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15 years age difference, need advice! 🙏
I’m about to hit my one year mark here at Amazon, and I while I do enjoy dev work, I was recently informed that I’ve been put on a focus plan. While I’ve been told that I’ve made good progress to leave the focus plan at the end of the 60-day period next week, I’m no longer sure if I even want to stay.. For background, after all of the layoffs, I was reorged onto this new organization with individuals from my old team, and the environment has been rather hostile.. My current dev team consists of 4 people in total - all L4s. Leadership has told us repeatedly that they never needed any of us & originally planned for two of their L6s to take on the project, but had ultimately agreed to keep us on the payroll in order to take ownership of the project we were planned to work on. As a result, our current responsibilities are to take on full-stack work inclusive of backend + web + iOS + Android, with no assistance from our new organization as assistance would prevent us from having artifacts to validate our employment.. Trying to engage with teammates to get information has also been like pulling teeth, as its been made clear from our leadership that a quota for low performing developers needs to be met. On top of all of this, the frequent oncall rotations are also incredibly poor experiences as alarms go off frequently with minimal information, and with other developers frequently ignoring their own oncall responsibilities, I’ve found myself often taking on a significant load- even moreso now that my work is the most scrutinized due to focus. I work out in the mornings, and find myself to be a rather positive person, but the work environment really does seem to drain me to the point where most of the people close to me in my life have told me to leave & stop trying to fight the focus plan. Realistically, my biggest concern is- How much worse could a work environment be? Im sure that economic pressures have turned plenty of workplace environments into tougher spaces, and as a result, I’m wondering if it might be worthwhile to get a grasp of essentially “playing the game” of padding my work with nonsense CRs & inflationary politics like I’m seeing from the rest of my team/org… Deep down, I think I really just want to quit & take some personal time to leave these bad experiences in the past. I am a bit concerned financially around finding another job to pay the bills, but before the hiring freezes last year, I was able to make it to final rounds with Google/Roblox/Meta/Twitch/SpaceX (all of which had their positions closed due to the freeze), and while I know the market is no longer hot to hire, I really dont need the highest paying salary, and would honestly not even mind being a cashier or something temporarily… Still, I would really appreciate hearing any thoughts/criticism from others about where I am, or even any positive workplace environment stories/experiences that others may have in the industry, as that might make me feel a bit better about walking away from a job for the first time 😅 YoE: 1 TC: 180
You made it to all those companies :O
Blah blah blah Amazon sucks. We know. Most places are full of hostile pricks. I'm counting the days before I finally get managed out successfully. I just hope it's with a severance.
If you were able to make it to the final round with those companies last year, in a job market similarly unfavorable to employees as the current market, then why not just coast, start interview prep, get PIPed to collect severance, and then start interviewing?
I can try - Though hearing about a lot of qualified devs struggling to find a technical job for an extended period has made me a bit nervous. On top of that, I think I’ve heard of bad experiences from most companies & so trying to figure out what to really look for/where to go to next. Have you had a decent time at JPMorgan?
Yeah, I don't blame you for wanting to do your due diligence, especially after your experience at Amazon. l would try to just focus on your interviewing ability and have more confidence -- i doubt you just got lucky, I think its likely you interview well. I think most of those stories are from people with too little experience (mid-level or lower) or too much (8+ YOE without real impact/proof of seniority) edit: My time at Jpmorgan was alright but I wouldn't recommend it for someone that isn't a junior/desperate. It's career suicide otherwise unless you're very diligent about picking the team, which is tough to so
Man is Amazon really this bad? I’ve been on blind for a while and I keep seeing so many stories like this.
Wondering the same thing...Blind seems to really hate Amazon
To be honest, I originally joined on a really great team with really bright people here at Amazon. I think from all of this, I’ve learned that the most important thing is to find a manager that you can really trust to support & defend you and your work. I’m sure it’s a lot easier to go to forums like blind when things go south, and Amazon is really big. Still, I wouldnt be surprised if Amazon simply has lower quality people in the main. I dont think the hiring bar is that high either for devs specifically and so the quality of the people you end up working with can be a bit random. For reference, I think amazon’s SDE assessment allows two hours to do two questions. When I was interviewing last year, amazon was closer to the bottom of my list & so I sent in two one-line answers in ~5m and I got an email for final rounds about an hour later. Every other company seems to have harder interview questions
hang in there for 2 yrs -- that's what recruiters look for on a resume. 2 is the magic number . "You spent 2 yrs in AMZ boot camp? -- great, you're hired"
Play the CR and politics game, over and over again, and it will eat your soul. Don't play the CR and politics game, and you'll feel left behind. It's a tradeoff. Not everyone makes one choice over the other. I certainly didn't make good choices when I was younger. Imo, life is too short for abusive relationships. And Amazon, and Amazon-like companies are abusive AF. If I had blind back in the day, and I had awareness of poor corporate politics, I would have just collected paychecks and played the managers for fun. I would have totally gaslighted them the same way they did to me. While simultaneously interviewing elsewhere for a higher TC. While not all companies are like Amazon, many companies admire the BS policies of Amazon. They copy them and crash and burn. You'll need to cycle through these crazies many times over your career unfortunately.
You got a toxic team. Sorry OP.
Amazon engineering is 100% a shit show. Other functions however is completely opposite, and may even be one of the best places to work.
Which team?
A typical Amazon PIP story.