11 ms·

Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started

201 points by agoldis 8y ago

JimGuns 8y ago
This is how every big tech company operates.
twblalock 8y ago
This 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.
- simaracode 8y ago
  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.
  - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 8y ago
    I don't think it's so cut and dried. I concur that "100% it’s part of your job" in the sense that ultimately you are responsible for looking after your own interests, but disagree that this completely absolves your manager / company responsibilities to evaluate promotions by their own initiatives. If anything, not doing so sows discontent. I was (un)fortunate that my first few managers were proactive in rewarding my good performance, until I had a manager who wasn't. Under the new manager, my peers had all been promoted in due time, and my feedback from them and said manager had been positive, as he'd expressed during our frequent 1:1, so I wasn't worried about my progression. That was until I casually brought the subject up at a 1:1. He of course affirmed that it would be forthcoming, but from his demeanor my gut told me that he hadn't given it a thought until that moment. I believe this was not out of malice or office politics, and in retrospect my coworkers had dropped hints to me that I should have broached the subject sooner rather than later -- this was how this organization operated -- but the idea was so foreign to me that I didn't quite process their message. Had it been malicious I would have been screwed. Ever since I've erred on the side of impudence. I hate it, but...[0] No analogy is perfect, but suppose if you do your job, you expect to be compensated; if you do a good job, you expect to be promoted, get a raise / bonus, etc. Would it be acceptable for a company to not pay its employees unless they bring it up each pay period, because it's "100% [...] part of [their] job"? Indeed there are industries -- often low end retail -- where this happens a lot, and this assuredly contributes to employee dissatisfaction. Similarly, some people would prefer if their work speak for itself, and managers / companies wouldn't neglect to promote them just because they don't bring it up. When the OP found out that's not now it worked at Amazon (and many other large enterprises), he was understandably miffed, as I was from my own experience. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  I struggled with the same concept myself. A decade ago my manager provided an additional perspective : initiative, eagerness to succeed,ambition... Desire to grow and willingness o work for it, are qualities the company appreciates in addition to "Doing your job". The onerous process is not maybe the best way to measure it, but it's the best way many big companies have. Explained that way, the 'gating' is a little bit easier to understand. I still struggle with it every time I need to invest the work, but c'est La vie.
- agoldis 8y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out! I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that: > focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC. Not by writing self-promotional documents. > Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. 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. > 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. Do you think I came from Tel Aviv to Vancouver AND brought my family to just "do the job" and not to exceed? And, moreover, write and share an article about that? No.
  - throwawayamzn98 8y ago
    >Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC. >Not by writing self-promotional documents. >> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. >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. You're stating the problem to be documenting. Yes, Amazon, I, and many others think that having concrete examples and data outlined explicitly is a good way to make these important decisions. Otherwise you have nepotism and gut-feeling type promotions for employees. If you thought about this more, would you really want promotions handed out randomly? How else do you show you're "completing activities, optimize, reduce costs, work on POC". Do you want to leave this all up to one person, your manager? What if they have a slight against you? Do you want your manager to do the work of documenting your progression? You still run into the single point of failure problem, on top of your manager's workload increasing for each developer, on top of them usually being already busier. Amazon et. al. constantly seek data on doing these types of things better, but you haven't proposed much of an alternative. (Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own, not my employer's)
- cblum 8y ago
  > Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. That was exactly his point though. He hoped that he would get promoted by doing an awesome job, by going beyond what was merely expected as "done". I know where he's coming from. I've had one job in my career that was exactly like that (and I miss it dearly). I never really worked on promotions while on that job. I was very passionate about the stuff we were doing and made sure we were always building the right product for our customers, made sure our code was excellent, made sure we fixed bugs quickly, etc. And I didn't do those things by going around politicking. I just came in every day, sat at my desk, wrote code, had technical discussions with other folks, did code reviews, etc. I got two promotions while on that job. They always came as a surprise and came with a brief talk with management about how much they appreciated my contributions and my technical skills. These days I just dread all the career stuff. Thankfully I'm in a position at my current company where I can just "park" for the rest of my time there if I want to. The last thing I want to do when going to work is politicking and forking alliances and whatnot. I want my technical work to speak for itself. If that's not enough, I don't care. I make more than enough to make a good living.
  - agoldis 8y ago
    very exact description! thank you!
- hef19898 8y ago
  There is one very important destinction to make here. Exceeding expectations =/= focuding on your promotion. The first thing is about focusing on your job and getting things done, improving things. The latter is about making the right connections and playing political games. At one point this means that people focusing on their job are being played by those focusing on their promotion. And tthe job-focused people become a threat as well once reality hits and performance does matter. And if focusing on your promotion is your job according to Amazon, well than there famed leadership principles, Customer Obsession being the first that comes to mind, are just words on some document you have to use for political purposes. What that means for Amazon as a company is everyones guess.
willio58 8y ago
Stories 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.
- themoat 8y ago
  Ask lots of questions in those interviews. There are medium sized companies try to emulate giants. You can wind up with a company that's not going to pay you as well as a giant, but tries to implement all the rigid, bureaucratic policies of a giant. Speaking from my own mistake.
- lapitopi 8y ago
  Always take other people’s experience with a grain of salt. You don’t know their motivations or their biases or even their situation. Even if what you just read is 100% true, it’s from someone else's perspective. So you don’t know what you are missing. I have worked in both big companies and small. Politics abound in all of them. In my opinion company culture plays a large role in how toxic the place really is. Another factor is your manager. Sometimes they can even compensate for toxic culture by shielding you from it and having a pleasant environment to work in. Unfortunately I have not been able to come up with a great set of questions to divine whether someone is a good manager or not. It totally depends on how much they believe in having your back vs having their own backs. Don’t let experiences like these discourage you. There are plenty of big companies where you can have a sizeable impact because team sizes are small and the work is challenging. And there are plenty of small to mid size companies that are just surviving from one round of funding to the next on the whims of their investors. Only way to find out is ask a lot of questions and try a few of them.
- lsc 8y ago
  so, just a datapoint, but I personally am much more consistently happy with my situation at large companies. Smaller companies tend to be dominated by how good your boss is (or isn't) - and even when you get a good boss, the small companies just don't have the resources, usually, to treat you as well. There's also the other side of impact. Sure, it's easier to have a larger impact the smaller the company is. But... the other side of that is that there is a lot of pressure. At least on the ops side of things, a lot of my happiness has to do with how often the pager goes off. I mean, I don't mind being on pager; I can stay sober. But... if the pager goes off too often? we've got a problem, because my performance degrades as my sleep does. You can wake me up once a week. Maybe twice. More than that? and yeah, I'm not going to be so useful. Larger companies have a lot more bureaucracy, sure, but that's good in some ways. For me? the biggest way that the bureaucracy is good is that it makes my relationship with my immediate supervisor (and those up the chain) feel a lot less feudal. It feels like it's a lot less dependent on my personal relationship with this person. (I mean, sure, your supervisor and your personal relationship with them is still important... just not as important) But... a lot of people like smaller companies, too. It's a good idea to try both. But if you do get the chance to try working at a FANG company, I recommend you take it; If you don't like it and you leave after a few years, it will make it a lot easier to interview at smaller places.
jurassic 8y ago
I 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.
- kev009 8y ago
  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.
  - jurassic 8y ago
    Not sure what you mean by "sycophant recruiters". Most recruiters I've worked with were strongly motivated to bring good people on board at their company. If you are an attractive candidate but you let them know you're only interested in pursuing roles at a certain (non-entry) level, they'll either make adjustments to slot you into interviews for that other higher role or the process doesn't move forward and everyone avoids wasting time. It's really a win-win to be upfront about your leveling expectations early.
    - bradknowles 8y ago
      There are good recruiters, who do tend to act this way. But then there are also bad recruiters, who seem to think that blindly generating as many candidates as possible and throwing against the wall as many resumes as possible, is a good way to do business. I’ve learned enough in this business that I have been able to avoid bad recruiters for a long time, but not everyone has that kind of luxury — or luck. Of course, even if you do get a good recruiter who has contacted you about a position, it’s entirely possible that it might be for a shitty company, or maybe just not a company or position you are well suited to. There’s lots of things that can go wrong in this process.
faitswulff 8y ago
> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc
- joffotron 8y ago
  Honestly, everyone needs to watch this. It's not just Amazon, but so many companies have these absolutely toxic and ridiculous "principles"
0xmohit 8y ago
> 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.
- agoldis 8y ago
  Thank you for your comment. Of course that is not how I see promotions work, I have added a remark to the original article to make myself clear. Thank you again.
Pfhreak 8y ago
I 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.
- nicolashahn 8y ago
  I don't understand why Amazon would call out games specifically - is there some rationale behind it?
  - hackcasual 8y ago
    Probably because they're in the game business now.
    - test1235 8y ago
      They are? How so?
      - Kurtz79 8y ago
        https://www.amazongames.com/ https://www.amazongames.com/
    - Jach 8y ago
      The policy predates their entry though.
paulcole 8y ago
Interesting take on getting promoted: > It is not enough to get your job done and help the company grow. It’s a promotion, not a participation medal. Yes, you should get a salary increase but are you qualified for a new title and responsibilities just by showing up and performing adequately at what you were assigned to do and nothing else?
- agoldis 8y ago
  Thank you for your comment. Of course that is not how I see promotions work, I have added a remark to the original article to make myself clear. Thank you again.
NAHWheatCracker 8y ago
This was the least convincing blog post on this sort of topic that I've read. I didn't see anything that actually painted Amazon in a very bad light. I think anyone should expect bureaucracy to be a major problem at a large company. Complaining about promotions seems a bit unfair since he was only there for 5 months. Moreover, I saw quite a few senior engineers and discovered that I do not want to be alike… This is one thing that I've seen at several jobs I've had and it seriously concerns me. I'm almost 10 years into my career and I've worked at 5 companies. I don't feel like I've ever worked with someone that I really thought of as someone who I want to be like. The senior engineers, tech leads, and managers I've worked with are usually people with more seniority, less energy, and not much more wisdom. It wouldn't make me so anxious, but that I'm getting to the point where I feel like I'm their position and my less experienced coworkers are thinking the same of me. I try to be better but I've gotten tired of it and I get the feeling that everyone else is tired too.
- agoldis 8y ago
  Thanks for your comment! To be fair, I didn't try to convince you - I was sharing my experiences and observations :) Most chances the article is not as good as others, I am not a writer (otherwise I wouldn't have a problem with writing a promotion document) :)
  - NAHWheatCracker 8y ago
    I didn't intend my lack of conviction entirely as a criticism. 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)
    - 8y ago
yc-kraln 8y ago
This is expected and predicted by the Amazon vesting schedule. In the case that you're curious, it's 5% in the first year, 15% in the second year, and then 20% per half-year until four years is over. Almost like they expect people not to stick around...
pfarnsworth 8y ago
The author sounds super naive. I'm not sure what exactly he was expecting, I believe this is how life is at all these big companies. Any of the FANGs will have the same level of bureaucracy. If you want a different lifestyle, you can join a startup or a smaller company, but this has been the way it has always been. Amazon is one of the largest tech companies in the world, I'm not sure why he would think it's somehow not a huge bureaucracy and a certain way of doing things with so many engineers.
- agoldis 8y ago
  Agree - I was very naive. I worked for Intel for 6 years, but hoped that one of FANGs is different. Seems like no :)
Caillebotte 8y ago
20% coding is very sad. I hate to think how many great minds are being wasted this way. After starting work at a startup, I feel more fulfilled in my daily life. I can easily say I spend around 80-90% of my time coding and feel I contribute much more than I ever did at any of these jobs.
- laurentoget 8y ago
  20% does sound sad but 80-90% is not very realist if you are working on a project involving several people working for several years.
- imhoguy 8y ago
  In an already grown company there may be not much of new code to be produced outside R&D departments. Most of others work is ongoing operational maintenance, gluing customizations, not-yet automated grunt stuff.
encoderer 8y ago
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”. I don't think this is a good example of "politics". I think this is primarily about earning a place in a team among the people who have been sweating it out for years. It doesn't happen overnight, and it's especially difficult in an entry-level role.
- cblum 8y ago
  I think this might be a cultural issue. It's anecdotal but I think I can offer some perspective. I've been living in the US for several years now, but I'm originally from Brazil. I started my career there. In Brazil, my experience was always that people initially trust newcomers, and only lose their trust if they fuck up. I always felt trusted when joining a new team, and thankfully I never fucked up. But I saw people fuck up, and other people lost their trust on them very quickly. In the US (and I think Canada, both countries seem to have similar work cultures), it seems to be the opposite. When you join a new team, you have to prove yourself worth of their respect. You have to do some initial labor to show that you deserve your place in the team. That's been the case in every team I've joined so far. I don't know what it's like in Israel, but I wonder if the author of the post had a similar experience to mine.
  - sridca 8y ago
    I think India is similar to Brazil in that regard. If someone truly cares about cultural acceptance (above and beyond the superficial diversity jabber), it would serve them well to start by replacing trust (and distrust) with intelligent appraisals.
- sridca 8y ago
  In any case, why do we humans persistently depend on the emotion of trust instead of using our native intelligence to appraise each situation as they come? Trust is an archaic emotion that may have had its value in primitive societies living amidst predators and such demanding instant reactions. However we now live in a safer modern society where newcomers to the team don't come with an intention to kill and plunder others; why not just use the brain's intelligence to deal with their proposals? Why keep these archaic hierarchies alive and the need to "earn one's place" in them?
forkLding 8y ago
To be truthful, it aint a fair world out there, everything tends to deviate to playing some sort of game. Seems like OP just didn't want to play that game. Although I do feel this is a norm in all big modern companies not just tech. Realistically there isn't a big life goal or changing-the-world impact for any one employee inside the company. I would say once you enter the company, just get used to playing the game and keep advancing, its easier that way.
ron_swanson_00 8y ago
One thing that I would keep in mind when evaluating the post is how Amazon is organized. I've been with AWS for about 1.5 years and I've found that experiences are different from team to team. There are even larger differences between internal orgs. I would describe Amazon internally as a collection of startups. Each one is run a bit differently than the others. For me, one of the teams I was on was pretty awful, and the other team was great. Each team is pretty unique.
agentofoblivion 8y ago
I work at Amazon. Was hired in at L4 and promoted to L5 within one year, which is a little early, but not by much. I think 18 months is typical. I want to say that I like their promotion process. It’s designed to be transparent and owned by the employee. I’d much rather have an ongoing conversation with my manager, using the doc as an excuse, that keeps the conversation on how close I am and exactly what I need to do to progress. This is far better than just working heads down and quietly wondering when you’ll be picked. It’s also designed to persist in the event your manager leaves, which is a high likelihood event in the tech world on the scale of years. It would be really bad if your promotion totally depended on the support of one person who then leaves and you’re left at square one. At Amazon, boxes are ticked and they stay ticked if your manager leaves. Yes, it takes time to maintain this doc. But it mostly is an excuse for you to have an open conversation with your manger and focus the conversation in a way that helps you grow and progress. It may not be perfect, but it’s designed with all the right intentions and in my experience has been very helpful and effective. I also struggled with trust early on, but that’s not an amazon thing, that’s a human thing. People will tend to not take the new guy whose preaching big changes seriously, especially if he’s at a lower level. In that case, I found the best strategy was to find the high trust members, get their buy in first, and then present it as “I was talking with X and we think...”. That way, you get to borrow their trust level and he heard, and stengthen the relationship with them. Plus, they probably are better and smarter than you, so the conversation will likely lead to you learning something and being better off than just pushing your ideas on people that aren’t really listening.
- agoldis 8y ago
  One of the best comments so far. Thank for taking your time and writing it! Good luck at Amazon!
jijji 8y ago
In his post he talks about how he doesn't want to talk about money. I'd rather tell them I need $200/hr up front in the first email then to have to go through all their time wasting interviews and find out they aren't going to pay what I need.
- windowsworkstoo 8y ago
  Yep, this is what I do for solicited and unsolicited approaches. Weeds out the pretenders and also signals that you are a serious person. Price signalling works!
jancsika 8y ago
> internal set of tools for source code control Why on earth?
sonnyblarney 8y ago
This isn't a very good rant, and I'm not sure I respect the author's decision (though ultimately of course it's a very personal one so we have to respect that). 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.
- agoldis 8y ago
  Thank you for your comment and advises. My target wasn't to disgrace Amazon and tell people how terrible it is. I wanted to share my experience, possible help others to get better idea about what to expect. I do not neglect the qualities and agree that "Trust, relationships, competency - those are real things.", but I like them pure, non-situational and not manipulative. And that was not the case.
filmgirlcw 8y ago
My biggest takeaway from reading this isn’t that Amazon is a bad place to work — but that it was the wrong place for the author to work. To me the biggest red flag was the fact that the role/team wasn’t discussed until AFTER the interview was over. Maybe that’s common with hiring events — I work at Microsoft but I’ll be the first to admit I’m very OOTL when it comes to recruitment efforts outside of my team/org. In any event, I know for me, I would need to know what I was going to do and who my manager would be before accepting a job. In fact, I turned down a job that paid extremely well, in part because I had no concrete idea of what I would be doing - and this was after I’d met with the hiring manager and I had a title for the role. Still, the whole thing was really ambiguous and that made me uncomfortable, despite the strength of the offer. That might not be the same for everyone, but it is for me. But the broader problem I think was that the author just didn’t gel with how things worked at that office. And that’s totally OK. It’s better to leave early than to stick around, especially if you know that early. The only area I think the author was overly naive was on the promotion front. Obviously there will always be exceptions and edge cases, but it’s generally a bad idea to take a lower-level job with the hopes that you’ll be able to get quickly promoted. Even the most aggressive promotion schedule at a place like Amazon would take more than five months to go from SDE1 to SDE2. I feel the same way about taking jobs as I do about buying new, unproven gadgets. It’s bettet to take the job based on what it is on paper when you accept it and not what it might evolve into over time. Now, if the job isn’t what was promised and you were actively misled about what you would be doing versus what you actually do (and I’ve had that happen and I’ve also seen that happen to others), that’s a sign you should leave that job as soon as possible. But I don’t think that was the scenario here. I think the author took whatever job he could get because he assumed he’d be able to quickly turn the job into what he wanted it to be. It usually doesn’t work that way. But that’s ok! We’ve all made the wrong decision about a job or a relationship or whatever. I think it’s great the author was able to realize Amazon wasn’t the right place for him sooner rather than later. But I don’t think that necessarily says anything about Amazon — just about the experience and fit with the author.
- agoldis 8y ago
  I read your comment and I'd say you are completely right. The hiring event is sponsored by Amazon's divisions, it's a massive recruitment - like, we need 30 new developers - go end get em. There was no single person from the actual team I was working for at the interviews. After I passed the interviews, I was told that they still don't know about the specific job because organizing the paperwork for relocation would take few months, until then many things can change. As soon as papers arrived I insisted to talk to my future manager (I verified after I started that I was the only person who did that - other people were just assigned a position within a team). It was too late thought - I was already committed to move. I do take responsibility setting wrong expectations, and as you pointed out (and the article states) it is my experience and observations of what happened.
daxfohl 8y ago
My one advice is don't take a job that you think is below your qualifications. Don't even apply for them. Because now you're stuck with SDE1 on your resume after ten years of experience. That makes it look like you must not be very competent at what you do. It's always better to hold out for a higher position. If enough time goes by with no bites then maybe reduce your expectations. But shoot high and don't worry about rejection. And definitely don't worry about getting in over your head. If you're competent you'll be fine wherever you land. If not, well you won't be the first person in the world who has been underqualified at their job. But the future opportunities will be greater with the bigger role on your resume.
dustinmoris 8y ago
I find it silly how he was only offered a junior developer role, but then again if it was me I'd probably tell the recruiter that I don't care about my job title, if I have a certain set of skills and experience I just want to get at a minimum the market value compensation for it, so as long as that is the case they can knock themselves out with silly job titles. If they can't pay what I'm worth then I wouldn't take the job even if my title was CTO.
- meritt 8y ago
  In startups, titles are more meaningless but at large companies like Amazon your compensation is completely tied to your job title. The two are inextricably linked.
vfc1 8y ago
Sounds just like any other large organization that I've worked at: Too much bureaucracy, mindless procedures, politics, blame deflection, responsibility avoidance, siloed teams hiding behind a black hole support email address that don't communicate with other teams, etc. Its the same everywhere, its not just Amazon. There are only a couple of realistic solutions: - become a freelancer: this way you can switch jobs every year with no problem. You will get new challenges and you will be able to face this bureaucracy knowing that its only temporary - work at a smaller company: they often pay the same or more and have a much more personal work environment, with much more opportunities for gaining extra responsibility and performing tasks that are actually relevant to the company. - start your own small business and become your own boss. This way the only bullshit that you will have to put up with is your own. Other than that, this is the definition of being an employee working for someone else: you are either doing something that someone else doesn't want to do, or that they don't know how to do. You will have limited responsibility, and be assigned a supervisor that will control your every move. That is not going to change, its the same everywhere.
andybak 8y ago
What strikes me most about the articles about the big tech giants is this: They are hiring the brightest and best, paying them large sums of money and then completely squandering their abilities. I mean there's people who in startup could be single-handedly creating best-of-breed software and Google would have them tied up in some marginal aspect of a marginal product. I'm not sure how that makes me feel...
meuk 8y ago
> "The major algorithmic / coding / intellectual challenges that I faced were of 3 types: - dealing with technical debt of other systems - strictly following a policy or a standard - fighting with the in-house dev environment > There were very few interesting problems that actually required to find an effective solution / optimize / enforce security." That's how I feel as well at my current job, but it seems to hold for almost all IT jobs I've encountered.
purplezooey 8y ago
"...trying to only work on projects that contribute to your promotion..." Too many people like this in medium/big companies. Don't be that guy.

201 points by agoldis 8y ago

This is how every big tech company operates.

This 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.

simaracode 8y ago
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.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 8y ago
  I don't think it's so cut and dried. I concur that "100% it’s part of your job" in the sense that ultimately you are responsible for looking after your own interests, but disagree that this completely absolves your manager / company responsibilities to evaluate promotions by their own initiatives. If anything, not doing so sows discontent. I was (un)fortunate that my first few managers were proactive in rewarding my good performance, until I had a manager who wasn't. Under the new manager, my peers had all been promoted in due time, and my feedback from them and said manager had been positive, as he'd expressed during our frequent 1:1, so I wasn't worried about my progression. That was until I casually brought the subject up at a 1:1. He of course affirmed that it would be forthcoming, but from his demeanor my gut told me that he hadn't given it a thought until that moment. I believe this was not out of malice or office politics, and in retrospect my coworkers had dropped hints to me that I should have broached the subject sooner rather than later -- this was how this organization operated -- but the idea was so foreign to me that I didn't quite process their message. Had it been malicious I would have been screwed. Ever since I've erred on the side of impudence. I hate it, but...[0] No analogy is perfect, but suppose if you do your job, you expect to be compensated; if you do a good job, you expect to be promoted, get a raise / bonus, etc. Would it be acceptable for a company to not pay its employees unless they bring it up each pay period, because it's "100% [...] part of [their] job"? Indeed there are industries -- often low end retail -- where this happens a lot, and this assuredly contributes to employee dissatisfaction. Similarly, some people would prefer if their work speak for itself, and managers / companies wouldn't neglect to promote them just because they don't bring it up. When the OP found out that's not now it worked at Amazon (and many other large enterprises), he was understandably miffed, as I was from my own experience. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s
NikolaNovak 8y ago
I struggled with the same concept myself. A decade ago my manager provided an additional perspective : initiative, eagerness to succeed,ambition... Desire to grow and willingness o work for it, are qualities the company appreciates in addition to "Doing your job". The onerous process is not maybe the best way to measure it, but it's the best way many big companies have. Explained that way, the 'gating' is a little bit easier to understand. I still struggle with it every time I need to invest the work, but c'est La vie.
agoldis 8y ago
Thanks for pointing that out! I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that: > focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC. Not by writing self-promotional documents. > Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. 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. > 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. Do you think I came from Tel Aviv to Vancouver AND brought my family to just "do the job" and not to exceed? And, moreover, write and share an article about that? No.
- throwawayamzn98 8y ago
  >Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC. >Not by writing self-promotional documents. >> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. >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. You're stating the problem to be documenting. Yes, Amazon, I, and many others think that having concrete examples and data outlined explicitly is a good way to make these important decisions. Otherwise you have nepotism and gut-feeling type promotions for employees. If you thought about this more, would you really want promotions handed out randomly? How else do you show you're "completing activities, optimize, reduce costs, work on POC". Do you want to leave this all up to one person, your manager? What if they have a slight against you? Do you want your manager to do the work of documenting your progression? You still run into the single point of failure problem, on top of your manager's workload increasing for each developer, on top of them usually being already busier. Amazon et. al. constantly seek data on doing these types of things better, but you haven't proposed much of an alternative. (Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own, not my employer's)
cblum 8y ago
> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. That was exactly his point though. He hoped that he would get promoted by doing an awesome job, by going beyond what was merely expected as "done". I know where he's coming from. I've had one job in my career that was exactly like that (and I miss it dearly). I never really worked on promotions while on that job. I was very passionate about the stuff we were doing and made sure we were always building the right product for our customers, made sure our code was excellent, made sure we fixed bugs quickly, etc. And I didn't do those things by going around politicking. I just came in every day, sat at my desk, wrote code, had technical discussions with other folks, did code reviews, etc. I got two promotions while on that job. They always came as a surprise and came with a brief talk with management about how much they appreciated my contributions and my technical skills. These days I just dread all the career stuff. Thankfully I'm in a position at my current company where I can just "park" for the rest of my time there if I want to. The last thing I want to do when going to work is politicking and forking alliances and whatnot. I want my technical work to speak for itself. If that's not enough, I don't care. I make more than enough to make a good living.
- agoldis 8y ago
  very exact description! thank you!
hef19898 8y ago
There is one very important destinction to make here. Exceeding expectations =/= focuding on your promotion. The first thing is about focusing on your job and getting things done, improving things. The latter is about making the right connections and playing political games. At one point this means that people focusing on their job are being played by those focusing on their promotion. And tthe job-focused people become a threat as well once reality hits and performance does matter. And if focusing on your promotion is your job according to Amazon, well than there famed leadership principles, Customer Obsession being the first that comes to mind, are just words on some document you have to use for political purposes. What that means for Amazon as a company is everyones guess.

willio58 8y ago

Stories 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.

themoat 8y ago
Ask lots of questions in those interviews. There are medium sized companies try to emulate giants. You can wind up with a company that's not going to pay you as well as a giant, but tries to implement all the rigid, bureaucratic policies of a giant. Speaking from my own mistake.
lapitopi 8y ago
Always take other people’s experience with a grain of salt. You don’t know their motivations or their biases or even their situation. Even if what you just read is 100% true, it’s from someone else's perspective. So you don’t know what you are missing. I have worked in both big companies and small. Politics abound in all of them. In my opinion company culture plays a large role in how toxic the place really is. Another factor is your manager. Sometimes they can even compensate for toxic culture by shielding you from it and having a pleasant environment to work in. Unfortunately I have not been able to come up with a great set of questions to divine whether someone is a good manager or not. It totally depends on how much they believe in having your back vs having their own backs. Don’t let experiences like these discourage you. There are plenty of big companies where you can have a sizeable impact because team sizes are small and the work is challenging. And there are plenty of small to mid size companies that are just surviving from one round of funding to the next on the whims of their investors. Only way to find out is ask a lot of questions and try a few of them.
lsc 8y ago
so, just a datapoint, but I personally am much more consistently happy with my situation at large companies. Smaller companies tend to be dominated by how good your boss is (or isn't) - and even when you get a good boss, the small companies just don't have the resources, usually, to treat you as well. There's also the other side of impact. Sure, it's easier to have a larger impact the smaller the company is. But... the other side of that is that there is a lot of pressure. At least on the ops side of things, a lot of my happiness has to do with how often the pager goes off. I mean, I don't mind being on pager; I can stay sober. But... if the pager goes off too often? we've got a problem, because my performance degrades as my sleep does. You can wake me up once a week. Maybe twice. More than that? and yeah, I'm not going to be so useful. Larger companies have a lot more bureaucracy, sure, but that's good in some ways. For me? the biggest way that the bureaucracy is good is that it makes my relationship with my immediate supervisor (and those up the chain) feel a lot less feudal. It feels like it's a lot less dependent on my personal relationship with this person. (I mean, sure, your supervisor and your personal relationship with them is still important... just not as important) But... a lot of people like smaller companies, too. It's a good idea to try both. But if you do get the chance to try working at a FANG company, I recommend you take it; If you don't like it and you leave after a few years, it will make it a lot easier to interview at smaller places.

jurassic 8y ago

I 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.

kev009 8y ago
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.
- jurassic 8y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "sycophant recruiters". Most recruiters I've worked with were strongly motivated to bring good people on board at their company. If you are an attractive candidate but you let them know you're only interested in pursuing roles at a certain (non-entry) level, they'll either make adjustments to slot you into interviews for that other higher role or the process doesn't move forward and everyone avoids wasting time. It's really a win-win to be upfront about your leveling expectations early.
  - bradknowles 8y ago
    There are good recruiters, who do tend to act this way. But then there are also bad recruiters, who seem to think that blindly generating as many candidates as possible and throwing against the wall as many resumes as possible, is a good way to do business. I’ve learned enough in this business that I have been able to avoid bad recruiters for a long time, but not everyone has that kind of luxury — or luck. Of course, even if you do get a good recruiter who has contacted you about a position, it’s entirely possible that it might be for a shitty company, or maybe just not a company or position you are well suited to. There’s lots of things that can go wrong in this process.

faitswulff 8y ago

> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc

joffotron 8y ago
Honestly, everyone needs to watch this. It's not just Amazon, but so many companies have these absolutely toxic and ridiculous "principles"

0xmohit 8y ago

> 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.

agoldis 8y ago
Thank you for your comment. Of course that is not how I see promotions work, I have added a remark to the original article to make myself clear. Thank you again.

Pfhreak 8y ago

I 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.

nicolashahn 8y ago
I don't understand why Amazon would call out games specifically - is there some rationale behind it?
- hackcasual 8y ago
  Probably because they're in the game business now.
  - test1235 8y ago
    They are? How so?
    - Kurtz79 8y ago
      https://www.amazongames.com/ https://www.amazongames.com/
  - Jach 8y ago
    The policy predates their entry though.

paulcole 8y ago

Interesting take on getting promoted: > It is not enough to get your job done and help the company grow. It’s a promotion, not a participation medal. Yes, you should get a salary increase but are you qualified for a new title and responsibilities just by showing up and performing adequately at what you were assigned to do and nothing else?

agoldis 8y ago
Thank you for your comment. Of course that is not how I see promotions work, I have added a remark to the original article to make myself clear. Thank you again.

NAHWheatCracker 8y ago

This was the least convincing blog post on this sort of topic that I've read. I didn't see anything that actually painted Amazon in a very bad light. I think anyone should expect bureaucracy to be a major problem at a large company. Complaining about promotions seems a bit unfair since he was only there for 5 months. Moreover, I saw quite a few senior engineers and discovered that I do not want to be alike… This is one thing that I've seen at several jobs I've had and it seriously concerns me. I'm almost 10 years into my career and I've worked at 5 companies. I don't feel like I've ever worked with someone that I really thought of as someone who I want to be like. The senior engineers, tech leads, and managers I've worked with are usually people with more seniority, less energy, and not much more wisdom. It wouldn't make me so anxious, but that I'm getting to the point where I feel like I'm their position and my less experienced coworkers are thinking the same of me. I try to be better but I've gotten tired of it and I get the feeling that everyone else is tired too.

agoldis 8y ago
Thanks for your comment! To be fair, I didn't try to convince you - I was sharing my experiences and observations :) Most chances the article is not as good as others, I am not a writer (otherwise I wouldn't have a problem with writing a promotion document) :)
- NAHWheatCracker 8y ago
  I didn't intend my lack of conviction entirely as a criticism. 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)
  - 8y ago

yc-kraln 8y ago

This is expected and predicted by the Amazon vesting schedule. In the case that you're curious, it's 5% in the first year, 15% in the second year, and then 20% per half-year until four years is over. Almost like they expect people not to stick around...

pfarnsworth 8y ago

The author sounds super naive. I'm not sure what exactly he was expecting, I believe this is how life is at all these big companies. Any of the FANGs will have the same level of bureaucracy. If you want a different lifestyle, you can join a startup or a smaller company, but this has been the way it has always been. Amazon is one of the largest tech companies in the world, I'm not sure why he would think it's somehow not a huge bureaucracy and a certain way of doing things with so many engineers.

agoldis 8y ago
Agree - I was very naive. I worked for Intel for 6 years, but hoped that one of FANGs is different. Seems like no :)

Caillebotte 8y ago

20% coding is very sad. I hate to think how many great minds are being wasted this way. After starting work at a startup, I feel more fulfilled in my daily life. I can easily say I spend around 80-90% of my time coding and feel I contribute much more than I ever did at any of these jobs.

laurentoget 8y ago
20% does sound sad but 80-90% is not very realist if you are working on a project involving several people working for several years.
imhoguy 8y ago
In an already grown company there may be not much of new code to be produced outside R&D departments. Most of others work is ongoing operational maintenance, gluing customizations, not-yet automated grunt stuff.

encoderer 8y ago

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”. I don't think this is a good example of "politics". I think this is primarily about earning a place in a team among the people who have been sweating it out for years. It doesn't happen overnight, and it's especially difficult in an entry-level role.

cblum 8y ago
I think this might be a cultural issue. It's anecdotal but I think I can offer some perspective. I've been living in the US for several years now, but I'm originally from Brazil. I started my career there. In Brazil, my experience was always that people initially trust newcomers, and only lose their trust if they fuck up. I always felt trusted when joining a new team, and thankfully I never fucked up. But I saw people fuck up, and other people lost their trust on them very quickly. In the US (and I think Canada, both countries seem to have similar work cultures), it seems to be the opposite. When you join a new team, you have to prove yourself worth of their respect. You have to do some initial labor to show that you deserve your place in the team. That's been the case in every team I've joined so far. I don't know what it's like in Israel, but I wonder if the author of the post had a similar experience to mine.
- sridca 8y ago
  I think India is similar to Brazil in that regard. If someone truly cares about cultural acceptance (above and beyond the superficial diversity jabber), it would serve them well to start by replacing trust (and distrust) with intelligent appraisals.
sridca 8y ago
In any case, why do we humans persistently depend on the emotion of trust instead of using our native intelligence to appraise each situation as they come? Trust is an archaic emotion that may have had its value in primitive societies living amidst predators and such demanding instant reactions. However we now live in a safer modern society where newcomers to the team don't come with an intention to kill and plunder others; why not just use the brain's intelligence to deal with their proposals? Why keep these archaic hierarchies alive and the need to "earn one's place" in them?

forkLding 8y ago

To be truthful, it aint a fair world out there, everything tends to deviate to playing some sort of game. Seems like OP just didn't want to play that game. Although I do feel this is a norm in all big modern companies not just tech. Realistically there isn't a big life goal or changing-the-world impact for any one employee inside the company. I would say once you enter the company, just get used to playing the game and keep advancing, its easier that way.

ron_swanson_00 8y ago

One thing that I would keep in mind when evaluating the post is how Amazon is organized. I've been with AWS for about 1.5 years and I've found that experiences are different from team to team. There are even larger differences between internal orgs. I would describe Amazon internally as a collection of startups. Each one is run a bit differently than the others. For me, one of the teams I was on was pretty awful, and the other team was great. Each team is pretty unique.

agentofoblivion 8y ago

I work at Amazon. Was hired in at L4 and promoted to L5 within one year, which is a little early, but not by much. I think 18 months is typical. I want to say that I like their promotion process. It’s designed to be transparent and owned by the employee. I’d much rather have an ongoing conversation with my manager, using the doc as an excuse, that keeps the conversation on how close I am and exactly what I need to do to progress. This is far better than just working heads down and quietly wondering when you’ll be picked. It’s also designed to persist in the event your manager leaves, which is a high likelihood event in the tech world on the scale of years. It would be really bad if your promotion totally depended on the support of one person who then leaves and you’re left at square one. At Amazon, boxes are ticked and they stay ticked if your manager leaves. Yes, it takes time to maintain this doc. But it mostly is an excuse for you to have an open conversation with your manger and focus the conversation in a way that helps you grow and progress. It may not be perfect, but it’s designed with all the right intentions and in my experience has been very helpful and effective. I also struggled with trust early on, but that’s not an amazon thing, that’s a human thing. People will tend to not take the new guy whose preaching big changes seriously, especially if he’s at a lower level. In that case, I found the best strategy was to find the high trust members, get their buy in first, and then present it as “I was talking with X and we think...”. That way, you get to borrow their trust level and he heard, and stengthen the relationship with them. Plus, they probably are better and smarter than you, so the conversation will likely lead to you learning something and being better off than just pushing your ideas on people that aren’t really listening.

agoldis 8y ago
One of the best comments so far. Thank for taking your time and writing it! Good luck at Amazon!

jijji 8y ago

In his post he talks about how he doesn't want to talk about money. I'd rather tell them I need $200/hr up front in the first email then to have to go through all their time wasting interviews and find out they aren't going to pay what I need.

windowsworkstoo 8y ago
Yep, this is what I do for solicited and unsolicited approaches. Weeds out the pretenders and also signals that you are a serious person. Price signalling works!

jancsika 8y ago

> internal set of tools for source code control Why on earth?

sonnyblarney 8y ago

This isn't a very good rant, and I'm not sure I respect the author's decision (though ultimately of course it's a very personal one so we have to respect that). 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.

agoldis 8y ago
Thank you for your comment and advises. My target wasn't to disgrace Amazon and tell people how terrible it is. I wanted to share my experience, possible help others to get better idea about what to expect. I do not neglect the qualities and agree that "Trust, relationships, competency - those are real things.", but I like them pure, non-situational and not manipulative. And that was not the case.

filmgirlcw 8y ago

My biggest takeaway from reading this isn’t that Amazon is a bad place to work — but that it was the wrong place for the author to work. To me the biggest red flag was the fact that the role/team wasn’t discussed until AFTER the interview was over. Maybe that’s common with hiring events — I work at Microsoft but I’ll be the first to admit I’m very OOTL when it comes to recruitment efforts outside of my team/org. In any event, I know for me, I would need to know what I was going to do and who my manager would be before accepting a job. In fact, I turned down a job that paid extremely well, in part because I had no concrete idea of what I would be doing - and this was after I’d met with the hiring manager and I had a title for the role. Still, the whole thing was really ambiguous and that made me uncomfortable, despite the strength of the offer. That might not be the same for everyone, but it is for me. But the broader problem I think was that the author just didn’t gel with how things worked at that office. And that’s totally OK. It’s better to leave early than to stick around, especially if you know that early. The only area I think the author was overly naive was on the promotion front. Obviously there will always be exceptions and edge cases, but it’s generally a bad idea to take a lower-level job with the hopes that you’ll be able to get quickly promoted. Even the most aggressive promotion schedule at a place like Amazon would take more than five months to go from SDE1 to SDE2. I feel the same way about taking jobs as I do about buying new, unproven gadgets. It’s bettet to take the job based on what it is on paper when you accept it and not what it might evolve into over time. Now, if the job isn’t what was promised and you were actively misled about what you would be doing versus what you actually do (and I’ve had that happen and I’ve also seen that happen to others), that’s a sign you should leave that job as soon as possible. But I don’t think that was the scenario here. I think the author took whatever job he could get because he assumed he’d be able to quickly turn the job into what he wanted it to be. It usually doesn’t work that way. But that’s ok! We’ve all made the wrong decision about a job or a relationship or whatever. I think it’s great the author was able to realize Amazon wasn’t the right place for him sooner rather than later. But I don’t think that necessarily says anything about Amazon — just about the experience and fit with the author.

agoldis 8y ago
I read your comment and I'd say you are completely right. The hiring event is sponsored by Amazon's divisions, it's a massive recruitment - like, we need 30 new developers - go end get em. There was no single person from the actual team I was working for at the interviews. After I passed the interviews, I was told that they still don't know about the specific job because organizing the paperwork for relocation would take few months, until then many things can change. As soon as papers arrived I insisted to talk to my future manager (I verified after I started that I was the only person who did that - other people were just assigned a position within a team). It was too late thought - I was already committed to move. I do take responsibility setting wrong expectations, and as you pointed out (and the article states) it is my experience and observations of what happened.

daxfohl 8y ago

My one advice is don't take a job that you think is below your qualifications. Don't even apply for them. Because now you're stuck with SDE1 on your resume after ten years of experience. That makes it look like you must not be very competent at what you do. It's always better to hold out for a higher position. If enough time goes by with no bites then maybe reduce your expectations. But shoot high and don't worry about rejection. And definitely don't worry about getting in over your head. If you're competent you'll be fine wherever you land. If not, well you won't be the first person in the world who has been underqualified at their job. But the future opportunities will be greater with the bigger role on your resume.

dustinmoris 8y ago

I find it silly how he was only offered a junior developer role, but then again if it was me I'd probably tell the recruiter that I don't care about my job title, if I have a certain set of skills and experience I just want to get at a minimum the market value compensation for it, so as long as that is the case they can knock themselves out with silly job titles. If they can't pay what I'm worth then I wouldn't take the job even if my title was CTO.

meritt 8y ago
In startups, titles are more meaningless but at large companies like Amazon your compensation is completely tied to your job title. The two are inextricably linked.

vfc1 8y ago

Sounds just like any other large organization that I've worked at: Too much bureaucracy, mindless procedures, politics, blame deflection, responsibility avoidance, siloed teams hiding behind a black hole support email address that don't communicate with other teams, etc. Its the same everywhere, its not just Amazon. There are only a couple of realistic solutions: - become a freelancer: this way you can switch jobs every year with no problem. You will get new challenges and you will be able to face this bureaucracy knowing that its only temporary - work at a smaller company: they often pay the same or more and have a much more personal work environment, with much more opportunities for gaining extra responsibility and performing tasks that are actually relevant to the company. - start your own small business and become your own boss. This way the only bullshit that you will have to put up with is your own. Other than that, this is the definition of being an employee working for someone else: you are either doing something that someone else doesn't want to do, or that they don't know how to do. You will have limited responsibility, and be assigned a supervisor that will control your every move. That is not going to change, its the same everywhere.

andybak 8y ago

What strikes me most about the articles about the big tech giants is this: They are hiring the brightest and best, paying them large sums of money and then completely squandering their abilities. I mean there's people who in startup could be single-handedly creating best-of-breed software and Google would have them tied up in some marginal aspect of a marginal product. I'm not sure how that makes me feel...

meuk 8y ago

> "The major algorithmic / coding / intellectual challenges that I faced were of 3 types: - dealing with technical debt of other systems - strictly following a policy or a standard - fighting with the in-house dev environment > There were very few interesting problems that actually required to find an effective solution / optimize / enforce security." That's how I feel as well at my current job, but it seems to hold for almost all IT jobs I've encountered.

purplezooey 8y ago

"...trying to only work on projects that contribute to your promotion..." Too many people like this in medium/big companies. Don't be that guy.