Enough posts have been made about this already but I’m gonna offer my personal experience. Joined Amazon 20 months ago, did 3 major Launches in first 5 months, manager was happy yada yada. Then our SDM took a break cause she had a surgery, one launch got delayed (it was the SDM who was leading it) and afterwards an outage was caused as part of the delay. I realized I was thrown under the bus when my name was written all over the COE document and the SDM who took a sudden leave and was the one leading the project was absent , mind you not a single word was communicated to me about me being in charge and I was the most junior in the group. Things started going down hill after that, I and another dude (both of us not belonging to a certain demographic) would get yelled at in stand up for things that were “ok” if someone else did them. Our engineering estimates seemed “too lazy” while if someone else provided the same estimate or 2x it was fine. The nail in the coffin was a cloud migration project where I had to migrate a service to AWS, this caused a 3 hour outage in prod and I was put in focus for it. During the focus the tasks seemed pretty easy and I was completing them on time until I realized manager is going to screw me, I was emailed feedback summary each week with things like why I only slacked a customer (he responded in slack btw) and not slack and chimed him or why I went to stand up 2 minutes lates blah blah. This started to get me really frustrated, amidst my focus my sdm took a maternity leave and gave me a huuuuuge migration project with only 3 days to launch. On the second day I realized I need more time cause her suggestion would not work and I’d have to find another way. Prior to her leaving I told her that your suggestion won’t work to which she smiled and said “I knew, I wanted to make sure you are ready to come out of focus and now I realize you aren’t”. SDM leaves and skip is now in charge on our first 1:1 he starts crying in front of me saying he has no choice but to pip me and in my head I’m like wtf, chill bro. Then while he is crying he starts reciting LP and how I’m not meeting the bar (I swear not making this up) , now his face is all read and if anyone is looking through the room they’re thinking I’m the one pipping him. Anyhow I walk out of the room, and call my MD, tell him the situation (was seeing a psychiatrist cause prior to my focus I got severe depression and gained 50 pounds due to stress eating, thinking I’m the dumbest person on planet earth, life has no purpose, yada yada ) and he says you have to take FMLA. Based on our previous conversation and a recording I made out of our 1:1 he (psychiatrist) said both your skip and SDM are practically playing mental games with you. I take FMLA without being served the pivot doc grind leetcode and system design and now thank god have a verbal offer. I’m also blessed with being a citizen and not worried about visa issues. Today I went back to the office , SDM is back from her maternity leave and tells me “they want to extend my focus “ and how much she “missed me” and blah blah. Interviews: Market is bad and not bad. Having Amazon on your resume definitely opens doors, but companies are less forgiving, I cleared onsite for both meta (e5) and Citadel but they told me they had no head count by the time I was finished. My offers starts at June 15th and I’m probably gonna apply for more roles since then. Resources: forget grokking system design and Alex Xu, they are ok but the bar is definitely higher and I suggest resources that are deeper and do not hand wave stuff. CMU DB group , Jordan has no life are probably better. Use Pramp for mock interviews. Leetcode: Make sure you covered neetcode 150 and beyond, for meta I only passed onsite cause I had seen the EXACT problem in my prep and had to somehow play the “I haven’t seen this lemme work on this with you “ part . System design is much harder for mid level and prepare to go into sharding and replication consistency and engines behind different data bases. TC: 220 YOE: 3 Location: Seattle
Thanks for sharing your experience. I just started Amazon 3 months ago and I can already feel my SDM playing mind games with me. All this talk about “I’m going to push you to excel” , “when are you going to stop making excuses for yourself?”, It’s a shame because I really like SDEs and skips on my team but SDM is such an asshole and I just don’t trust him already. I have asked for feedback from all the SDEs on my team and they have all said that I’m doing good but it feels like he’s convinced otherwise. Talk about earn trust, he definitely does not have it from me.
Hmm, COE explicitly mentions not to name names as a part of the process. Escalate that COE to HRBP/upper management. Not likely anything will happen, but the COE being blameless is one of the few good things Amazon does.
It didn’t have names but only my CR’s were put in there while the outage was caused by something else but that’ll really take 4-5 hours and cross org verification to prove. And now I’m just waiting for severance, the L7 reviewing the COE grilled me and I provided the facts but he didn’t really care and gave some LP bullshit. SDM, L6 and L7 apparently are from a specific tight area and really have each others back and carpool to work. I thought about raising it to HR with other evidence but am burned out tbh
Eh, just submit it to HR before leaving, perhaps with your notice.
Wow! Having worked at Amazon, I know what you probably went through. Congrats on the offer. Thank you for sharing resources. Good luck with your new and better venture.
Thank you
What org are you in, OP?
Yeah Amazon is not for the faint of hearts
I don't understand why managers think they are gods or play mental games or play to the tune of their pied pipper leaders? Amazon doesn't care about them too. And in the grand scheme of things, they are just hurting their own karma.
How long were you on FMLA? Did you get paid while on leave?
Congrats op. Even I was in focus as a PM at amazon and found 2 offers within 6 weeks
We all know amazon is worst place to work and has reputation of clown owned dumpsterfire