Why I Quit Amazon
Money can't buy happiness. Bananas can't buy employees. 🍌🍌🍌
Hey Pirates, PK Here. In this video, I will discuss why I decided to leave Amazon.
How long did you work at Amazon?
I worked at Amazon for about thirteen months between 04/2017 and 04/2018.
When did you decide to leave Amazon?
3 months after I started Amazon.
Why? Why did you decide to leave so early?
Several reasons. Compensation wasn't the primary issue; I knew I wouldn't be happy there. Combine that with the poor company benefits and oppressive culture. It didn't take long for me to arrive at such a conclusion.
Let's start with the benefits. What are the perks at Amazon?
That's the thing. Amazon doesn't have notable perks. There aren't even cafeterias inside the corporate buildings. At that time, it didn't even sponsor Green Cards for foreign L4-level employees (they do now), which also played a critical role in my decision to leave. So what are the benefits, then? Well, they give you free Starbucks coffee (+ water), $100 amazon.com credit per year, and, of course, free bananas 🍌 (disrupting the local supermarkets by killing banana competition).
What is the company culture at Amazon?
Amazon's super competitive not only externally but also internally. I'm not comfortable calling my peers coworkers because they all felt like competitors. There's this thing called PIP at Amazon (short for Performance Improvement Plan). If you get that, you can say that you are fxxxed; it pretty much means the company doesn't want you anymore. Even during my short stay at Amazon, I witnessed several people evaporate. I saw a few managers get demoted too. And this all happened within my thirteen-month tenure at Amazon. Weak job security is never a good thing. I mean, nobody wants to work in fear.
There's this intriguing internal website at Amazon which ranks the length of your tenure compared to other employees. For example, if you had just started your day 1 at Amazon, you would obviously be at the bottom of the ladder. I checked this website to see where I stood thirteen months after my day 1, a few days before I left Amazon. To my surprise, I was already a little above the middle. The resignation rate is so great that I was already above the 50th percentile! I mentioned earlier that compensation isn't the most important thing. I guess I'm not alone in that sense. Enough about Amazon's corporate culture. Like the company name, Amazon is a jungle where you must take care of yourself to survive.
Why were you not happy at Amazon?
Amazon is a great company (despite all this...). They're one of the FAANGs, pay software engineers well, and their stocks went up substantially over the past few years (+ free bananas 🍌). There are definitely things that Amazon excels in. Going back to the question, I was unhappy with my team (not "just" Amazon); the work wasn't fun. Not only that, I didn't feel like I was growing. A mix of unsatisfying work and a lack of growth (with a little more emphasis on the former) were the causes of my early offboarding.
What did you do at Amazon?
I worked at Amazon Prime. I worked on a platform that conducts marketing experiments like A/B testing. My team was responsible for building its frontend. But here's the thing. I don't enjoy working on UIs.
Why don't you enjoy it?
It's not exactly that I don't enjoy working on frontend but working with HTML and CSS. Software engineers were responsible for writing their own HTML and CSS, including the layouts. Let me share an anecdote. One of the feedbacks on my code review was, "why is the color of this UI green?" I'm like, wtf…? Can't I ask the same question for red, orange, blue, or any other color? I obviously didn't do that but instead asked him, "what's your favorite color?"
Have you tried talking to your manager about it?
Of course! I always do; however, I only do it once because there's no point in asking twice. Here's what I learned from working at corporate giants. If your manager is the type of person who really cares about you, he'll take it to heart and act on it right away. Otherwise, nothing will change, even if you bring it up multiple times. I explicitly told my manager that I prefer working on the backend. After all, I was hired as a software engineer, not a frontend engineer (Amazon has distinct roles for software and frontend engineers). Anyways, I was honest about it, and he said yes, but with a very reluctant face because that's not where he wanted me. He said he'll try his best, but that was the last time we discussed this topic. You know, if he really did try his best, he would have at least tried to confront me and explain why it's not feasible for the time being. Instead, he chose to avoid the question. I waited about a month, and as my third month at Amazon was finishing, I told my wife, "I'm leaving."
But can't you change teams at Amazon? Did you really have to leave?
Here's the thing. To change teams at Amazon, you must still go through the entire interview cycle again. But if you must max out preparation anyway, why not apply to other companies? I could always try moving internally, but after I fail to do so externally.
But don't you get stocks? Isn't stock compensation an incentive to stay?
The Restricted Stock Unit policy at Amazon is quite messed up. The RSUs only vest 5% during the first year, 15% the following year, and 40% in the third and fourth. Others usually vest at 25% every year for four years. Where you would have collected half the RSUs at other companies after two years, you wouldn't even have reaped a quarter at Amazon. If my reward for four years of patience would turn me into a millionaire, it's a different story. But the 5% wasn't even worth $10,000 at that time. More importantly, the price I was paying for the lack of growth was greater than the financial incentives. Couple thousand bucks weren't worth the career stagnation.
You decided to leave Amazon within three months of starting. Then, why did it take longer than a year to leave?
I made the decision within three months, but jumping ship needs preparation. For software engineers, that means leetcoding. But having relocated internationally from South Korea, my wife and I had yet to settle in Seattle. We spent the following three months learning about the area. I then started interviewing after grinding LeetCode for almost three months. I accepted the offer from Microsoft nine months into Amazon. With my next destination determined, I wanted to leave as soon as possible. But that wasn't easy either, as foreign employees like me had to get new work authorization. This delayed the entire process by additional three months. I honestly didn't care about that 5% RSU, but thanks (?) to that delay, I somehow completed a full year at Amazon and received the 5%.
Do you have any regrets?
No, I don't have any regrets about leaving Amazon. Their stocks have quadrupled since, but not only would they take four years to fully vest, but I also wanted to avoid putting my career at stake. I mean, that's four years! Besides, Microsoft is a lot more chill; they also offered a position I wanted.
