I'm there right now and this is very true.
It isn't even a hidden truth about working there. In fact, the company has a set of principles [0] that are necessary to adopt and use to justify all decisions you make or feedback you give to others.
And missing from this set of principles? Any mention of the humanity of those you are leading. The only empathy encouraged is for the customer. It's a cold cold place to work.
[0] https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/amazon-leadership-pr...
The two new principles are less than a year old. They aren't taken as serious as the other originals. The culture is already established.
If you want to argue that the culture doesn't match them, whatever, but you can't say nothing's mentioned.
After that, your kids will start to turn towards friends, teachers, and other relatives. As they should--it's an important part of becoming a full fledged human.
But it's still a bit bittersweet to see the end of being able to do no wrong in your kiddo's eyes.
Really? I’ve always felt that the Amazon brand is relatively low quality. I’ve also heard that tech-wise it’s less interesting than you might assume from the outside, and they just burn out engineers on problems rather than solving them well.
I’m relatively uninformed so don’t make a decision based on this, but maybe something to consider.
I will agree that Amazon has some weird stuff around their internal development environment, which I think is well documented elsewhere. OTOH, when you're building services to handle billions of customers all around the world, there are some things you have to do a little differently.
NYT's story was very controversial.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/17/432555175...
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/amazon-...
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/17/9166023/new-york-times-amazon
NYT has a tremendous agenda and often goes unchecked.
Anonymous discussions are as far as most people will go.
From the poor tooling to the most toxic "team" of co-workers I've ever been on.
I don't regret joining but every month I deeply regret staying. Props to Amazon for providing me with the motivation to find something better.
I find that a lot of Amazon’s management systems appear to be built as safeguards against the pitfalls less experienced leaders might not know how to handle. Unfortunately it is optimized for the “least common denominator” of human collaboration, which is basically coercing individuals to behave like machines. I agree with your characterization of the problem.
I would go so far as to say that I disagree with the system in a philosophical manner. It is opposite of good leadership, in motivating humans to grow, innovate, and create success, in my understanding. Yet I cannot ignore Amazon’s market success; it may have succeeded in spite of these flaws.
I do not know how long I will stay. I anticipate a deep enough philosophical conflict to motivate my eventual exit.
Until then, my team will benefit from stronger cohesion, shared knowledge, clearer prioritization, growth, work life balance, and ultimately happiness. Some of them have taken their first vacations in the last few years, in the few months of my tenure so far, because of the changes we’ve embraced.
I will create a healthy environment of leadership for my team, and we will succeed. We will show Amazon what is required, as long as I can.
If past experience is any indication, I will carry my team’s allegiance because I look out for their interests, individually and collectively.
And when we deliver strategic advancements, we will gain autonomy. If not, I know that my talents can be impactful elsewhere.
I hope that I can quell the tide of dynamics of which you warn.
I keep waiting for that shoe to drop, and so far it hasn't.
We recently had an off-site meeting for everyone in the organization under our L10, and I now feel so much better about where we are going and how we are going to get there. I didn't realize how much pent up angst I had until the end of the first day of the off-site, and I felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders, and that I had finally seen the light.
That said, my history with employers is that everything can be perfect and great up to a certain point, and then there is a sudden change. In the past, that change has usually been because of a change in leadership somewhere, possibly just down at the level of the new manager hired right above me.
After that change, what was one of the best places I've ever worked suddenly becomes one of the worst. I've seen this happen time after time at virtually every single employer I've had since 1989. I can count on one hand the number of times where this didn't happen.
So, I will continue to keep an eye out for that dropping shoe. But I will also continue to enjoy working on this team, with these people, and this leadership.
And with any luck, we will be able to successfully change the world for the better.
How many hours a week did you average at work? A lot of tech jobs will expect working 9-6. If it was over 40-45, did the money scale linearly to the hours you put in? If it was 40-45 then it's equal to most other jobs except with higher compensation?
But even here, the company is not generous at all. Your stock grants vest 1-2 years out. If the stock climbs during that time, then in next year, you get no additional compensation. My initial years at amazon, I received little to no compensation increase, even with multiple promotions, because the stock had climbed significantly in value.
So if they don’t give you more shares when the stock appreciates, then what happens if it doesn’t grow or declines? They try to compensate you by giving you more shares that vest over a 2 year time frame. So if the stock does good, you get screwed. If the stock performs poorly, you get screwed too.
Did something else bad happen at the company?
I guess our definitions of screwed are slightly different. It sounds like they are giving you extra compensation in case your options happen to do poorly one year. They could have chosen to say "we can't control the market, you received 10 shares and whether they go up or down is out of our control". This way you win some and lose some based on the market. Even with having to wait for 2 years that's not too bad (it's basically free money).
Holding for a year also means your stock compensation is taxed at long term capital gains instead of income. If I were working at a stable and successful public company I'd prefer stock options if you were comparing $1 in cash vs $1 in options. After taxes, etc. your options are going to be likely 20-25% more valuable due to less taxes (no risk) and it has the chance to potentially to go higher (risk involved). The only time it's worse is if the stock tanks hard (the 20-25% tax difference) but that's not going to be a common event in a company like Amazon.
Combine that with you entering in 2012 when they were trading for 215 a share, that's a 15x return vs today. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing how that outcome isn't good. If you worked let's say 45 hours a week, combined with 10 years of a competitive tech salary + having options in a company that has had massive growth that's a combo where you end up being pretty much set for life (multiple millions of post-tax money available).
Were you working something like 80 hours a week for 10 years straight? That would make the decision much harder but at the same time you're trading 10 years to never have to worry about money again so even then it's not a hard no, 80 probably is a hard no because but 60 hours brings it closer to "maybe, it depends".
I will try to explain again. Let me offer an example that captures one part of the problem.
Let's say you join Amazon today (Day 1). In a year from now, let's say I promote you and give you increasing scope and responsibility. Now if the value of your previous stock grant (from Day 1) has appreciated, I will give you no additional compensation. As your manager, I can get you through multiple promotions without providing you any meaningful compensation increase since Day 1.
Now because your compensation weighs heavily on stock vests, let's say Amazon's stock performs poorly, falling behind even the SP500. So, your total compensation this year will drop significantly. I will offer you additional stock grants that vest in a year from now and two years from now. So if you stay with me for at least two more years, you can "earn" the compensation that you did not receive THIS year. If the stock continues going side ways or drops next year, you can make next's years losses by staying another 2 years (3 years total).
To put it bluntly, if you perform well and the company's stock increases, thank you very much. You previous stock grants have brought your compensation this year to its maximum. We won't have give you another dime.
If you perform well and the company's stock doesn't increase or drops – that's too bad for you. This year, that's YOUR loss to deal with. If you stick with us two years, we'll "try" to give you back the money we "hoped" to pay you this year.
>Were you working something like 80 hours a week for 10 years straight?
There are few people in Amazon engineering that work 40 hours a week, and any organization that normalizes that will get either re-org'd or have their products/services completely canned. 55-60 hours is a baseline. 80 hour weeks is not unheard of, for even 6 months at a time. There is NEVER a down time. You do A and then you move on to B and then C. If you fail to do A or if you decide to take a break between B and C. We do stack ranking and drop whoever falls at the bottom of the stack, even if they're pretty dang good. Somebody HAS to be let go. No way around it.
Having spent a decade at Amazon, across several organizations, I don’t recommend it as a place to work.
There was a NYTimes article about the company in 2015. Everything there still reflects the day to day culture of the company.
For me Amazon took an unprecedented toll on my mental and physical health. I did earn enough money, but I immensely regret all the time I didn’t spend with my family over the years, all the friendships that faded, and the constant reminder from leaders how I could always do better - nothing was ever good enough.
Amazons leadership fundamentally does not see their employees as human beings. As I grew the ranks over the years, I was directly coached on removing myself from certain day to day interactions, because it would simplify decision making if I didn’t have an interest in my own people, that simply forming just work bonds was a conflict of interest in terms of doing what’s “right” for the company.
Any non compete you’re concerned about isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
Good luck to you.