10 ms·

My Amazon Burnout Experience

120 points by amzn_throwaway 11y ago

therobot24 11y ago
TLDR; expects "purist meritocracy", gets upset when there's corporate politics
- shrineOfLies 11y ago
  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 checked, which is exactly what he states.
  - therobot24 11y ago
    >> "I accomplished my goals, but I didn't gain peer support...partly because in order to accomplish my yearly goals I had to alienate my peers. I had to tear down their pet projects that were inhibiting progress, I had to inform them of misinterpretations of data that they held dear, and I had to make specific types of failures as obvious and clear as possible, whether that was with a bug report or a published analysis. This does not bode well for a promotion process that ultimately relies on having people like me. In order to do my job, I had to destroy my own political capital." The author clearly acknowledges that they're not only ignoring politics, but actively "alienating" themselves from their peers to achieve the best performance they can. >> "So why was I not promoted? There are fair criticisms of my personality that I'm willing to accept as legitimate, but my performance was real and measurable." Despite these characteristics the author still expects and insists that they deserve a promotion because of the 'merit'. Hence the TLDR.
    - ubercore 11y ago
      While reductive, I do agree with your TLDR here. The sub-text for me reading that, and I admit this may say more about me than OP, is that she sounds like she helped to make a culture that would have made _me_ develop kidney stones. I find OP's view of what the workplace "should" be a pretty insular an inflexible one.
    - wisty 11y ago
      Without specifics, it's hard to tell. It could be "I was working with dangerously incompetent buffoons, and they got upset when I demonstrated that their projects where bug-ridden / physically impossible". Or the OP is nuts. Or it's somewhere in between, the OP had reasonable points but the managers struggled to understand them (or the OP had trouble getting them across). In this case, there's a fair bit of management / communications incompetence on both sides.
      - therobot24 11y ago
        >> Without specifics, it's hard to tell. I'd agree in most situations, however, given that it's not uncommon for many at Amazon to move to Google, Microsoft, et al. we can make a general assumption that the average engineer isn't a "dangerously incompetent buffoon" (outliers can occur, but a whole team of such is very unlikely). Also, OP is probably not nuts, more likely a narcissist as other have commented. Of course there's many posts out there stating that management is not functioning as it should - OP paints the same picture, however, the statement provided by the author also tells of continuously combative attitude.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    author also wrote 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 had to directly refuse to work on a VP escalation So basically, (s)he was difficult to manage and assumed, at a relatively low level of visibility, to know better how to allocate his or her time than the relevant management chain. And stunningly, was not well rewarded for this behavior.
    - richardwhiuk 11y ago
      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?
      - adekok 11y ago
        > 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 those outcomes unsatisfactory. There are people who manage to get promoted in corporate hierarchies precisely because they can solve problems. By your choices (a) and (b) above, doing anything is bad, and will result in bad outcomes.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    > 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)
    - gotrecruit 11y ago
      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.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    "He/She clearly states that their progress was objective and benefitted the company." Objective? By what standard? "benefitted the company" By whose measure? By their own?
- bischofs 11y ago
  agree, this guy likes the smell of his own farts. Would not want to work for or under him.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
joezydeco 11y ago
I know Bezos had to come out and say "gee guys, nothing's wrong here, I've never seen any problems", both for the sake of positive P/R spin and for his shareholders who would rather not see a brain drain happen. But to double down and claim nothing is wrong is just inviting a flood of anecdotes from current and ex-employees, like this one and like the one from an Amazon spouse yesterday. http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/ http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo...
legitster 11y ago
I'm familiar with a high-level executive assistant at Amazon, and they are well aware of the "burnouts". It's very intentional. Amazon is acquiring young talent, extracting as much value from them, and making no efforts to retain them. Among the local tech scene in Seattle, there's a quiet view that Amazon is kind of a boot camp where young workers get experience then move on.
- smrtinsert 11y ago
  Cheap labor and nothing more. In my career I've learned "experience" 9/10 means experience working at that specific company. Different organizations use different tools, processes, and division of labor. I find time at non-prestigious X is as valuable as time at prestigious Y.
- omouse 11y ago
  >Among the local tech scene in Seattle, there's a quiet view that Amazon is kind of a boot camp where young workers get experience then move on. That's the common view of digital agencies too; the turn-over will always be high and people are there just to gain experience because the projects are between 2 to 6 months long so within 1 year you're going to be working on at least 2 projects that will launch and be visible to the public. It isn't a bad business model for the execs at the top; but eventually someone's going to eat your lunch. If you look at agencies, much of those short-term projects don't really increase revenue: I've yet to see any agency that does a retrospective with a client in the room and proves that they helped increase their revenues. In Amazon's case...well they're lucky they have a lot of cool projects to work on but others will eat their lunch eventually.
- kps 11y ago
  > and making no efforts to retain them. If you retain them, their RSUs will start to vest, and they might even approach the ‘total compensation’ dangled in front of them when they were hired.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Cut off their H1B access, then. They clearly don't believe in a shortage of tech talent since they make no effort to retain it. If talent is so plentiful they can dispose of it without care, they don't need to be importing it.
adekok 11y ago
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.
- shoyer 11y ago
  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.
  - calbear81 11y ago
    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.
jedicoffee 11y ago
"there is"...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dmourati 11y ago
"Amazon hires intelligent people, and they retain the sociopaths" That is a damning statement that unfortunately has the ring of truth to me.
- buckbova 11y ago
  To me this also rings of "I'm too morally superior to engage in corporate politics." Suck it up and kiss ass, suppress information when necessary, make allegiances, and whatever else is if you want to move up in that structure. If all this is beneath you, then time to work for yourself.
  - angersock 11y ago
    If deceit, politics, and treachery are what's required to "get ahead" in a company, it should be no surprise that anybody who has an alternative (e.g., put skill points into engineering instead of sociopath biz bro) will look elsewhere.
  - dmourati 11y ago
    Agree, ya. I have a hard time kissing ass but I realized what I needed to do to advance was a little different. In my case, the key was to stop actively pissing people off. Maybe just a change of perspective but it has helped me a good deal. People who say they don't play politics just reveal themselves as unable to perceive and react to the daily goings on.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    ... Which perhaps is a big part of what's wrong with that structure, culture, and way of life. Not the least of which is that it consists of sociopaths.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  Sounds just like the world of large law firms, actually. They hire top people from top schools, most burn out within 2-3 years and leave, occasionally someone is sociopathic enough to make it to about year 7 where they're made partner. No efforts are made to retain the people, they're just worked crazy hours until they either crack or, rarely, make partner. Even the incentives are kind of the same: Great pay and looks great on a resume. The latter allows one to move over to things with much more reasonable hours if desires, albeit for lower (but still very decent) pay. Not sure how interesting the work is for an entry level position at Amazon, but I can say at large firms, the work for first years is mind-numbing and useless, basically reviewing documents for minor things.
archimedespi 11y ago
Good grief, this is the first time I've seen Github rate limit anything.
- codazoda 11y ago
  Glad it wasn't just me. For a minute there I thought that I had done something to get rate limited personally.
- chrismarlow9 11y ago
  http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY
thoughtpalette 11y ago
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?
- chadillac 11y ago
  Same, gists are rate limited?
- niuzeta 11y ago
  Same. I guess sudden inflow of traffic triggered it. Considering it's on front page of HN on a sensitive/popular topic, I'm convinced.
- martin_ 11y ago
  Me too, luckily it's in google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
  - thoughtpalette 11y ago
    Thank you!
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- bernardlunn 11y ago
  me too
- Hydral1k 11y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kti7jV2u64sJ:https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kti7jV2... There you go buddy.
- BuildTheRobots 11y ago
ericjang 11y ago
Link is down due to Github's rate limiting. Mirror anyone?
- tostaki 11y ago
  http://pastebin.com/taccdWUn http://pastebin.com/taccdWUn
tsunamifury 11y ago
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 retrospective naiveté smacks of narcissism. I'm not saying Amazon is a great place to work -- but its clear this person isn't a great person to work with.
- slunk 11y ago
  I stopped reading a few paragraphs in when all the author had managed to convey was how great they are. I also find it strange that someone so competent who wants to remain anonymous would reveal so much information about their situation in the company. What little I read seems like it would be enough to pinpoint them within the organization.
  - Tobu 11y ago
    Hopefully enough has been altered that they can't be identified too easily. That said, it looks like they can, maybe should find better elsewhere.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    You should read the whole thing. The author may come across as a narcissist at the beginning but that wanes rather quickly - he is also quite honest and forthcoming about his own shortcomings. Everything he writes will resonate with anyone who has worked in large bureaucracies.
    - m3andros 11y ago
      Touché!
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  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"?
dantillberg 11y ago
> If I wanted to accomplish my goals (which I am ostensibly judged on for promotion), I had to do it on my own time. At a former job as a software engineer at a smallish (~250 employees or so) enterprise, I sat down quarterly with my manager to sketch out "my" goals for the quarter. I did my best to set my sights high, and I outlined technical goals (underneath most folks' radar but my own) that I wished to accomplish. Ultimately, though, I didn't have the authority to set my own priorities. Generally speaking, I was assigned work to execute, and it was my job to complete that work; I was not supposed to choose, as the OP did, that my goals were ever more important. But I did. I still tried to make progress on my goals, either by delaying completion of assigned tasks, or by staying late and hacking away after everyone else went home. Looking back, it would have been better for me (because you do get judged on this stuff in reviews) to just write down goals for myself along the lines of "do the work that is assigned to me", "keep management informed whenever I am unable to do the work that is assigned to me in the timeframe expected", and "report to the office during business hours." It's great to have employees that are passionate about making your business succeed. But you need to wield that passion during normal working hours -- don't hope that it somehow seeps out of the cracks during evenings and weekends.
fapjacks 11y ago
Amazon called me up one day trying to recruit. I haven't shuddered like that in a very long time.
- nsfyn55 11y ago
  Don't bother. At first you look at your inbox and think "Amazon? me really?" I responded only to find out this was a mass spam campaign. They found me via LinkedIn, said "Our senior management as indicated your experience is exactly what we are looking to hire", then proceeded to ask me what my experience was. Hashtag this company has become a joke.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Yeah, absolutely it's obvious. These days though it seems they send out "Your experience is exactly what we're looking for........... Come visit our hiring event in <bigass city>". I don't even read them anymore. Just straight to the trash.
chrismarlow9 11y ago
http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY mirror
fsloth 11y ago
Great text for all the green geeks moving into corporate world: not prioritizing the things your boss wants to prioritize is precisely the wrong thing to do. It's not evil, it's called building trust and trust is the key glue in all orgs. Like in any relationship, first one needs to prove that one is trustworthy. Then, if there are these great projects they need to be sold to ones boss before moving forward. While I appreciate the fact that Amazon might not have the best employer culture I think the OP would have been burnt at any big corp. It's great to have vision and initiative - but the thing is, either you do those on your own time or then get management backing first. I have the highest sympathies for burning out - it sucks. Perhaps there should be a "How to live in a corporate culture for dummies" book somewhere.
erickhill 11y ago
What a shame that someone flagged this article (who knows why?). I was finding the comments rather interesting enlightening. Then 'poof!'
- dantillberg 11y ago
  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.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    It only takes a few people flagging to kill it. Say, a few heads at Amazon. Quite annoying when there is lively discussion, I agree
SiVal 11y ago
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.
nsfyn55 11y ago
Polymath? Pshhhaw. And I thought referring to oneself as a "genius" was the pinnacle of self-aggrandizement. Sorry friend you are not a genius, you are not a polymath, and given amazon's volume a 6 or 7 figure savings is likely indistinguishable from a rounding error. And while we're on the subject. Why doesn't he share the nature of his advanced degree in a quantitative discipline that puts him on equal footing with the world's leading econometricians rather than pulling the old neo bullet dodge?
hartator 11y ago
I think it's weird that's not on the home anymore - 110 points in 6 hours as for now.
lazylizard 11y ago
our job is not to find the most efficient way to solve a problem. far from that. its to make the customer look good to his boss. - some previous workplace
LISACULLY 11y ago
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LISACULLY 11y ago
This is a testimony of how my life was transformed financially by Dr.Lawrence Super Spell world and also of how my ex got back to me but before i give you my story , i will like to say this little thing , “It is not important who you are, what you look like, or what you do.Please know that everyone has a right to a place in the society and this you can work out EASY, FAST and SWIFT when you have a good spiiritual doctor like Dr.Lawrence email him today Drlawrencespelltemple@hotmail. com You are in safe hands. he is always ready to help

120 points by amzn_throwaway 11y ago

therobot24 11y ago

TLDR; expects "purist meritocracy", gets upset when there's corporate politics

shrineOfLies 11y ago
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 checked, which is exactly what he states.
- therobot24 11y ago
  >> "I accomplished my goals, but I didn't gain peer support...partly because in order to accomplish my yearly goals I had to alienate my peers. I had to tear down their pet projects that were inhibiting progress, I had to inform them of misinterpretations of data that they held dear, and I had to make specific types of failures as obvious and clear as possible, whether that was with a bug report or a published analysis. This does not bode well for a promotion process that ultimately relies on having people like me. In order to do my job, I had to destroy my own political capital." The author clearly acknowledges that they're not only ignoring politics, but actively "alienating" themselves from their peers to achieve the best performance they can. >> "So why was I not promoted? There are fair criticisms of my personality that I'm willing to accept as legitimate, but my performance was real and measurable." Despite these characteristics the author still expects and insists that they deserve a promotion because of the 'merit'. Hence the TLDR.
  - ubercore 11y ago
    While reductive, I do agree with your TLDR here. The sub-text for me reading that, and I admit this may say more about me than OP, is that she sounds like she helped to make a culture that would have made _me_ develop kidney stones. I find OP's view of what the workplace "should" be a pretty insular an inflexible one.
  - wisty 11y ago
    Without specifics, it's hard to tell. It could be "I was working with dangerously incompetent buffoons, and they got upset when I demonstrated that their projects where bug-ridden / physically impossible". Or the OP is nuts. Or it's somewhere in between, the OP had reasonable points but the managers struggled to understand them (or the OP had trouble getting them across). In this case, there's a fair bit of management / communications incompetence on both sides.
    - therobot24 11y ago
      >> Without specifics, it's hard to tell. I'd agree in most situations, however, given that it's not uncommon for many at Amazon to move to Google, Microsoft, et al. we can make a general assumption that the average engineer isn't a "dangerously incompetent buffoon" (outliers can occur, but a whole team of such is very unlikely). Also, OP is probably not nuts, more likely a narcissist as other have commented. Of course there's many posts out there stating that management is not functioning as it should - OP paints the same picture, however, the statement provided by the author also tells of continuously combative attitude.
- x0x0 11y ago
  author also wrote 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 had to directly refuse to work on a VP escalation So basically, (s)he was difficult to manage and assumed, at a relatively low level of visibility, to know better how to allocate his or her time than the relevant management chain. And stunningly, was not well rewarded for this behavior.
  - richardwhiuk 11y ago
    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?
    - adekok 11y ago
      > 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 those outcomes unsatisfactory. There are people who manage to get promoted in corporate hierarchies precisely because they can solve problems. By your choices (a) and (b) above, doing anything is bad, and will result in bad outcomes.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  > 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)
  - gotrecruit 11y ago
    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.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  "He/She clearly states that their progress was objective and benefitted the company." Objective? By what standard? "benefitted the company" By whose measure? By their own?
bischofs 11y ago
agree, this guy likes the smell of his own farts. Would not want to work for or under him.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

joezydeco 11y ago

I know Bezos had to come out and say "gee guys, nothing's wrong here, I've never seen any problems", both for the sake of positive P/R spin and for his shareholders who would rather not see a brain drain happen. But to double down and claim nothing is wrong is just inviting a flood of anecdotes from current and ex-employees, like this one and like the one from an Amazon spouse yesterday. http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/ http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo...

legitster 11y ago

I'm familiar with a high-level executive assistant at Amazon, and they are well aware of the "burnouts". It's very intentional. Amazon is acquiring young talent, extracting as much value from them, and making no efforts to retain them. Among the local tech scene in Seattle, there's a quiet view that Amazon is kind of a boot camp where young workers get experience then move on.

smrtinsert 11y ago
Cheap labor and nothing more. In my career I've learned "experience" 9/10 means experience working at that specific company. Different organizations use different tools, processes, and division of labor. I find time at non-prestigious X is as valuable as time at prestigious Y.
omouse 11y ago
>Among the local tech scene in Seattle, there's a quiet view that Amazon is kind of a boot camp where young workers get experience then move on. That's the common view of digital agencies too; the turn-over will always be high and people are there just to gain experience because the projects are between 2 to 6 months long so within 1 year you're going to be working on at least 2 projects that will launch and be visible to the public. It isn't a bad business model for the execs at the top; but eventually someone's going to eat your lunch. If you look at agencies, much of those short-term projects don't really increase revenue: I've yet to see any agency that does a retrospective with a client in the room and proves that they helped increase their revenues. In Amazon's case...well they're lucky they have a lot of cool projects to work on but others will eat their lunch eventually.
kps 11y ago
> and making no efforts to retain them. If you retain them, their RSUs will start to vest, and they might even approach the ‘total compensation’ dangled in front of them when they were hired.
waterlesscloud 11y ago
Cut off their H1B access, then. They clearly don't believe in a shortage of tech talent since they make no effort to retain it. If talent is so plentiful they can dispose of it without care, they don't need to be importing it.

adekok 11y ago

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.

shoyer 11y ago
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.
- calbear81 11y ago
  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.

jedicoffee 11y ago

"there is"...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dmourati 11y ago

"Amazon hires intelligent people, and they retain the sociopaths" That is a damning statement that unfortunately has the ring of truth to me.

buckbova 11y ago
To me this also rings of "I'm too morally superior to engage in corporate politics." Suck it up and kiss ass, suppress information when necessary, make allegiances, and whatever else is if you want to move up in that structure. If all this is beneath you, then time to work for yourself.
- angersock 11y ago
  If deceit, politics, and treachery are what's required to "get ahead" in a company, it should be no surprise that anybody who has an alternative (e.g., put skill points into engineering instead of sociopath biz bro) will look elsewhere.
- dmourati 11y ago
  Agree, ya. I have a hard time kissing ass but I realized what I needed to do to advance was a little different. In my case, the key was to stop actively pissing people off. Maybe just a change of perspective but it has helped me a good deal. People who say they don't play politics just reveal themselves as unable to perceive and react to the daily goings on.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  ... Which perhaps is a big part of what's wrong with that structure, culture, and way of life. Not the least of which is that it consists of sociopaths.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
irl_zebra 11y ago
Sounds just like the world of large law firms, actually. They hire top people from top schools, most burn out within 2-3 years and leave, occasionally someone is sociopathic enough to make it to about year 7 where they're made partner. No efforts are made to retain the people, they're just worked crazy hours until they either crack or, rarely, make partner. Even the incentives are kind of the same: Great pay and looks great on a resume. The latter allows one to move over to things with much more reasonable hours if desires, albeit for lower (but still very decent) pay. Not sure how interesting the work is for an entry level position at Amazon, but I can say at large firms, the work for first years is mind-numbing and useless, basically reviewing documents for minor things.

archimedespi 11y ago

Good grief, this is the first time I've seen Github rate limit anything.

codazoda 11y ago
Glad it wasn't just me. For a minute there I thought that I had done something to get rate limited personally.
chrismarlow9 11y ago
http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY

thoughtpalette 11y ago

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?

chadillac 11y ago
Same, gists are rate limited?
niuzeta 11y ago
Same. I guess sudden inflow of traffic triggered it. Considering it's on front page of HN on a sensitive/popular topic, I'm convinced.
martin_ 11y ago
Me too, luckily it's in google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
- thoughtpalette 11y ago
  Thank you!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
bernardlunn 11y ago
me too
Hydral1k 11y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kti7jV2u64sJ:https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kti7jV2... There you go buddy.
BuildTheRobots 11y ago

ericjang 11y ago

Link is down due to Github's rate limiting. Mirror anyone?

tostaki 11y ago
http://pastebin.com/taccdWUn http://pastebin.com/taccdWUn

tsunamifury 11y ago

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 retrospective naiveté smacks of narcissism. I'm not saying Amazon is a great place to work -- but its clear this person isn't a great person to work with.

slunk 11y ago
I stopped reading a few paragraphs in when all the author had managed to convey was how great they are. I also find it strange that someone so competent who wants to remain anonymous would reveal so much information about their situation in the company. What little I read seems like it would be enough to pinpoint them within the organization.
- Tobu 11y ago
  Hopefully enough has been altered that they can't be identified too easily. That said, it looks like they can, maybe should find better elsewhere.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  You should read the whole thing. The author may come across as a narcissist at the beginning but that wanes rather quickly - he is also quite honest and forthcoming about his own shortcomings. Everything he writes will resonate with anyone who has worked in large bureaucracies.
  - m3andros 11y ago
    Touché!
enraged_camel 11y ago
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"?

dantillberg 11y ago

> If I wanted to accomplish my goals (which I am ostensibly judged on for promotion), I had to do it on my own time. At a former job as a software engineer at a smallish (~250 employees or so) enterprise, I sat down quarterly with my manager to sketch out "my" goals for the quarter. I did my best to set my sights high, and I outlined technical goals (underneath most folks' radar but my own) that I wished to accomplish. Ultimately, though, I didn't have the authority to set my own priorities. Generally speaking, I was assigned work to execute, and it was my job to complete that work; I was not supposed to choose, as the OP did, that my goals were ever more important. But I did. I still tried to make progress on my goals, either by delaying completion of assigned tasks, or by staying late and hacking away after everyone else went home. Looking back, it would have been better for me (because you do get judged on this stuff in reviews) to just write down goals for myself along the lines of "do the work that is assigned to me", "keep management informed whenever I am unable to do the work that is assigned to me in the timeframe expected", and "report to the office during business hours." It's great to have employees that are passionate about making your business succeed. But you need to wield that passion during normal working hours -- don't hope that it somehow seeps out of the cracks during evenings and weekends.

fapjacks 11y ago

Amazon called me up one day trying to recruit. I haven't shuddered like that in a very long time.

nsfyn55 11y ago
Don't bother. At first you look at your inbox and think "Amazon? me really?" I responded only to find out this was a mass spam campaign. They found me via LinkedIn, said "Our senior management as indicated your experience is exactly what we are looking to hire", then proceeded to ask me what my experience was. Hashtag this company has become a joke.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  Yeah, absolutely it's obvious. These days though it seems they send out "Your experience is exactly what we're looking for........... Come visit our hiring event in <bigass city>". I don't even read them anymore. Just straight to the trash.

chrismarlow9 11y ago

http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY http://pastebin.com/q0YYj7RY mirror

fsloth 11y ago

Great text for all the green geeks moving into corporate world: not prioritizing the things your boss wants to prioritize is precisely the wrong thing to do. It's not evil, it's called building trust and trust is the key glue in all orgs. Like in any relationship, first one needs to prove that one is trustworthy. Then, if there are these great projects they need to be sold to ones boss before moving forward. While I appreciate the fact that Amazon might not have the best employer culture I think the OP would have been burnt at any big corp. It's great to have vision and initiative - but the thing is, either you do those on your own time or then get management backing first. I have the highest sympathies for burning out - it sucks. Perhaps there should be a "How to live in a corporate culture for dummies" book somewhere.

erickhill 11y ago

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

dantillberg 11y ago
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.
- studentrob 11y ago
  It only takes a few people flagging to kill it. Say, a few heads at Amazon. Quite annoying when there is lively discussion, I agree

SiVal 11y ago

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.

nsfyn55 11y ago

Polymath? Pshhhaw. And I thought referring to oneself as a "genius" was the pinnacle of self-aggrandizement. Sorry friend you are not a genius, you are not a polymath, and given amazon's volume a 6 or 7 figure savings is likely indistinguishable from a rounding error. And while we're on the subject. Why doesn't he share the nature of his advanced degree in a quantitative discipline that puts him on equal footing with the world's leading econometricians rather than pulling the old neo bullet dodge?

hartator 11y ago

I think it's weird that's not on the home anymore - 110 points in 6 hours as for now.

lazylizard 11y ago

our job is not to find the most efficient way to solve a problem. far from that. its to make the customer look good to his boss. - some previous workplace

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LISACULLY 11y ago

This is a testimony of how my life was transformed financially by Dr.Lawrence Super Spell world and also of how my ex got back to me but before i give you my story , i will like to say this little thing , “It is not important who you are, what you look like, or what you do.Please know that everyone has a right to a place in the society and this you can work out EASY, FAST and SWIFT when you have a good spiiritual doctor like Dr.Lawrence email him today Drlawrencespelltemple@hotmail. com You are in safe hands. he is always ready to help