What is life like outside of Amazon.
I have an outside offer from a local non-tech company. Its great pay. What is life like outside of Amazon? I started Amazon 2+ years ago and my hesitations in accepting the offer lie in not having the same resources, organization, and ownership mindset from colleagues. Can anyone who left Amazon tell me about their transition?
Work? Could be less, same or more. Usually in unicorns or places where you want good ownership, the work will be same or more. Difference? Amazon employees gets more stressed by constant competition with their team mates which causes animosity between them, not supporting their team members, 0 transparency etc. Outside amazon, this doesn't happen often. Thus a big chunk of stress is releaved.
The second point is apt. I got laid off and now I'm working outside Amazon at a tech company and the only problems i face in the office are technical and not political. More importantly at better tc somehow
Nicer!
I realized how badly I was being treated (emotionally/monetarily) at Amazon after getting out of it. It's like breaking up from an abusive relationship. A few therapy sessions later, life's better. I thought work was more interesting at Amazon in the beginning but as I got ramped up at the new place, that base got covered as well. Feeling way more healthy in life.
L6 SWE $500TC at Google Amazon was the most unique company I worked at, I was there for about 5 years. I've worked at research labs, startups, Amazon, Google. Amazon is really extreme in terms of the demands and commitment to work, which has its pros and cons. The pro is that you learn a lot from it, and get a good sense of ownership as you mentioned. You get what you put in, I would say similar if you went to med school, a really hard college, investment banking, consulting, and other high commitment places. I think every year I was at Amazon was worth 1.5 years of industry experience at any of my other companies. That's just one aspect though. You're right that you'll miss that. But I think it's also valuable to be at a company that takes a less extreme outlook to work. You'll gain empathy, learn to strategize and prioritize versus dump tons of hours in, and gain good personal skills from being in a less cutthroat environment. There were a lot of things that I just started accepting as normal when I was at Amazon, it's clear they're toxic but I just drank the kool-aid. Amazon has such a bad reputation of this that you sometimes hear companies not wanting to hire ex-Amazon for fear of bringing in toxic culture. So what was my transition like? I mainly had to stop myself from running so fast and treating every issue as a life threatening emergency. I've found I produce much better code, have more time to think about long term design. I've learned to bite my tongue and not be blunt since at Google we care a lot about how we treat each other. I don't get yelled at all the time at Google, which is amazing and has made me a better person bc I'm less likely to yell at others, but sometimes I feel people are beating around the bush. If I had known all of this, I would have left Amazon years earlier. It was a great experience in terms of software engineering skills but I definitely had to "detox" from a LOT of things afterward.
Getting paid more to do less manual work and more strategic work. Amazon is a great opportunity but honestly has a plateau
All depends on where you are going. I've been to 4 companies and also agree with above that there's no place like Amazon elsewhere (both good and bad). Personally, moving from Amazon to G has been the best single decision I have ever made career wise.
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