments without the need to put it down/skim, then you probably have self-esteem issues. Consequently, you are probably not that great to work with. Additionally, you seem to support propping up "team work" at the expense of actual work (so you tend to favor status quo when it collides with competence), so that's a double no :)

Ah downvotes. I guess I am the only one.

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