(2018-11-05) Goldis Why I Quit Amazon Just5 Months After Ive Started

Andrew Goldis: Why I quit Amazon just 5 months after I’ve started. I was overwhelmed by online “cultural” trainings about the company’s leadership principles and other corporate bullshit, I felt like I am joining a religious organization and being brainwashed.

Supposedly, every employee should be guided by the leadership principles during their day-to-day routine. The principles actually make a lot of sense, when used appropriately. As time went, I discovered that the most common application of the principles was to creatively find a leadership principle that best supports the situation.

The team’s product was highly dependant on other services and was subjective to what is called in Amazon’s “away team” experience — that is when you need to change the source code of a service run by another team. (SOA)

That was a terrible experience — the other teams neither had context nor motivation to support you, the proposed changes were pushed backed, discussed in endless meetings with “bar raisers” and took extreeeeeeemly long.

As time goes you start to to use the “art of fetching a principle” and see other people doing it in conflicting situations, trying to find one that supports your argument.

I saw quite a few senior engineers and discovered that I do not want to be alike… Either professionally incompetent, either political or arrogant — those people successfully managed to navigate their careers and be recognized by the company (and company’s culture) as leaders

The 5 months at Amazon was the most stressful job I ever had.

common issue for companies that provide RSU as part of their compensation, but what is more problematic and manipulative is how companies use RSUs to mislead employees about of their compensation package.

cf Two-Pizza Team, 2011-10-12-YeggeGoogleVsAmazonAndOthersPlatform