I recently started to work at Amazon (Seattle) and I’m very excited about it. I’ve noticed that my teammates (team of 11 people) work extra time all the time. Constantly. (Pinging me/others from 8am - 11pm, CRs on weekends (people even review/approve/deploy these CRs during the weekend), constantly mentioning how they “got the task done working overtime”, etc. I don’t really like this “culture” because I enjoy having a life outside of work. Am feeling very good in terms of my knowledge and contributions to this team, but I’m pretty sure that a team like this is pretty 💩 for my taste. I have a better offer from G (just a little over 22k extra TC),so I’ll probably take it. My question, is this normal at Amazon or is it bad luck? (I was super excited for joining Amazon to be honest). I’m even thinking it might be a cultural thing? 🤔 (all 10 of my coworkers, as well as manager and skip are all from the same country/origin… could it be that?)
What did you think Amazon would be like?
Very normal at amazon. Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking it’s not pervasive throughout the company - it is
Honestly, I thought it would ve a “tier 1” company :(
Let me guess, all are south asians? I’m gonna be honest, I think it’s an immigrant thing (I’m an immigrant myself), I joined amazon recently as well, and my entire org is ~70% Indians (~85% Immigrants), all are proud to work on weekends/late nights. That’s the thing, when we come to the US, even if we plan to stay and call it home, we still live with the an expat mentality, of making as much as we can and save, which defies the perpose of establishing a consistent, predictable, healthy lifestyle. You can obviously see it alot here with all the TC or GTFO deal. Amazon loves that, it’s getting highly talented workers, fearful to lose their jobs/visas, and are obsessed with being money machines.
Depends on their culture…
A LOT of folks at Amazon (and AWS) and most tech companies don’t have lives. I’ve noticed some folks just work-work-work. You don’t have to do that. Just do your job and you’ll be fine. Folks who are all work-work-work are trying to get promoted or simply don’t have full lives yet.
I think it's just some teams. My group have a strict 9-5 timings and get work done in that time. Yet have a google offer, prob will switch in a few months
Did you join blind after Amazon ?
Not sure if this is normal at Amazon but this is somewhat normal for some members in my team. It creates a toxic culture when management praises people that work extra hours and weekends and explicitly state that they worked overtime to get things done.
This
Yeah, just tell them you have a life, 😂.