My Amazon Burnout Experience
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I'm not saying Amazon is a great place to work -- but its clear this person isn't a great person to work with.
Everything he writes will resonate with anyone who has worked in large bureaucracies.
If the author is capable of developing systems that save the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year, why the fuck does it matter if they are a "great person to work with"?
If the author is a narcissist, they would be mistaken about saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Remember, this is from the author's point of view. Allegedly, he was working with PH.Ds and others who disagreed with his metrics. A man who within his own rant claimed to be smarter than everyone else in his team.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Dunning Kruger effect is real. A man who says nothing good about his own team (that he admits has PH.Ds that were disagreeing with him) is hard to believe. The author is probably honest about _believing_ that he was saving millions of dollars per year. But perhaps he was an idiot and his metrics were wrong.
And based on my experience, when a rant begins with: > I love to solve real world problems, and in many ways am the perfect type of person for Amazon's culture
You can almost certainly believe the guy is on the "Illusory superiority" side of the Dunning Kruger effect.
But, maybe you can try to recall all the other people saying pretty much the same thing about working for amazon? Does that help you judge this post a little more favourably/give it more credence?
Anyone who has worked in this industry knows that middle management can make or break a team. All that the news has told me is that some middle management at Amazon sucks.
Which is true for all companies. Some middle managers are absolutely awful at their job. The engineers then blame the company in its entirety, not realizing that it was their direct supervisors who were messing up.
I'm sure Amazon has their fair share of awful managers. But all companies do.
Honestly, a professional would write up specifics beyond "My analysis says that I saved millions of dollars but no one else on my team believed my numbers".
Which is the crux of his entire argument unfortunately. I don't see anything here about awful bosses micromanaging him. I don't see him mentioning the turnover of his team (My sister had an awful boss. Her entire team left within 6 months. She was the last one to get out about a year later. The entire team took a paycut to leave for another company)
I know what awful bosses sound like. Failing to give a promotion to one dude who self-thought he was doing good is not necessarily indicative of a mistake.
Tell me the numbers. How many team members (or what percent) has left the team in the past 6 months? How have _other smart_ team members been ignored?
When a team is awful, it effects more than just you personally. The people who complain with true vigor are the ones who see it in their coworkers.
If its 100% personal anecdote of a self taught self-described polymath... sorry, I'm chocking it up to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
In fact, their continued employment at a company that routinely cuts the lower performers is probably evidence against them having dunning krugers.
If he wasn't a narcissist, he'd have managed to fit at least a few words about how a coworker was mistreated.
Not writing stories about your co-workers qualifies you for NPD now? Why are you splitting hairs?
The fact that he has failed to account for how his management effects his team is very telling about the guy's personality.
I'm not asking for much, just a paragraph or two that proves that this "throwaway" account isn't 100% narcissistic.
But again, nearly 3000 words and nothing about teammates or coworkers in there. That's pretty telling honestly.
This is an important note. _Everyone_ has the Dunning Kruger effect. It is a glitch that occurs in virtually all human brains, including myself and yourself.
That's why its very important to keep coworkers in mind. You can be a lot more objective about other people than you can be about yourself.
Its like the eternal joke goes. If you ask a team "who is the best programmer", everyone will probably say "me" or "myself".
However, if you want to _really_ know the best programmer, ask the team who the 2nd best programmer is.
Cause no one wants to work with an asshole, no matter how smart they are. There's plenty of other engineers out there that can build systems and save money, maybe not to the specific degree that OP claims to be able to, but unlike OP they'll work with their team.
I guess thats why HR should work more to find people with different mindset, ability and should create working environment for them, where is the equality then? Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms, so what? should they die? should they always live in dirt?
My small brain suggests me that's the problem of HR
What? Who suggested that.
>> Not everyone succeeds in social terms, not everyone is good at amusing their peers, there are some people who do better in academic/virtual stuff, but not so good in other terms.
No one claimed that everyone/anyone needs to better in social situations. However, there's a clear and obvious difference between lack of social skills and being an asshole.
>> so what? should they die? should they always live in dirt?
Or they could stop being an asshole? They could try to resist their urges to consistently alienate and discredit the work of their team mates. Maybe give that a shot.
Everyone has their own opinion on that topic, but if we rely on Wikipedia [1]
Human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a function in organizations designed to -->maximize employee performance<--
another topic tells
Organizations will engage in a broad range of human resource management practices to capitalize on those assets.[2]
If your HR cannot capitalize assets, if your HR cannot maximize performance, if your HR hired asshole, who is the responsible? HR
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management
I definitely agree that HR should use other measures of accepting an applicant other than possible performance. But that doesn't mean that someone being an asshole is HR's fault. You're basically saying that there is consistent negative correlation between performance and social skills - which is not true.
I am not claiming any correlation between performance and social skills, I want to say, if performance is good but employee sucks social skills, then HR should help them in some way, maybe guy has a vision for future, but because he lacks social skill, he shouldn't be suppressed.
Since we are saying "this person isn't a great person to work with", let me say the same about you. If you can't read someone else's accomplishments without the need to put it down/skim, then you probably have self-esteem issues. Consequently, you are probably not that great to work with. Additionally, you seem to support propping up "team work" at the expense of actual work (so you tend to favor status quo when it collides with competence), so that's a double no :)
Ah downvotes. I guess I am the only one.
So often engineers and quants take it on themselves to define "results" but is that fair? As an engineer these are lessons hard won over my career. I am a component in larger system. What if the alternator in my car took it on itself to improve engine efficiency, fuel economy, or safety at the expense of the job I expect it to do?
One of the most important things an engineer can learn on the job is humility. Understanding that the don't have all the information and accepting the tasks they are given. The author admits this is not what they did and they deserve poor marks as a result. No promotion? ... color me surprised.
Why are you ignoring everything else that has come up about amazon's culture?
Why are you advocating being a sheep? The dude did what he thought was his job description and what he was told was what would help the company at the macro not the micro level I guess his job description should have been: "do what your manager says" ?
Are you maybe going to say that's everyone's job description? Well maybe that would be ok if you are hired for a job that doesn't require initiative etcs. But. Since we are hired to use our brans, we do use our brains :(
>Why are you ignoring everything else that has come up about amazon's culture?
I've read the articles, but its important to remember that if you've had a bad experience you are 10 times more likely to be vocal about it(that shit is some straight science - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/your-money/why-people-reme...).
> guess his job description should have been: "do what your manager says" ?
I'm not a scientist but I am pretty sure that is the definition of a job.
Having been both an engineer and a manager and an engineer again I can honestly say my smoothest projects were composed of folks that were great followers. They understood when they needed to take initiative and when they needed to follow instructions to the letter. When intentionally adding a leak to the abstraction was necessary to get something out the door and when their code needed to be bullet proof.
Alpha programmers are different animals. If they are truly an Alpha programmer then I use them like a flamethrower loosely directing them at tough, solo/small team problems. But I've encountered my share of C/D players that labored under the delusion they were an Alpha programmer. These folks lashed out, constantly questioned my judgement, and eroded the team's cohesion. Somehow they managed to do this while also not being capable or qualified to tackle my big picture problems. I afforded them every opportunity to be successful, but in several cases they were just too smart for me I guess so I had to set them free. This article sounds like a my many meetings with the latter.
As for advocating being a sheep. Some things are bigger than one person. Is the defensive end on a football team a sheep for following the play the QB/Offensive coordinator has chosen? He may not be put in the best place to make a tackle or a sack(very prestigious stats) because his role might be more subtle than that (containing the quarterback). This is what you do when you are part of a team. Why are you advocating going rogue?
The author clearly states that their smartness did not extend into the social realm. He cites the friend he referred to Amazon, who got hired and quickly started rising in the ranks by kissing ass, sucking up and going so far as to show fake data in meetings to make his superiors look good.
So, either his feedback loop was lengthened because it was input that didn't match his past experience.
Or, maybe he wasn't/isnt that great on picking up social cues (something he eludes to).
They seem to be writing about the gap between the reality for promotion Amazon and how they thought they thought they had fit the expectations - the latter of which involves talking about themselves and establishing why they think they qualified for promotion.
I am aware that I don't work as well as I could with others, especially those who hold lots of power but little technical aptitude. Its not out of a smug sense of superiority...I recognize these people are very much my superior in other ways. It is probably limitations of my vocabulary and inexperience at conveying complex ideas with common language. I have no problem claiming to possess numeric and analytical intelligence, but social intelligence is a daily struggle. I even recognize that I was probably hard to manage from a higher-than-direct level, especially when I let my frustrations get the best of me.
Regardless, I find that to be beside the point I am trying to make.
I was sold on a meritocratic position under a boss who believed in a meritocratic ideal, and I thought I could do that job well. As the job was described to me, and as I was told of my criteria for promotion, I actually did do that job well. However, I was judged by a standard that was opaque, never communicated clearly (in fact, some internal rules prohibit a more clear explanation), and I languished for several years in absolute naivety and ignorance while believing every line they fed to me hook, line, and sinker. It took someone who actually cared about me as a person to open up and explain how it all really worked before I got it.
My story absolutely is one of being hard to work with, having naive expectations, and going about things all wrong. But it is also one about being lied to repeatedly about how to do my job right, destroying my quality of life in the pursuit of the game as it was communicated to me, being cast aside for people who played the deliberately obscured game better, and getting burnt out by it. And given the recent statements by senior level executives about how Amazon is so meritocratic, it is a story of how even those who rise to the high performance meritocratic expectations that they talk about can get obliterated by aspects of the company culture that those same executives claim do not exist.
I'm not perfect, but I knew well before I started that political intelligence was a weak spot for me...and if I had any indication of how insanely political the promotion process was, I probably would have never accepted the offer. I wanted the meritocratic Amazon that was sold to me.
The best thing that ever happened to me was that I was fired. I did a few critical things during that transition for their IT, but in the end I didn't really matter, even though I could claim hundreds of billions of dollars in new transactions.
Wells wasn't wrong and I wasn't either -- we were just wrong for each other.
I've found in the places I've worked there's a ceiling on a meritocracy in the workplace. Being the smartest, fastest, best worker doesn't get you through to those high level promotions.
You need to play the game. If you refuse, then be happy you are getting as much pay and good work as you are getting. Or, work for yourself.
Anyway, sucks that middle management sucks and lives to only forward their existence.
Have a good one and thanks for the read. Hope it was cathartic for you.
There's a lot of books out there on corporate and office politics. Might be a good idea to read at least one.
What I read was someone who was frustrated with their position in Amazon. Someone who made a bad bargain, not someone who necessarily would not be a great person to work with.
What I found most curious was the need to anonymize. I imagine for upper management at Amazon, finding employees
Among the local tech scene in Seattle, there's a quiet view that Amazon is kind of a boot camp where young workers get experience then move on.
That's the common view of digital agencies too; the turn-over will always be high and people are there just to gain experience because the projects are between 2 to 6 months long so within 1 year you're going to be working on at least 2 projects that will launch and be visible to the public.
It isn't a bad business model for the execs at the top; but eventually someone's going to eat your lunch. If you look at agencies, much of those short-term projects don't really increase revenue: I've yet to see any agency that does a retrospective with a client in the room and proves that they helped increase their revenues. In Amazon's case...well they're lucky they have a lot of cool projects to work on but others will eat their lunch eventually.
> and making no efforts to retain them.
If talent is so plentiful they can dispose of it without care, they don't need to be importing it.
Like in any relationship, first one needs to prove that one is trustworthy. Then, if there are these great projects they need to be sold to ones boss before moving forward.
While I appreciate the fact that Amazon might not have the best employer culture I think the OP would have been burnt at any big corp.
It's great to have vision and initiative - but the thing is, either you do those on your own time or then get management backing first.
I have the highest sympathies for burning out - it sucks. Perhaps there should be a "How to live in a corporate culture for dummies" book somewhere.
That is a damning statement that unfortunately has the ring of truth to me.
Suck it up and kiss ass, suppress information when necessary, make allegiances, and whatever else is if you want to move up in that structure.
If all this is beneath you, then time to work for yourself.
In my case, the key was to stop actively pissing people off. Maybe just a change of perspective but it has helped me a good deal.
People who say they don't play politics just reveal themselves as unable to perceive and react to the daily goings on.
Even the incentives are kind of the same: Great pay and looks great on a resume. The latter allows one to move over to things with much more reasonable hours if desires, albeit for lower (but still very decent) pay. Not sure how interesting the work is for an entry level position at Amazon, but I can say at large firms, the work for first years is mind-numbing and useless, basically reviewing documents for minor things.
But to double down and claim nothing is wrong is just inviting a flood of anecdotes from current and ex-employees, like this one and like the one from an Amazon spouse yesterday.
http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo...
At a former job as a software engineer at a smallish (~250 employees or so) enterprise, I sat down quarterly with my manager to sketch out "my" goals for the quarter. I did my best to set my sights high, and I outlined technical goals (underneath most folks' radar but my own) that I wished to accomplish.
Ultimately, though, I didn't have the authority to set my own priorities. Generally speaking, I was assigned work to execute, and it was my job to complete that work; I was not supposed to choose, as the OP did, that my goals were ever more important. But I did. I still tried to make progress on my goals, either by delaying completion of assigned tasks, or by staying late and hacking away after everyone else went home.
Looking back, it would have been better for me (because you do get judged on this stuff in reviews) to just write down goals for myself along the lines of "do the work that is assigned to me", "keep management informed whenever I am unable to do the work that is assigned to me in the timeframe expected", and "report to the office during business hours."
It's great to have employees that are passionate about making your business succeed. But you need to wield that passion during normal working hours -- don't hope that it somehow seeps out of the cracks during evenings and weekends.
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There you go buddy.
The bigger the company gets, the bigger the conflict, because as a company grows, your contribution is known to a shrinking subset of the company and your distance from the people at the top (whose compensation is most benefited by overall company success) increases to the point that you become invisible to them.
Your promotion will almost always be determined by your immediate subtree of superiors. If you want your contribution to the company overall to count for more, you have to work for a company where your personal subtree and the company itself differ less, e.g., a smaller company.
i.e. the managers goals are not in line with Amazons goals. If we believe the OP. this dissonance is costing Amazon billions of dollars.
I know corporate politics are bad, but that takes the cake.
The silence with which moderation on HN is wielded has been frustrating me of late.