I’ve been at Amazon Ads working in marketing for 4 months. Since I was hired I’ve been bounced around by 3 different managers (my hiring manager switched orgs before I started, my next manager moved the project I was on to a different team so I’m now under somebody else). In those 4 months, all 5 people that were on my team have switched to other orgs. One of them referred me to an open position on her team. All have advised me that the team I’m on and the work I’m being asked to do will cause me to burn out quickly. I trust the advice I’m getting. They were all on this team for 2+ years and I assume know what’s up. However, it feels really wrong to switch this early. I know I’d be leaving my current manager in the lurch. She’s explicitly said that she doesn’t want me to leave. But it sounds like the team I’m on is understaffed and has a lot of problems. Should I feel weird/guilty about leaving? Is this normal at amazon? Will I burn bridges?
God, Amazon has ads now too 😭
Amazon had ads for a while..
Being guilty for your manager is a common anti-pattern. Don't be. 1. Nobody is indispensable. If your whole team vanishes today, Nothing really disastrous happens at Amazon scale. There are so many bright kids who can replace you. 2. For your senior management, fixing your team means spending money and attention. It’s done only when they see if it makes business sense. In many cases, rotating door teams are just a metric that they choose to live with. 3. Sometimes they might choose to dissolve the whole team quickly. There is no guilt from the other side. 4. During performance reviews, your manager can always reason her poor delivery to poor staffing + She also has the choice to switch. It is her choice to stay and suffer. Is this normal? Yes, for a team like yours. Will you burn bridges? They mostly treat you like a traitor for some time and quickly forget your existence.
Thought I’d update this in case anybody has been waiting with baited breath: I made the decision to switch teams. The process was fairly straight forward. I looped under the table with the other team and was offered the position within a week. My current manager took the news fairly well and seemed to understand my reasons for wanting to leave. Overall, no bad will and I think this will be a positive move for my career. I start at AWS in a month.
What's the internal transfer loop look like?more whiteboarding@
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