Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

Why on earth?

At this point, I've read enough blog posts about leaving FAANG companies and they all paint a picture that makes me sure that I wouldn't want to work there.

This blog post didn't change anything in my mind about employment at Amazon, which was surprising in it's own way. It was an experience to read because it was different than what I expected.

It's like if you're reading stories from people who were tortured and you're cringing at every twist of the knife. Then one story is about being given paper cuts and you don't cringe at all. (not that it is a fair metaphor for something that may affect your career/livelihood like Amazon)

There are much better places to work for in Vancouver (my opinion :). Hopefully you'll land in one (should have landed that before leaving Amazon :) ). There are definitely places with better management and where good work is noticed. That said you need to be aware of the cultural differences and that things work differently than the way you're used to. I was really lucky in terms of landing in a place with good culture and a team that I really got along with, but still there were culture clashes initially (and probably to some degree still are).

Anyways, good luck at work and surviving the grey winter ;) Let me know how to get in touch if you're interested in some more local advice.

This was apparently a relatively recent change. Until about a year ago, apparently managers wrote this document. Previous feedback that the promotion process seemed random, obscure, and allowed favoritism resulted in this change being made, where employees are involved in writing their promotion document.

However, the intention isn't to focus more on documenting your promotion than doing the right things.

At least in our office, senior management is aware of the problems that have been introduced, and trying to find solutions.

> Not by writing self-promotional documents.

If you think the most important thing for promotion is writing your promotion document, you have either been misled by your manager, or you have fallen into a trap.

> Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.

In my experience, this is not true.

I have sat in promotion reviews where the manager was told to write the employee's promotion doc for them, because it wasn't worth it to frustrate an good employee who doesn't find time to write his own promotion document.

I am sorry that you had a bad experience at Amazon, but your experience doesn't match mine or any of the colleagues at our office that I know well enough to gauge their job satisfaction etc. However, a lot of your sentiments have been reported to arise in junior employees (who seem to focus too much on reaching promotion instead of on developing themselves).

Your case may have been different because you seem to have had a bad hiring experience, where you should have been hired as an SDEII, not an SDEI. But, your manager should have sorted this out for you (by doing the work to fast-track your promotion without letting you do all the document-writing). Either you had a bad manager, or you didn't discuss this with your manager adequately.

I think it is unfair for you to judge the whole company based on what seems to be one bad manager.

From his essay ... Amazon seems like reasonably well run large company by most standards.

The author maybe doesn't seem to grasp that large teams doing big things don't seem hugely efficient.

The bit about the Canada/US border trip was rich, they're trying to get stuff done, it's not like their flagrantly in violation of anything.

"My manager told me it is trust that I yet to earn — people don’t trust my judgement and I need to build good relationships with decision makers. I agreed. But that what is called “politics”. "

It's often in addition to politics, but it's not just politics.

Trust, relationships, competency - those are real things.

Surely some people don't want to work at large organizations, but the author I believe maybe needs some experience to grasp that this is what it means.

I would say to the author: welcome to how it is.

I think the author should have stuck it out for a couple of more years, they might have learned a lot before doing something much more aspirational.