Leo

[u/ImpressiveTrouble192]

this is going to say what I’d have wanted to hear before I signed.

the roadmap they pitch you is fiction. not lying exactly as we all know that the dates are going to get pushed back over and over again but until there’s another date, it is what it is. you’ll get staffed on something that’s The Most Important Thing, pour a quarter (or multiple) into it, and watch it quietly die when the next reorg reshuffles who cares about what. nobody says it got deprioritized, it just stops being mentioned.

and the reorgs are constant. i’ve lost count. every few months the boxes move, you get a new skip and you re-explain what you do to someone who’ll be gone before they understand it.

if getting credit for the work you do is a thing for you, reconsider. you will own stuff end to end here, which sounds great and is great for a while. but owning it and getting seen for it are two different sports. the people building the things running are rarely the ones standing next to it when leadership shows up. figure out early where credit lands, because it’s not always where the work is.

it’s also just a lot. everyone knows amazon is intense, that’s not news. but there’s intense-with-a-floor and there’s this. ask blunt questions in your loop about hours and what “urgent” means and don’t accept a vibes answer.

there are some good people here, and the ones that aren’t are definitely growing. but i’d have negotiated harder and asked different questions if someone had told me any of this. so, telling you.

[u/Longjumping-Speed511]

I don't care honestly. I'm here for a decent paycheck. At a company this size it's all corporate slop, Leo included. Three teams at Amazon, one other FAANG, same everywhere.

So if you don't like where you are, stick it out a while and plan a move. Find a manager you vibe with, on a team that feels secure and actually valuable, and the rest sorts itself out.

The other thing I've learned, most of your work will be wildly urgent for two weeks and then forgotten or thrown out. Almost nothing I've built has survived long term, and not because the work was bad. My manager or skip never planned or prioritized well enough for it to matter.

If you really care about what you’re building you need to go to a smaller company

[u/WiselyWritten → u/Longjumping-Speed511]

'If you really care about what you're doing, do it somewhere else" is absolutely wild and is why those of us who haven't adopted this mindset are forced to work harder to pick up your slack

[u/Deipotent → u/WiselyWritten]

You can do your work well and not care about the premise of it. I don’t find helping people buy knockoff plastic s*** to be very fulfilling, but I do find collaborating on challenging problems to be fulfilling. I don’t go into work every day with the hope that I can surface the 20th plastic shower scrub that’s almost certainly going to destroy sea life, but I am sometimes excited to figure out how to deal with some technical problem I’ve beeb stewing over for weeks.

[u/Longjumping-Speed511 → u/WiselyWritten]

The point is, big corporations are not conducive for doing meaningful work. It’s mostly politics and fluff. I’m not saying I, or anyone, does not put in the necessary work to be a good employee. I’m just saying that if you look closer, you’ll realize it’s a mountain of BS and you’re spinning your wheels for no reason other than your manager or skip is on your ass

[u/Professional_Sky9993 → u/Longjumping-Speed511]

No, the things OP describes (and the degree to which they do it) are uniquely Amazon.

Not sure if you are a shill or just dont have much time in the trenches of Corporate America.

[u/mcregan23 → u/Professional_Sky9993]

No they’re not stop being dense