This is a very different post than I usually write because it is for my benefit, not yours. I need closure on my Amazon experience and I hope by writing down what happened I can let it go and fully move on.
The first eight months or so at Amazon were great. I was working on a new, ambitious project. There was nothing to maintain and we did not get much input from management so the team was able to focus on building cool software. Building cool stuff is fun, but what really made the experience great was the relationship I built with two of my coworkers. We pushed each other to be better, we collaborated really effectively, and we were great friends. I am so thankful to have worked with them and gotten to know them.
I am not sure exactly what changed, maybe it was when our product achieved adoption, but something happened around the 10-month mark. Suddenly we were constantly receiving high-priority feature requests. We stopped being able to do multiple days of uninterrupted work in a row. Huge features were requested suddenly, we would drop everything and scramble to get them out in two weeks. And then the features would never be adopted. My team was continually lobbying our manager to prioritize features that would make the developers more effective and happier, but instead, he pushed us to take on technical debt that slowed down progress. The team pushed for clarity on problems, we kept asking “is work assigned to contractors or do the contractors pick what work they do?” and our manager would never answer so we had to maintain an overly complex system that did both. Morale on the team fell sharply.
There was a tool that asked questions each day. Questions like “Do you regularly make decisions that sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term benefits?” and “Are you happy at work?”. I talked to my coworkers and they told me they were giving low scores on all the questions. Our manager refused to address those questions and only discussed the results for questions that were not interesting. I was the first to start looking for a different job, but I was the last to leave the team. My two coworkers accepted internal transfers to different Amazon teams. I was left with the decision to do an internal transfer or join Google. I decided to transfer internally, but it did not work out.
At some point during my second year at Amazon, I got a 4% raise on my base pay. I asked my manager why I didn’t get a bigger raise. He told me that my raise was fine and that some people in the company were getting 0% raises so I should be happy. In reality I was not getting a good raise because my manager was giving me bad performance reviews and did not tell me. Later I found out that he was also giving bad performance reviews to one of my coworkers (and maybe all three of us). It nearly cost one of my coworkers a promotion on his next team.
When I tried to complete the internal transfer the other manager withdrew his offer due to the bad performance reviews I was given. This was the first I had heard about my bad performance reviews. My manager had consistently given me the impression that my performance was good during 1:1 meetings. My manager told me that if I did 6 months of good work on his team, he would allow me to transfer internally to a different team. Maybe he was trying to save himself from losing all his developers at once. I accepted my Google offer and left Amazon on my two-year anniversary.
After I accepted the Google offer, I set up a meeting with my manager’s manager to tell her about how I was being forced out of Amazon. I also wanted to tell her about the bad performance reviews I received. I thought she would be sympathetic because my team was the highest performing team in her org. I did get a meeting scheduled. But I decided to cancel the meeting because I was mad at Amazon and I thought having the meeting might help the company. At that time I did not want to do anything that might help Amazon. My manager is still at Amazon and is presumably still being dishonest with his reports.
I have been much happier at Google and it is a healthier organization. I have been able to focus on one thing at a time with minimal high-priority interruptions. At Google, performance ratings are provided transparently to employees and I have received great ratings from supportive managers. I have made some friends and learned from great engineers. Google is by no means a perfect company, but it is clear that Google is grateful for the contributions of its employees and that means a lot to me.
My two coworkers who stayed at Amazon have not fared as well as I have. One of them stayed two more years and got very burnt out. When he resigned, the job posting to replace him was for a higher job level than he was when he left. Why didn’t Amazon promote him before he left if he was already doing the work? The other coworker is still at Amazon. I am not in good touch with him, but last I heard he was not enjoying the work.
When I left Amazon I thought it was a good company, just with a few bad apples like my former manager. But as I see how things are done at Google, and after seeing what happened to my two coworkers, I have changed my mind. I now think any organization that tolerates the kind of treatment that I experienced at Amazon is bad. I deserve to be treated better. I will never work at Amazon again.