A couple of months back left Amazon for a small tier 2/3 company that gave me a very good TC. now, after coming and working at a new company I realized how far in eng bar they are. All conversations with managers on improving things, setting up proper processes, basically raising the eng bar are ending with response like that’s allgood but we cannot afford that, etc. I am missing eng culture and tools we had at Amzn. not sure what to do now.
Stay and make the company better. You have a great opportunity to set the direction right. You need to understand that engineering is not only using tools but to build them as well. Step out of your comfort zone
Small companies are stubborn as hell, especially if they're run by someone who got lucky and thinks they know how to run a business (even though it miraculously hasn't grown in size for the last 10-20 years.) Just leave. Screw them.
Be a better communicator, earn their trust and do the right thing. Why does everybody think escaping from people/company will solve problems?
Which tier 2 company?
Cannot reveal, quite small the community at L6 level.
What is the "cost" they're afraid of? Raising the bar should either decrease cost or increase revenue over time.
Start by building tools that make your own job easier.
This guy gets it, lead by example. If it's actually good others will follow
We had a testing tool lacking. I made it in my free time. Some of my team mates started using it recently & they appreciate it. It will keep spreading if it's good. We have some Staff engineers who are not hired to write libraries but they wrote it & now people use it. Point being, it's very expensive to dedicate resources for it, you got to push great practices on your own slowly. Business value generating $$$ is more important over CI/CD process.
Seattle or Bay Area? (or somewhere else)
Seattle
You could also try some other technically mature company. Amazon is lagging FAR behind the state of the art for technical operations, so if Amazon is your point of reference for doing things right, I would encourage you to seek a company closer to the cutting edge.
It depends what you want. Don't forget the bad at Amazon. I worked with crazy psychopaths and even though I miss the intelligent culture, I'll never go back. Work doesn't matter that much. I do my best where I can and don't worry about what I can't control. Embrace the inefficiencies, they're why you have a job.