Last day at Amazon - AMA
Spent 4 years working in different teams across retail, ads and Alexa. Some lessons and experiences. 1. Your experience is very manager and skip dependent. I was lucky to have managers who were good human beings - not all were good leaders. 2. Any role can be tagged as a PM role in Amazon - in fact it may be the most abused role title here. Be wary of what you are getting into as your market value and future opportunities are impacted based on your experiences. 3. It is a nice place to learn if you have the thick skin and make mistakes with confidence. I was too under confident and over whelmed by the complexity of the problem space in one of my roles and was almost put up in dev list/focus (my manager had to make a case why I delivered per expectations). Add to that, I didn’t like working on the product. So I moved on from the team quickly. 4. Interviewed more than 70 candidates in the last year. Hard to find good PMs. 5. Stack ranking is real. If you can’t find the sucker in your team, you are the one. 6. More than a few amazonians find pleasure in extracting the most out of their colleagues. Your well-being is your responsibility. L6 PMT. yoe 9 tc 240k New tc 430k at LinkedIn #tech #pm Also - blind moderation sucks.
Welcome to LinkedIn. My experience here has been that it won’t be anywhere near that cut throat or cold. Nice people in general, good work, a bit more bureaucratic for my taste but overall a great workplace.
Thank you! I have heard good things. Even my interview and post offer experience was pretty good - everyone was very open but friendly. I had a few offers but chose LinkedIn because I just felt I belonged there.
Well said. Especially point 2.
Well. Stack ranking is the name of the game. You can always fit people in a curve and by sucker I don’t mean only in terms of deliverables, but just overall personality.
Which amazon org was the best?
Alexa is the most chill. Retail is where the most learning happens. Ads is in between.
That said, even these orgs are pretty huge so exercise caution when you are making decisions for yourself.
$430k for L6 PM at LinkedIn? 🧐
Yup
Did you get a higher level or something else? Care to break it out? Not calling you a liar, but that seems really high for LinkedIn and L6 PM.
Bro, congrats on the massive TC increase. Although, I think you deserve even more. I’m trying to leave too at my 2-year mark once year 2 RSUs vest. In a Sales Strategy role so the market isn’t that hot right now.
Thank you! Fingers crossed 🤞 for you - all the best.
What other companies did you have offers from?
Uber and Tiktok
Why not Uber?
When looking for other teams within the company, what were your criteria/things you asked during the process? Want to make sure I join a better team where I can learn a lot
In the beginning, my criteria weren’t great - I looked for shiny new problem spaces and just went with how it will look in my resume. But I have learnt that not all problems are good product problems. As a PM, the most important is the presence of a clear business problem that we are trying to solve through a product, and getting clarity on the ownership, responsibility and accountability. Second, the quality of managers writing- measured by the docs they authored in the past. Third, scope for growth - think of how your role will grow if everything goes according to the plan. That is the biggest upside for you.
Describe “good PMs”
Easy to define bad PMs - poor communication and listening skills, lack of demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with the team members, doesn’t work backwards from the customer problems and can’t see the forest for the trees. I obviously only get a good signal on a few of these during an interview, but have a good sense of the bar now.
Why did you torture yourself 4 years? Punishment for watching Twilight?
Well. 2 reasons - 1) I thought I needed to work in product for a few years before I find a better company, and 2) Amazon does work in some pretty interesting spaces so if you are in one of those - you feel like you are changing the world (equivalent to drinking the kool-aid) Looking back both are partially true, but not completely and I could have made the move sooner.
Vesting of initial share grant, too.