Thank You Amazon !!!

Aug 23, 2021 67 Comments

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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