I Quit $200,000 Software Engineer Job at Amazon

Key Takeaways

a lot of people ask me if i was fired from amazon in today's video i'll share my experience of working at amazon and why i decided to switch to google if you watch this video till the end you'll learn about the framework i use to decide whether to make the switch this framework will guide you to answer questions about your own situation and help you navigate your career on this channel we always give you tips and tools on how to fast track your career in tech industry so if you are new to our channel do consider subscribing let's do this before we begin i want to make it clear that all the opinions in this video are my own and do not represent those of any of my employers let's start with my experience of working at amazon in my view amazon is very different from what you might have read on anonymous discussion boards like blind amazon has somehow become notorious for being very harsh on its tech employees by putting them on performance improvement plans and eventually firing them well that doesn't represent my lived experience at amazon before you jump on me i'm not saying these things don't happen but during my time at amazon i have not seen any tech employees being treated unfairly another thing to note is that i'm only talking about tech employees here and no other type of workers anyway let's move on at amazon i worked with a group of really intelligent teammates working towards a common goal of improving customer shopping experience my managers always cheered for me and gave me projects that helped me grow as an engineer there was a lot of focus on improving communication skills by writing good design docs and constantly presenting your work these skills i believe are very undervalued in the tech industry my managers never micromanage me and always gave me freedom to choose my projects these projects were usually very high impact and it was always very motivating to see the results in summary i've learnt a lot of invaluable skills at amazon that have helped me both professionally as well as personally as we already discussed amazon is a great place to work at but there were a few things that prompted me to look for other opportunities here i want to mention this framework that i have developed in this framework i rate my job in four different dimensions every year these dimensions are number one is learning whether i am learning new things in my job or not number two is earning whether i'm earning as well as my peers in the same job number three is productivity does the job allow me to do my best work by being productive number four is impact am i doing some small bug fixes or my work has some real impact on the users of the product let's talk about them one by one in the context of amazon for learning in my first year at amazon i learned a great deal about how to write code in big code bases i also learned how code reviews are done it's one thing to write whatever code works in your personal projects when you're writing code for systems that cater to millions of users there's a certain amount of diligence that has to be done before you check in new code since amazon is so big i also learned how to work in cross-functional teams i also learned how to write good design docs and communicate better but towards the end of my second year at amazon i started feeling like my learning was stalling that's because amazon has this constant focus on customer obsession sometimes what's best for the customers is not best for an engineer's growth let's take an example of a feature that is very useful for customers in the us amazon wants to launch this feature in all other marketplaces for you as an engineer it's not much of a growth when you are tasked to just copy paste or successful in the us to other markets even though that's the best thing to do for the customers so when i assessed my job for learning at the end of my second year i gave it a 6 on 10. now coming up i'll walk you through how i rated my job for earning productivity and impact this will help you rate your own job so stay tuned for that but first like this video and let me know in the comments down below which of these two companies google or amazon would you like to work for let's talk about earning compensation at amazon was great i was making a six-figure salary that afforded me a comfortable lifestyle which i'm grateful for however when i compared the numbers to my peers i felt i was underpaid there are a few reasons for that number one amazon has little to almost no stock refreshers from all the people i talked to the amount of stocks they got after joining amazon was negligible amazon has no year end bonus compensation structure at amazon is unlike any other tech company at most companies the amount of refreshers or increment you get depends on your performance at amazon the refreshes you get also depends on your expected salary for the next year so if your stocks have increased in value you're already reaching the top of the band that amazon has established for your level you get no more stocks or increments in other words the upside to your salary is limited and you rarely go outside the salary bands established by amazon for earning i rated amazon at 5 on 10 next comes productivity internal tools in amazon was generally great but in my team we had to use this tool to manually run reports to analyze the av experiments we were doing this tool would take like 30 seconds to load and was completely unreliable everybody seemed to hate this tool but even after filing numerous bugs to improve it it was going nowhere in 2021 having to manually run reports for av tests is unacceptable i felt i could use my time better for productivity i gave amazon a good 7 on 10. lastly let's talk about impact as i already mentioned the work i was doing at amazon was highly impactful i was building these recommenders that you see on amazon.com work was customer facing we used to run a lot of a b test to collect data and figure out which recommender works better overall i did it my job 9 on 10 for impact by combining all the scores we get a solid 27 on 40. even though it's a good score it didn't clear the cutoff of 3140 that i have for a good job so i started looking for opportunities outside amazon if you want to learn more tips and tools that can help you fast track your career in tech industry please watch these videos i'll see you in the next one [Music] you