Thank You Amazon !!!
I left Amazon 6 months back. I know there is a lot of hate for amazon here but after staying Amazon for 10 years, I overall felt I have achieved good in Amazon than if moved to some other options I had during that time (Yahoo/Qualcomm). Amazon 10 years back was considered prestigious to join and I had colleagues from MIT and Stanford.
Some good things -
- In 10 years, I had 1,900+ stocks granted (6M+ $$ valuation). After removing (Vesting) tax and additional capital gain I own, Amazon gave me a net-worth of 4M+. (Who says Amazon pay is Banana.)
- I learnt a lot about distributed systems, creating large scale systems specifically in AWS.
- I had an amazing WLB, average worked for around 40 hours per week even after working on Tier 1 AWS systems. I only worked more during promotion time when I had to put my fingers on things outside of my scope.
- Gave me the respect from Recruiters and my network and top companies show genuine interest in me.
Some bad things -
- My career growth was below average considering I stayed 10 years during the hyper-growth phase at Amazon. My L7 promotion came too late.
- Hated Amazon attitude of not caring about employees. I got 0 paternity leaves for my first kid. The benefits overall felt like I am working in a third class company.
- Tech skills are considered as second class at Amazon and even delivering is not appreciated that much. People who are good with communication and managing upwards will have a faster growth even when they don't deliver anything and bad at tech.
- It is now a bloated company with 1 M+ employees.
- The kind of leadership Amazon is hiring or promoting internally (non-tech becoming SDM) is really bad.
Where I stand now
- Will I join Amazon back in future? No
- Will I suggest others to join Amazon? Depends on the option. My default answer is "No" (you have much better options today for career growth), unless you are joining other bloated day 2 companies.
- Did I made the right decision to join Amazon 10 years back? Definitely Yes.
New TC - 800K
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comments
I’m happy about your net worth and the fact that you joined “at the right time”, but it doesn’t negate hundreds of nightmare stories posted here by folks who were abused by their managers, PIPed, scared about their job and/or visa status, and a bunch of other things.
In my last 10 years, Amazon stock grew 28 times in comparison to Microsoft 12 times.