Polling former Amazon SDMs
I’m a L7 SDM in AWS. I’ve been at Amazon 10 years and honestly love huge parts of the culture: the data driven attitude, moving fast, anyone-does-any-job mentality. However, I’m just not having fun anymore. My org is stacked with Microsofties and we’re moving so slow. Spending more time in meetings discussing a feature then it would take to actually deliver the feature. I look around and it’s increasingly difficult to find pockets of the Amazon that feel like “home.” I’m looking at moving on but honestly not sure where to go. I want the good parts of the old Amazon culture. I want to ship software, emphasize ownership, and not get stuck in red tape. Everyone complains about Google’s culture being too slow and not actually interested in delivering. Facebook looks like everything about the Bay Area that keeps me from moving there. I can’t really get behind Snap. Any former Amazonians move on and find greener pastures? (I’m staying in Seattle.)
Isn’t L7 high enough to shift the culture yourself? Aren’t most the people in the meetings / not shipping code on your team?
Ouch for Microsoft people.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot of teams in AWS that move fast... you should consider switching teams
I’m not afraid to switch teams. I just can’t find ones with leadership I trust. I’m all ears if you love your VP. :)
Any chance you could switch to PE? It’s a really fun role.
I really really like managing people. I did start at Amazon as a Dev, but SDM is really my calling.
What is PE?
I hear lot of cribbing and lame excuses to good ideas above. Maybe asked to be lowered a level or two as that sounds apt for this whining.
X Amazon long time sde3 here, you will love Facebook. Ping me
OP do you actually code? You keep parroting the Amazon culture but if you only manage folks, sorry, you're nothing but a glorified slave driver
Lol.. go work in aws before you comment
Really, I would genuinely like to know. If you're not deep in the technical trenches, what exactly are you doing? Putting out livesite fires and such? I generally have no respect for management at Microsoft and I work in Azure Compute. ICs generally drive the technical things here and managers remove roadblocks for us. The respectable ones are those who code and know more about the service than engineers.
Why aren’t you resting and vesting like most other mid level mgrs everywhere?
I certainly don’t want a company people can get away with rest and vest. I really enjoy putting new software in front of customers. Not doing that sounds boring.
Awesome! Then I won’t recommend LinkedIn. Having come from Amzn myself, looking for ways to get out.
Sounds like you’re in a bummer part of AWS...I rather like my AWS team. Hopefully we’re not on the same one!
Sounds like an early stage startup to me.
Most early startups don’t want a L7 SDM (think 50ish engineers). And they probably can’t match my pay.
Well, you said "I want to ship software, emphasize ownership, and not get stuck in red tape.", not "I want to manage 50 peons and be paid shitloads of money".