7 ms·

Jeff Bezos Taught Me When to Quit

158 points by lionhearted 14y ago

debacle 14y ago
This is really hard advice for a lot of people to stomach. That free-falling feeling you get the morning after you quit, and the bittersweet terror of being unemployed are brutal realities, but you're usually better off quitting in the long run.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  having a cushion in the bank helps immensely. i realize everyone has different risk tolerance levels, but... having a year of expenses in the bank gives you a much different perspective on things than living check to check, or even having 1-2 months of savings.
  - debacle 14y ago
    Very true, but it takes a long time to get there when you've got a family to support.
    - mgkimsal 14y ago
      or have been deep in debt. :) No doubt it often takes a lot of hard work and discipline. Sometimes just thinking about that being a possibility is too much for some people.
jorleif 14y ago
Nice organizational insight: Yes, in theory the higher up managers should do something about the bad boss, but they don't know there is a problem, and a conflict is hard to solve, since you don't know who is to blame (and tend to side with the boss, because he is more like yourself, and you probably know him better) High turnover, on the other hand, is a good signal of failed management, and if you can find another job, then you'll probably do better that way.
- hef19898 14y ago
  > High turnover, on the other hand, is a good signal of failed management, and if you can find another job, then you'll probably do better that way. There your right. But a non existant turn-over tends to be a sign for an unflexible and counter-innovative bureacratic culture. Or a good working climate. Hard to tell from the outside. And once you're in and can tell, well it could already be too late!
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  When the higher-up managers are the problem, there's generally little hope except to leave. I worked someplace that had about 50% of the dept leave in a 9 month period (I was part of the 50%) - towards the end of that period it was harder for people to not get the signal that there was a leadership/management problem, and the owner eventually stepped in, but not until a lot of damage was done.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mmcnickle 14y ago
I was feeling sympathetic with the author regarding the raise until I realised he was asking for it a few weeks after joining. I think his boss was right, he accepted the salary when he joined; if he didn't like it he should have negotiated at the time. I'm sure a raise would have be considered after a suitable period.
- eroded 14y ago
  Right, so he made a bad decision by taking the job. It's still much better to realise you made a bad decision and cut your losses (by quitting), than blindly sticking with it. Given he was about to quit anyway if he wasn't offered a raise, there was no harm to asking.
  - reidrac 14y ago
    But then it looks like Jeff Bezos didn't teach him when to quit. There's a difference between a bad boss and making a bad salary negotiation when you take a new job. Nice post anyway, but it's a little bit like "I've seen it in the tea leaves". Edit: typo
- wccrawford 14y ago
  It's a little more complicated than that. First, the job was more painful than expected. Second, they lied to him about starting salaries, telling him that all new employees in that position started at the rate he got. Then they hired another employee into that position for higher, just weeks later. And finally, you have to ask for things to get them. If he just quit without asking, he'd never know if he could have gotten that raise instead. Now, he knows. At a different company, he might actually have gotten it. I think he made exactly the right decision at each step, given the knowledge he had at that point. Personally, I probably would have chosen to stick it out at that company until I found that second job, instead of quitting on the spot, but that's me. But the end result wouldn't be that different.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    Sounds like he wants union work, then, with the benefits (such as complete wage transparency and information clarify) but also the detriments (lobsters in a pot pulling each other down, impossible to exceed the boundaries of a position). I don't want union work. When I hear people whine and bitch because they think they're worth as much as other employees...I don't know but it really makes me dislike them. I despise that mentality. Someone else negotiated better than you -- suck it up, crybaby.
kristovaher 14y ago
I agree that you should quit when your 'boss is bad', but in a way I also think that what you did was also stupid. Amazon is a great company and with effort you would have climbed the ladders there if you were good enough. Jeff Bezos -is- a smart guy and he is taking the company in the right direction as opposed to Yahoo!, which is a giant of yesterday. You had been there for six weeks and had a problem with someone else being hired who got paid more? Why did she get paid more? I've been in the industry long enough to know that salaries are never equal. They are part of the negotiations and are often affected by the situation the new employee is in. A lot of companies pay more for certain employees because of their background situation. If an employee is qualified and shows promise, then companies often offer a supporting hand, because otherwise the employee simply could not afford to work there. A lot of companies pay more to an employee if the employee asks for it when it is about 'their value' and not about value of someone else. It was incredibly stupid to complain that someone else is getting paid more, when you had been there for six weeks. You didn't sound much smarter than your boss there. I would never allow a new employee march in after six weeks and ask for a raise, unless they invented the next iPhone or iPad. You did spreadsheets. You would have gotten a 'no' from any and every executive I know of.
einhverfr 14y ago
I think the advice is actually good, all around. I also think it takes a certain degree of courage for a CEO to advise workers to quit on this sort of basis. Bezos's stature just grew a bit in my eyes. Additionally it's a bit of an inspiring story. There's another time and place to quit too which seems to me to be touched on in the article. If you are in a position that is well below your skills, very often times HR won't give you a chance to work to your capacity. It's usually better to quit and later re-apply than to try to work your way up within a company. I saw this at Microsoft and have reason to believe it happens everwhere else.
- aangjie 14y ago
  >If you are in a position that is well below your skills, very often times HR won't give you a chance to work to your capacity. Exactly, the lesson i learnt. Most of the times, once you are within an organization, switching roles/jobs/responsibilities is pretty impossible. I am not sure exactly how and why this works out to be so, but would probably blame it on social group-think and the fear of the unknown being amplified, when every individual states and restates the uncertainty. It's as if when it's time to make a decision, the number of people agreeing something is uncertain multiplies the actual uncertainty/risk. I don't understand how groups of people make decisions in that manner, but then i never was good with people.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    I think it's a fear on the part of HR and others that you are working at your ability. They don't see evidence of your ability even if it's there.
    - alttab 14y ago
      I think it could also be fear of sticking your neck out and failing. Now, a lot of places simply don't recognize execellence. I had to quit my job at Software GlobalCorp because my manager didn't know anything about technology or the project we were working on. I did however, continue to stick my neck out.
  - 14y ago
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
> I followed my heart. The universe took care of me. Survivorship bias. Other people have followed their hearts and the universe didn't take care of them, but their posts aren't likely to be posted on HN and upvoted to the front page.
- throwaway1979 14y ago
  Usually, I too think survivor bias. However, in this case, his action seemed to be a no-brainer. This was 1999 - not 2008 to 2012. I had just graduated from undergrad with a CS degree and was very naive. Yet, I had companies and groups within companies fighting over me. So ... he was in a hot job market, had a bad boss, a job where he didn't seem to be learning anything and a low salary. The course of action seems pretty clear to me. I don't think he needed "Jeff Bezos'" call to action to help him on this one. Quitting less than 2 months into a job does seem harsh (not sure if I'd do it) - if he waited a year or so, the tech boom would be over and then things would be different. So, perhaps he did get lucky with the timing.
  - clebio 14y ago
    Hindsight is 20/20
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I think it's much better to quit 6 weeks in than 6 months in. When I'm looking at resumes, a very short stay tells me it just didn't work out. It happens. I think it's also ok to just leave something like that off the resume. Especially after you've had some other job. But if you're there for a substantial amount of time (say, 3 months or more) that's harder to explain, and I think you need to keep it on your resume for a lot longer.
  - aswanson 14y ago
    Yeah, I was in a similar situation with dickhead managers around 99. It was hilarious how much they thought the engineers had to put up with their bs in that type of job market; I had recruiters tracking down and leaving messages on my work phone there. Serving my notice at that dump was one of the highlights of the 90s for me.
fmitchell0 14y ago
I think the point of the article is connecting to the emotional (and sometimes spiritual) experience of quitting. I think everyone should quit or get fired from a job at least once in their life. People talk about starting this or wishing things were better, but until you've gone through the utter terror of quitting/being fired, you never know how resilient you can be moving on to the next challenge. It's kind of like starting a business. You can talk all you want, but until you do it (or it happens to you), you don't get it. The universe might have taken care of him, but that is because he realized it's not about how you fall down (even if you jump down), it's how you get up. If you keep getting up, the universe WILL help you out.
- hef19898 14y ago
  Yeah, quiting can be enlightening! Since I wasn't fired, I can tell about that. I know peole who wanted to quit for some time but never got to it. Now, they still want to but are no longer able to. I never want to reach that point, I value my own freedom and independance to much for that.
snorkel 14y ago
Don't count on the universe. First find a new job, and then quit.
carsongross 14y ago
Quitting a job and following your heart during the largest tech boom in human history, when jobs were jumping out of windows onto unsuspecting passer-bys, might make for a great story, but I'm not sure it's great advice for young kids today, with under-25 unemployment in the 20's in the U.S. and much higher elsewhere. Unless you've got something lined up, or a lot of cash set aside, I'd advise being very conservative in this environment.
mynameishere 14y ago
Who would say that they have a bad boss at an "all hands" meeting? Wouldn't have to quit after doing that...
- spinchange 14y ago
  I bet it was a "planted" question to reinforce the hierarchical culture and approach to management they seem to have. Otherwise, that would be a very silly thing to ask the CEO, indeed. I think his answer was completely logical in that setting.
potatolicious 14y ago
> "Another new MBA was hired in my group. I found out her salary was higher than mine, although I had been told that my salary was “standard for new MBAs.”" Heh, replace "MBA" with "engineer" and this was my Amazon experience circa 2011. I was 2 years into the company, getting rave reviews and kudos from management, with pitifiul 1% "raises" a year... and then I found out they're paying a fresh undergrad more than I was making. Oh, and verbal promises of an upcoming promotion... and then nothing come review-time. [cue sad trombone] I did the same thing as author, except I found a 30% raise at another company before leaving ;) Damn it felt good when I gave notice. For those not in the know: Amazon's attrition rate is sky-high, and while management acknowledges this and has some token measures to try and mitigate it, nothing major is being done (i.e., none of the big, big reasons people quit are ever addressed - pay, advancement, on-call stress, etc). Now that I've got some distance between myself and Amazon, I consider the whole thing a learning experience. 'Twas my first job out of college, and I suppose learning to read poor advancement, bad pay, and bad management at that stage of my career was better than doing it later.
- timfrietas 14y ago
  Amazon is a giant company, so this statement is kind of broad, even in the context of engineering groups. I know plenty of engineering groups with people who have worked there 5-10 years, while others are a sausage factory of oncall hell, it really depends on your team--just like with any other giant company (insert Yahoo, Oracle, etc. here). Also, in their defense, they do in fact try to address this: for example, a couple years back they had a focus on operational excellence to reduce oncall pages company-wide. (Yes, I work at Amazon)
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    I apologize for sounding brusque, but yours is a defense of Amazon that I've heard many times - multiple times from people who ended up quitting in frustration/anger. It's a view I held myself until things got bad enough to make me leave. Things are always fine, until they aren't, and then they have a tendency to compound very quickly. > "Amazon is a giant company, so this statement is kind of broad" It really isn't. Amazon's attrition problems are company-wide, and not limited to a few bad orgs. Amazon's on-call problems are also company-wide, with only a minority of teams spared from it (actually, I was on one of those teams, thank God). Amazon's policy of not readjusting employee compensation to fit a rising market is also company-wide. So yes, they are a huge company, but that is not a defense. I was a returning intern, so I knew a lot of fellow ex-interns returning full-time. My opinion of Amazon is formed by both my own experience and also a whole lot of commiseration with others from across the company stretching over every org. In fact, of all the interns I returned with, only 3 remain, 3 years in. In fact, several quit without even fulfilling their first year. They willingly handed back their signing bonus clawbacks (+tax!) just to GTFO. My impression is that senior-level engineers see a whole different world. SDE1/2 employees are just cogs, but SDE3 and up are treated like Faberge eggs. Unfortunately, I was only a lowly SDE1. > "just like with any other giant company (insert Yahoo, Oracle, etc. here)." Amazon is trying to hire at the level of Facebook and Google. Comparing oneself to Yahoo and Oracle (both known for being particularly poorly managed, and the latter having a reputation for being a bit of a code sweatshop) is not praise. Hell, Amazon's hiring process may be harder than Google's. A full-day of 5-6 interviews, including lunch interviews, with a single member of the group having full veto rights over all other interviewers. It's a wonder they have anyone passing said gauntlet. With that high of a hiring bar, new hires trickle in, and the attrition rate pretty much negates any hiring anybody does. > "a couple years back they had a focus on operational excellence to reduce oncall pages company-wide." Platitudes. I was there. Nothing actually changed. I know a few sub-orgs had actual drives to decrease technical debt and drive down operational pain, but for everyone else it didn't do squat. Amazon's on-call misery stems from the high attrition rate. It's a vicious cycle. Most teams accumulate technical debt since they are constantly under-resourced, what with people leaving all the damned time. Most teams I've seen have perpetual open headcount, and never enough hands to really root-cause and fix the chronic problems that are waking up their on-calls at 5am on a Saturday. Combined with upper management that keeps trying to drive features and this is a recipe for disaster. The pace at Amazon is relentless (which is often good), but it affords almost no opportunities to refactor, redesign, rearchitect for better operational performance. Hell, if you want a prime example of this, look at how the Catalog systems are set up. It's like a brick wall extended by wooden beams extended by rebar extended by I-beams.
renegadedev 14y ago
It would be interesting if the author ever went back and figured out whatever happened to Bill, the horrible boss. People like Bill often don't last long in a swim or sink environment like Amazon. If you're not a superstar, and I'm as un-superstar (sic?) as you can get, and you've been around long enough, chances are you've held a job with shitty pay and shittier boss. Whether you depart for greener pastures or try to stay put make the best out of your situation and work on improving yourself and the company, says a lot about you also.
bryze 14y ago
More people need to do this. It seems that among adults, the most effective message you can send is "goodbye". Sad, but, in my experience, true. Even then, some people will never learn.
moocow01 14y ago
If there is anything I'd tell a new college grad it would be build a financial cushion as fast as humanly possible. I don't care if you are in debt from your loans... build one - immediately. And yes it is hard when you start out. Why? You will hate your job one day and probably sooner than later. It just happens, its part of the learning curve. I don't mean that you are always going to hate your job but you inevitably will end up in a situation with a crappy boss doing something you didn't realize you signed up for. Your cushion will give you perspective. Instead of looking at your crappy job as your life raft and clinging on for dear life, you will be better equipped to realize you have options. If you really don't want to go to that job anymore, you can reasonably wake up and stop the next morning. Another thing that nobody talks about is that having a cushion can inadvertently gain you more respect in your workplace. I used to work for a group where one of my work buddies was pretty financially independent (this doesn't mean fabulously rich) and unlike everyone else who was desperate to keep their job my work buddy would speak his mind to management. When projects were unreasonable he would tell them to take a hike. Well guess who got all the interesting work and respect. Seriously build a cushion if you are new to the work world - it only makes your life better.

158 points by lionhearted 14y ago

This is really hard advice for a lot of people to stomach. That free-falling feeling you get the morning after you quit, and the bittersweet terror of being unemployed are brutal realities, but you're usually better off quitting in the long run.

mgkimsal 14y ago
having a cushion in the bank helps immensely. i realize everyone has different risk tolerance levels, but... having a year of expenses in the bank gives you a much different perspective on things than living check to check, or even having 1-2 months of savings.
- debacle 14y ago
  Very true, but it takes a long time to get there when you've got a family to support.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    or have been deep in debt. :) No doubt it often takes a lot of hard work and discipline. Sometimes just thinking about that being a possibility is too much for some people.

jorleif 14y ago

Nice organizational insight: Yes, in theory the higher up managers should do something about the bad boss, but they don't know there is a problem, and a conflict is hard to solve, since you don't know who is to blame (and tend to side with the boss, because he is more like yourself, and you probably know him better) High turnover, on the other hand, is a good signal of failed management, and if you can find another job, then you'll probably do better that way.

hef19898 14y ago
> High turnover, on the other hand, is a good signal of failed management, and if you can find another job, then you'll probably do better that way. There your right. But a non existant turn-over tends to be a sign for an unflexible and counter-innovative bureacratic culture. Or a good working climate. Hard to tell from the outside. And once you're in and can tell, well it could already be too late!
mgkimsal 14y ago
When the higher-up managers are the problem, there's generally little hope except to leave. I worked someplace that had about 50% of the dept leave in a 9 month period (I was part of the 50%) - towards the end of that period it was harder for people to not get the signal that there was a leadership/management problem, and the owner eventually stepped in, but not until a lot of damage was done.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mmcnickle 14y ago

I was feeling sympathetic with the author regarding the raise until I realised he was asking for it a few weeks after joining. I think his boss was right, he accepted the salary when he joined; if he didn't like it he should have negotiated at the time. I'm sure a raise would have be considered after a suitable period.

eroded 14y ago
Right, so he made a bad decision by taking the job. It's still much better to realise you made a bad decision and cut your losses (by quitting), than blindly sticking with it. Given he was about to quit anyway if he wasn't offered a raise, there was no harm to asking.
- reidrac 14y ago
  But then it looks like Jeff Bezos didn't teach him when to quit. There's a difference between a bad boss and making a bad salary negotiation when you take a new job. Nice post anyway, but it's a little bit like "I've seen it in the tea leaves". Edit: typo
wccrawford 14y ago
It's a little more complicated than that. First, the job was more painful than expected. Second, they lied to him about starting salaries, telling him that all new employees in that position started at the rate he got. Then they hired another employee into that position for higher, just weeks later. And finally, you have to ask for things to get them. If he just quit without asking, he'd never know if he could have gotten that raise instead. Now, he knows. At a different company, he might actually have gotten it. I think he made exactly the right decision at each step, given the knowledge he had at that point. Personally, I probably would have chosen to stick it out at that company until I found that second job, instead of quitting on the spot, but that's me. But the end result wouldn't be that different.
- huggyface 14y ago
  Sounds like he wants union work, then, with the benefits (such as complete wage transparency and information clarify) but also the detriments (lobsters in a pot pulling each other down, impossible to exceed the boundaries of a position). I don't want union work. When I hear people whine and bitch because they think they're worth as much as other employees...I don't know but it really makes me dislike them. I despise that mentality. Someone else negotiated better than you -- suck it up, crybaby.

kristovaher 14y ago

I agree that you should quit when your 'boss is bad', but in a way I also think that what you did was also stupid. Amazon is a great company and with effort you would have climbed the ladders there if you were good enough. Jeff Bezos -is- a smart guy and he is taking the company in the right direction as opposed to Yahoo!, which is a giant of yesterday. You had been there for six weeks and had a problem with someone else being hired who got paid more? Why did she get paid more? I've been in the industry long enough to know that salaries are never equal. They are part of the negotiations and are often affected by the situation the new employee is in. A lot of companies pay more for certain employees because of their background situation. If an employee is qualified and shows promise, then companies often offer a supporting hand, because otherwise the employee simply could not afford to work there. A lot of companies pay more to an employee if the employee asks for it when it is about 'their value' and not about value of someone else. It was incredibly stupid to complain that someone else is getting paid more, when you had been there for six weeks. You didn't sound much smarter than your boss there. I would never allow a new employee march in after six weeks and ask for a raise, unless they invented the next iPhone or iPad. You did spreadsheets. You would have gotten a 'no' from any and every executive I know of.

einhverfr 14y ago

I think the advice is actually good, all around. I also think it takes a certain degree of courage for a CEO to advise workers to quit on this sort of basis. Bezos's stature just grew a bit in my eyes. Additionally it's a bit of an inspiring story. There's another time and place to quit too which seems to me to be touched on in the article. If you are in a position that is well below your skills, very often times HR won't give you a chance to work to your capacity. It's usually better to quit and later re-apply than to try to work your way up within a company. I saw this at Microsoft and have reason to believe it happens everwhere else.

aangjie 14y ago
>If you are in a position that is well below your skills, very often times HR won't give you a chance to work to your capacity. Exactly, the lesson i learnt. Most of the times, once you are within an organization, switching roles/jobs/responsibilities is pretty impossible. I am not sure exactly how and why this works out to be so, but would probably blame it on social group-think and the fear of the unknown being amplified, when every individual states and restates the uncertainty. It's as if when it's time to make a decision, the number of people agreeing something is uncertain multiplies the actual uncertainty/risk. I don't understand how groups of people make decisions in that manner, but then i never was good with people.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  I think it's a fear on the part of HR and others that you are working at your ability. They don't see evidence of your ability even if it's there.
  - alttab 14y ago
    I think it could also be fear of sticking your neck out and failing. Now, a lot of places simply don't recognize execellence. I had to quit my job at Software GlobalCorp because my manager didn't know anything about technology or the project we were working on. I did however, continue to stick my neck out.
- 14y ago

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

> I followed my heart. The universe took care of me. Survivorship bias. Other people have followed their hearts and the universe didn't take care of them, but their posts aren't likely to be posted on HN and upvoted to the front page.

throwaway1979 14y ago
Usually, I too think survivor bias. However, in this case, his action seemed to be a no-brainer. This was 1999 - not 2008 to 2012. I had just graduated from undergrad with a CS degree and was very naive. Yet, I had companies and groups within companies fighting over me. So ... he was in a hot job market, had a bad boss, a job where he didn't seem to be learning anything and a low salary. The course of action seems pretty clear to me. I don't think he needed "Jeff Bezos'" call to action to help him on this one. Quitting less than 2 months into a job does seem harsh (not sure if I'd do it) - if he waited a year or so, the tech boom would be over and then things would be different. So, perhaps he did get lucky with the timing.
- clebio 14y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20
- wpietri 14y ago
  I think it's much better to quit 6 weeks in than 6 months in. When I'm looking at resumes, a very short stay tells me it just didn't work out. It happens. I think it's also ok to just leave something like that off the resume. Especially after you've had some other job. But if you're there for a substantial amount of time (say, 3 months or more) that's harder to explain, and I think you need to keep it on your resume for a lot longer.
- aswanson 14y ago
  Yeah, I was in a similar situation with dickhead managers around 99. It was hilarious how much they thought the engineers had to put up with their bs in that type of job market; I had recruiters tracking down and leaving messages on my work phone there. Serving my notice at that dump was one of the highlights of the 90s for me.

fmitchell0 14y ago

I think the point of the article is connecting to the emotional (and sometimes spiritual) experience of quitting. I think everyone should quit or get fired from a job at least once in their life. People talk about starting this or wishing things were better, but until you've gone through the utter terror of quitting/being fired, you never know how resilient you can be moving on to the next challenge. It's kind of like starting a business. You can talk all you want, but until you do it (or it happens to you), you don't get it. The universe might have taken care of him, but that is because he realized it's not about how you fall down (even if you jump down), it's how you get up. If you keep getting up, the universe WILL help you out.

hef19898 14y ago
Yeah, quiting can be enlightening! Since I wasn't fired, I can tell about that. I know peole who wanted to quit for some time but never got to it. Now, they still want to but are no longer able to. I never want to reach that point, I value my own freedom and independance to much for that.

snorkel 14y ago

Don't count on the universe. First find a new job, and then quit.

carsongross 14y ago

Quitting a job and following your heart during the largest tech boom in human history, when jobs were jumping out of windows onto unsuspecting passer-bys, might make for a great story, but I'm not sure it's great advice for young kids today, with under-25 unemployment in the 20's in the U.S. and much higher elsewhere. Unless you've got something lined up, or a lot of cash set aside, I'd advise being very conservative in this environment.

mynameishere 14y ago

Who would say that they have a bad boss at an "all hands" meeting? Wouldn't have to quit after doing that...

spinchange 14y ago
I bet it was a "planted" question to reinforce the hierarchical culture and approach to management they seem to have. Otherwise, that would be a very silly thing to ask the CEO, indeed. I think his answer was completely logical in that setting.

potatolicious 14y ago

> "Another new MBA was hired in my group. I found out her salary was higher than mine, although I had been told that my salary was “standard for new MBAs.”" Heh, replace "MBA" with "engineer" and this was my Amazon experience circa 2011. I was 2 years into the company, getting rave reviews and kudos from management, with pitifiul 1% "raises" a year... and then I found out they're paying a fresh undergrad more than I was making. Oh, and verbal promises of an upcoming promotion... and then nothing come review-time. [cue sad trombone] I did the same thing as author, except I found a 30% raise at another company before leaving ;) Damn it felt good when I gave notice. For those not in the know: Amazon's attrition rate is sky-high, and while management acknowledges this and has some token measures to try and mitigate it, nothing major is being done (i.e., none of the big, big reasons people quit are ever addressed - pay, advancement, on-call stress, etc). Now that I've got some distance between myself and Amazon, I consider the whole thing a learning experience. 'Twas my first job out of college, and I suppose learning to read poor advancement, bad pay, and bad management at that stage of my career was better than doing it later.

timfrietas 14y ago
Amazon is a giant company, so this statement is kind of broad, even in the context of engineering groups. I know plenty of engineering groups with people who have worked there 5-10 years, while others are a sausage factory of oncall hell, it really depends on your team--just like with any other giant company (insert Yahoo, Oracle, etc. here). Also, in their defense, they do in fact try to address this: for example, a couple years back they had a focus on operational excellence to reduce oncall pages company-wide. (Yes, I work at Amazon)
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I apologize for sounding brusque, but yours is a defense of Amazon that I've heard many times - multiple times from people who ended up quitting in frustration/anger. It's a view I held myself until things got bad enough to make me leave. Things are always fine, until they aren't, and then they have a tendency to compound very quickly. > "Amazon is a giant company, so this statement is kind of broad" It really isn't. Amazon's attrition problems are company-wide, and not limited to a few bad orgs. Amazon's on-call problems are also company-wide, with only a minority of teams spared from it (actually, I was on one of those teams, thank God). Amazon's policy of not readjusting employee compensation to fit a rising market is also company-wide. So yes, they are a huge company, but that is not a defense. I was a returning intern, so I knew a lot of fellow ex-interns returning full-time. My opinion of Amazon is formed by both my own experience and also a whole lot of commiseration with others from across the company stretching over every org. In fact, of all the interns I returned with, only 3 remain, 3 years in. In fact, several quit without even fulfilling their first year. They willingly handed back their signing bonus clawbacks (+tax!) just to GTFO. My impression is that senior-level engineers see a whole different world. SDE1/2 employees are just cogs, but SDE3 and up are treated like Faberge eggs. Unfortunately, I was only a lowly SDE1. > "just like with any other giant company (insert Yahoo, Oracle, etc. here)." Amazon is trying to hire at the level of Facebook and Google. Comparing oneself to Yahoo and Oracle (both known for being particularly poorly managed, and the latter having a reputation for being a bit of a code sweatshop) is not praise. Hell, Amazon's hiring process may be harder than Google's. A full-day of 5-6 interviews, including lunch interviews, with a single member of the group having full veto rights over all other interviewers. It's a wonder they have anyone passing said gauntlet. With that high of a hiring bar, new hires trickle in, and the attrition rate pretty much negates any hiring anybody does. > "a couple years back they had a focus on operational excellence to reduce oncall pages company-wide." Platitudes. I was there. Nothing actually changed. I know a few sub-orgs had actual drives to decrease technical debt and drive down operational pain, but for everyone else it didn't do squat. Amazon's on-call misery stems from the high attrition rate. It's a vicious cycle. Most teams accumulate technical debt since they are constantly under-resourced, what with people leaving all the damned time. Most teams I've seen have perpetual open headcount, and never enough hands to really root-cause and fix the chronic problems that are waking up their on-calls at 5am on a Saturday. Combined with upper management that keeps trying to drive features and this is a recipe for disaster. The pace at Amazon is relentless (which is often good), but it affords almost no opportunities to refactor, redesign, rearchitect for better operational performance. Hell, if you want a prime example of this, look at how the Catalog systems are set up. It's like a brick wall extended by wooden beams extended by rebar extended by I-beams.

renegadedev 14y ago

It would be interesting if the author ever went back and figured out whatever happened to Bill, the horrible boss. People like Bill often don't last long in a swim or sink environment like Amazon. If you're not a superstar, and I'm as un-superstar (sic?) as you can get, and you've been around long enough, chances are you've held a job with shitty pay and shittier boss. Whether you depart for greener pastures or try to stay put make the best out of your situation and work on improving yourself and the company, says a lot about you also.

bryze 14y ago

More people need to do this. It seems that among adults, the most effective message you can send is "goodbye". Sad, but, in my experience, true. Even then, some people will never learn.

moocow01 14y ago

If there is anything I'd tell a new college grad it would be build a financial cushion as fast as humanly possible. I don't care if you are in debt from your loans... build one - immediately. And yes it is hard when you start out. Why? You will hate your job one day and probably sooner than later. It just happens, its part of the learning curve. I don't mean that you are always going to hate your job but you inevitably will end up in a situation with a crappy boss doing something you didn't realize you signed up for. Your cushion will give you perspective. Instead of looking at your crappy job as your life raft and clinging on for dear life, you will be better equipped to realize you have options. If you really don't want to go to that job anymore, you can reasonably wake up and stop the next morning. Another thing that nobody talks about is that having a cushion can inadvertently gain you more respect in your workplace. I used to work for a group where one of my work buddies was pretty financially independent (this doesn't mean fabulously rich) and unlike everyone else who was desperate to keep their job my work buddy would speak his mind to management. When projects were unreasonable he would tell them to take a hike. Well guess who got all the interesting work and respect. Seriously build a cushion if you are new to the work world - it only makes your life better.