Foreword #
Let me preface everything with this: whatever I say and do are entirely based on my own personal experiences and values. Leaving a job is a deeply personal decision. I don’t claim to have found any universal truth, for there is none. If you find what I’m saying resonating, great; if not, that’s great too. In the tattered fabric of human existence, everyone experiences things differently, all of which are no more or less valid than any others.
It would be incredibly unfair to say my time at Amazon is a complete waste of time. My time at Amazon is my most important professional experience to date. It has put bread and butter on my table, a roof over my head, armed me with real world technical skills, not to mention I have met some incredibly smart and dedicated individuals while working there. For those reasons, I’m forever grateful.
Long time coming #
In many ways, me leaving Amazon has been a long time coming. Other than making a good living, I have not enjoyed my tenure for a long time. After obtaining permanent residency in February, leaving became a question of when, not if.
I made the decision in March after an episode of workplace drama. To me, the episode itself was not a trigger; it was nothing new for Amazon but a continued manifestation of the behaviors Amazon incentivizes people to adopt: aggressiveness with an unwavering sense of urgency.
I decided to cross the Rubicon that day not because I’m mad at who or what, but with a realization that I no longer wish to be part of this game: the game of responding to manufactured urgency with pretended urgency, the game of responding to aggression by showing ‘ownership’, the game of demonstrating ‘leadership principles’ when the leaders across different levels play by different rules.
That evening, I wrote in my journal: the die has finally been cast. Following that realization, I took all my time-off in April. Well-meaning coworkers reached out privately to check on me, I offered minimal responses for I had little energy left.
Comfortable and unfulfilled #
Behind the glamorous exterior, working in Big Tech is like working in any other 9-to-5. Being a trillion dollar company, there is no doubt important and challenging work are being done, it just never occurred to me personally. Of all the people I met at Amazon, only a handful genuinely find their work fulfilling, only a single person I know would picture himself working there until retirement.
The technicality of my tasks or the tasks of my ‘superiors’ doesn’t excite me, made worse by the fact that I often do not even believe in the necessity of work itself. After stripping away the glittering exterior and buzz word, my work is no more than writing a few of ‘REST’-like APIs. It was fun at first, and I did learn quite a bit about building scalable software, but it got repetitively trivial quickly.
Though I was making progress towards greater financial returns, and possibly a promotion, I don’t feel I’m making any headway into becoming a better engineer. I feel disconnected from my training in school, the open source communities that made technologies interesting to begin with, as well as my personal values.
One of my favorite authors, Derek Sivers, wrote about having vs being. I came to Amazon because I want to be a good software engineer. As I stay on, however, I fear I would end up having plenty while being very little.
Lacking true role models #
I do not see anyone I truly want to grow into. I’m not throwing shade at anyone’s character, skills, or life choices. We merely have different priorities and want something different out of life. They are just not for me, period.
Most people around me seem always to be in a rush to get somewhere, perpetually busy and always on edge. The leaders I envision and try my best to be are the ones who get things done calmly, creating nothing but gentle assurance to those who follow. The vast majority of leaders I encountered at Amazon are those who might also get things done, but often through manufactured urgencies and coercions. They are like low-grade walking anxiety machines I dread interacting with, let alone following. If we are truly the average of the 5 people we hang out most with, I want a different set of people to be with 40 hours a week.
Hard to fit into the mould #
I always think people are like water; they flow where the landscape leads them to, they shape themselves into the vessel contains that them. The longer people stay, the better they fit. Although by no means absolute, that entails a few things from my observation throughout my tenure:
It is ‘better’ to be loud than to be effective A colleague once wrote a typo which caused some loss of application logs. He got a public and a private dress down from another more established coworker. He later discovered a similar bug written by the aforementioned person and fixed it in silence. Performance review rolls around, he got a lower rating than the other.
It is ‘better’ to accuse than to acknowledge Few people are willing to own their work in a meaningful way, for those who do are often eaten alive. When a design clearly has problems down the road, the senior who did the design often defends the flaws by pointing fingers to those who did the implementation; when a service is broken, acknowledging the mistake is often a last resort after exhausting all options to blame it on another team. Teams often treat each other like rivals competing for the same resources instead of as partners serving the same customers.
It is ‘better’ to complicate than to simplify My last team’s service has 60 weekly active users (fewer than this blog in a good week). All the users are internal, there is no way we would get more than a few hundred total users in the next few years. The service was designed and built as if it were meant to serve millions.
It is ‘better’ to focus on a vague future than a solid present ‘It is for possible future use cases’ is one of the most common yet cliche defense I hear when someone is defending an idea on shaky ground. That future almost never pans out the way it was planned, and those ‘future-proofing’ design choices end up costing more efforts to build, maintain, extend and tear down. By definition, future is unknown, if we are so sure and good at anticipating the future, we should be in another profession all together.
It is a set of moulds I find incredibly difficult to fit into.
What about money? #
Yes, Amazon pays well. In a world where an average American household makes less than $75,000 a year, an entry-level software engineer at Amazon easily makes more than twice as much.
Money, and by extension a comfortable life, can mask a lot of problems for a long time. For years, I thought I’d be okay with just working for the money and seek fulfillment elsewhere. After all, that’s what my parents did, as did their parents, as did millions of other people. It turns out I cannot. Constantly having to pretend to care and argue about issues I couldn’t care less about takes so much energy that it strips away anything good I have to offer after a grueling 8-hour workday. Towards the end of my tenure, it got so bad that I found myself starting to lose interest in the things I know I love, like playing the violin, playing with my cat Henry, or simply talking to my friends and family.
I have a friend in college who I love hanging out with. We played tennis at least three times a week, went to late night eateries, and pulled a couple of all-nighters either playing video games or studying for exams. He once said to me while we were in college: though we don’t have any money now, this is probably the happiest time in our lives. I did not agree with him at the time, how could we not be happier if we have more money? I ask myself today: am I happier? Sure, money has made parts of my life more enjoyable, but I don’t know if I would confidently say yes. Would you?
Next: a pathless Path #
I’d be lying if I tell anyone I have everything figured out, not even close to it. I told a friend back in April: I feel I’m on the precipice of a giant wave. I can feel endless opportunities swirling underneath, yet it is still scary to take the plunge. What finally pushed me over the edge is the notion of ‘memento mori’ from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations: ‘you can leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think’. As I contemplated it during my time-off, I saw no justification to continue.
I read Paul Millerd’s Pathless Path in March. It feels almost too personal. Swapping out the names, locations and numbers, this is my story. When Paul left his default path as a consultant in New York City, he too was around my age, he too left not insignificant amount of money ‘on the table’, he too was feeling utterly disconnected from work, he too didn’t exactly have a plan, he too was scared if he would still be loved as much. But he knew he could not just carry on and wither away, he had to get out and experiment. On that pathless path, he found his wife in Taiwan, a career as a writer, and a deeper conviction of another way to truly live and prosper.
I cannot say what my exact plans are, for I’m not sure either. I’ll focus on what I love: learning new technologies, read more books, playing more music, cooking more meals. I’ll connect and re-connect with people I love and admire, make travel plans that have been shelved for too long, and let let life happen as it unfolds.
In kindred spirits, I now start my journey to new shores.
June 19, 2024 Mérida, YU, Mexico