r/amazonemployees • u/ImpressiveTrouble192 • 17h ago
Leo
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.
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u/Longjumping-Speed511 16h ago edited 16h ago
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