Manager didn't respond well to my career plan...
I had a meetup with my mentor that I met through the mentoring network and he advised that I make sure my 1:1's with my manager are focused on my career development. I was skeptical of this bc my manager doesn't really know much about what's going on in the team, his default answer to most questions is, "well this is how it works at Amazon" or always ties his answer to Amazon and Amazon way of life is the source of truth to everything. In my 1:1 yesterday I told my manager that I wanted to focus on soley career development and he seemed interested. I told him what my career plan was and even the position I want to go to (currently in a non-tech role, want to go to a tech role) and he started telling me that I don't seemed focused at work and I'm just thinking about the future. Apparently said that I treat my job like I'm still in college and that my other co-workers said that I don't seem interested in my job. He went on to say that it'd take me 1.5 years to become and L4 (currently an L3) and that I need to stop focusing on the future and what my career goals are and just focus on what I'm doing now. The thing is, I literally work my ass off everyday, I'm working with really smart and talented individuals and I'm helping everyone out with work, coming up with new ideas (which my manager will take credit for coming up with?), I started daily standup meetings for the team which has helped us with actually knowing what everyone's doing, especially our manager who doesn't know wtf is going on. Sorry for the rant y'all, just really tired and stressed about this, like the rest of my team. TC: 60k L3
Gotta be trolling with that TC
Sorry to hear you have a bad manager. Honestly, don’t work so hard. Study in your free time and apply elsewhere. You can get a tech role job MUCH faster that route. Your career progression scheme doesn’t work well in your early career. Better to job hop up. Source: Was manual QA tester at startup, job hopped for 4 years, now E5 FTE SWE at Fb. 350K TC
Damn, that's some progression. I'm not trying to become a SWE, I just want to have enough tech knowledge to become a Product Manager who can have respect and work well with engineers when working on shipping features.
If your manager is not supportive of your career growth change teams else your career growth will be halted
Switch teams or companies now. You know your goals and can’t afford to have this guy harming them
You did huge mistake. It’s beyond the scope of your current manager to help you transition. He cannot agree to support such drastic transition. Now you need to watch your back for dodging dev plan or PIP. Consider working 130% now at your current job function. You should’ve asked here before spilling the beans to your manager. Consider changing your mentor. Basically you had to keep up with your current performance and follow a transition roadmap beyond regular work hours preferable at home and at your own time. The. when you’re ready or very close, you should’ve interviewed internally or externally discreetly. Many non-tech positions at Amazon (especially the ones paying 60k) are considered highly replaceable. Amazon doesn’t even care to retain Sr. or Principal SDEs with deep product knowledge if not top-tier (TT) rates employee.
I’ve seen that done transition from both an RC and an EA who switched to PM. The EA just switched under the GM she reported too so that’s probably not too helpful in your situation. The RC though got really close with the managers for the org she recruited from and began talking to them about wanting to make the switch. One of the managers told her about what tech she needed to learn to be able to make the transition. After 4 - 6 months of learning that tech (python mainly) that manager brought her on as a PM. You should note though that she was doing the RC thing for about a year before even beginning to try and make the transition. She was also by far the best RC I had seen for our org in the many years I was there. The only reason I believe that the manager even considered it was because they saw how well she did in her current role and how much time she dedicated to it (10-12 hours a day). I don’t mean that as they saw someone who would work that many hours in the new role, just that she was that dedicated to improving. The problem with talking to your own manager about it as an L3 (not sure what org/role you are) is that so many L3s aren’t good, at least for amazon expectations and the ones that are you really wouldn’t want to lose. It’s a shitty situation but unfortunately from a managers perspective there are many (bad) reasons why you wouldn’t want to help them switch roles. They might already not do well so transitioning them is futile, adding additional workload needed for a role transition might make their current performance drop, or you might lose one of the few good ICs. Since your manager is new they’re probably worse on the spectrum of helping career growth vs what amazon tries to do. So as the RC did, I’d recommend trying to get close with managers outside your org to see what it would take to transition to their org as a PM. Being 2 months in though it’s probably too early to really take this track. Be amazing at your current role first so that you have some substance if your manager tries to tank you and that other managers can see how well you’ve done already.
You own your career.. I suggest moving on to something new