Deteriorating systems

I was an employee at Amazon until a few months ago. Within the first few weeks of my time there, I realized I was put in a team that was completely orthogonal to my expectations, both in terms of what was considered acceptable behavior at work and in terms of what would be considered a reasonable workload. On top of it, I could never discuss my concerns because I frequently heard shocking statements from managers saying new employees have the least to complain about because they should appreciate the opportunity to be at such a great place regardless of what work they are assigned to. If they didn't succeed, it must be their fault and not the fault of bad managers or poor requirements or unreasonable workloads.

After finishing my year, I developed a minor health issue which slowly took a toll on my performance. After admitting this to my manager, she immediately put me on a pip. My only choice after that was to leave the company and it caused me so much anguish since I thought that I had achieved a good balance to actually keeping up with the insane workload up to that point.

Darwinism might be what some call Amazon's practices, but that would be a lie. Amazon hires in scores to keep their deteriorating systems working. Very few hard workers succeed to move onto better opportunities. Most good people drop out of the system (whether by choice or not) and those few who game the system survive to rise up and continue to make the situation worse with their expanded influence.