Ex-Amazonian, not in a software related position. I left for the same reason a lot of the fellow commenter did, internal politics, promotion / development and shitty bosses (two levels up, but that's where it counts).
For one, as great as Amazons Leadership Principles are in theory, in practice they are used more than a weapon than anything else. Once the higher ups have made up their mind about a person, no amount of feed-back will change that. In the end perf reviews resemble court-martial, except in a decent court-martial you are present to defend your self.
I realized that too late. Internal "voting rings" self-promoting members at the expense of other are aggravating this even further. I would still do it again though, only with a clear exit strategy from day one. Rough guideline, if you failed to get promoted or transfer internally by year 2 - 3 you are by default dead. A transfer buys you another 2 odd years of runway.
What did definitely not help was stock development. I joined in early 2014, initial RSUs have beem granted nased on 2013 expectations, the value increased by a factor of 10 by now. So AMZN had yet another incentive to reduce the number of employees in my generation of hires. And they did.
Funny side note, around two years after I left they implemented tje two high level solutions I proposed back the day and got axed for.
Since then I had two employers which didn't work out. Mental note: take the sabbatical immediately after leaving, failed to get start-up ofbthe ground and finished my studies.
I worked for an Amazon subsidiary for about 4.5 years. By the time that last review & reorg came around, I was mentally already out the door, being burned out. Having my job change to doing mostly Windows help desk (I'm a linux sysadmin) was what made me crazy. Unfortunately, that layoff came right after the "Great Recession" got going, and I was out of work for a year and a half. My nice $125/share stock RSUs had to be sold for living expenses. If the timing hadn't sucked like that I could have paid off my house by now. I still have 5 shares...
I kind of had a forced sabbatical after that. At least I was not in debt going into it.
Then I went to work for some big names, this time in Linux operations, some contract, some regular. Since I have the wrong age and plumbing, I constantly have title deflation and other BS to deal with. I'm currently at a university, at a pay drop and title drop, but it's more stable with more time off.
For one, as great as Amazons Leadership Principles are in theory, in practice they are used more than a weapon than anything else. Once the higher ups have made up their mind about a person, no amount of feed-back will change that. In the end perf reviews resemble court-martial, except in a decent court-martial you are present to defend your self.
I realized that too late. Internal "voting rings" self-promoting members at the expense of other are aggravating this even further. I would still do it again though, only with a clear exit strategy from day one. Rough guideline, if you failed to get promoted or transfer internally by year 2 - 3 you are by default dead. A transfer buys you another 2 odd years of runway.
What did definitely not help was stock development. I joined in early 2014, initial RSUs have beem granted nased on 2013 expectations, the value increased by a factor of 10 by now. So AMZN had yet another incentive to reduce the number of employees in my generation of hires. And they did.
Funny side note, around two years after I left they implemented tje two high level solutions I proposed back the day and got axed for.
Since then I had two employers which didn't work out. Mental note: take the sabbatical immediately after leaving, failed to get start-up ofbthe ground and finished my studies.