Amazon hasn’t been bad in the ways people typically say. My manager and team are fine, I just think the work here is absolutely mind numbing I hate working on design docs for things that are so difficult to translate to value for a real human. And having nerds on my team block things for weeks arguing about menial technical optimizations I hate working on these stupid microservice data pipelines that have 60 components just to move one thing into S3, never to be queried again I miss bringing products to life. At my team you’re really just resolving sev2s, creating alarms and metrics, moving data around and adding fields to things for other teams, and building services that do some super abstract thing that barely ties into an end product. I miss working at a startup, but don’t know how they could possibly compete compensation wise. It feels selfish to leave 100K+ for my family on the table just because I am bored at work. The golden handcuffs are real. People who have left FAANG how did you cope 😩 TC 390K
It’s not that bad. Can’t a price on mental well being. Amazon could have layoffs tomorrow and people recover. It’ll be ok bro
Your severance will still be bigger at Amazon than a startup that folds
Yeah and there is more upside in a startup. What’s your point Sfdc?
It’s hard once you went from startup to big tech
L5?
Take a week vacation, go sign-up and work at McDonald's for that week. You will never complain about a tech job again.
Being grateful is important. But so is seeking better/more fulfilling work.
390k is not golden handcuffs
Yes it is?
That's market rate comp and Amazon is not representative of all companies paying that range. Golden handcuffs are some huge bonus or appreciation in un-vested comp that is unbeatable on the market - so you're locked in. For example, SDE 2 at Nvidia with 1M TC can't go anywhere
Lots of other non-FAANG companies will pay you more. I left Amazon for Stripe and I get paid a lot more for the same level.
Meta is the exact opposite of this. But I don't think it's better.
Now imagine going to your new job for 100k less and still finding it boring. Work is work, it doesn't always have to be fun. Find fulfillment outside of work in your evenings and your weekends. You can afford some more expensive hobbies too.
You need to hit a NW number you are comfortable with, then move to more fulfilling work. Your family would happily sacrifice for you to not be miserable I’m sure. But honestly every job has its perks and downside .. make sure you aren’t going to jump ship to then feel unfulfilled in another way.. it’s an endless game trying to find the “perfect job”
Which team are you on?