So painful

I am a former employee of Amazon. I worked four long and painful years, just enough time for my offer letter stock to vest. Most of the people hired at the same time as me did not make it through their first year and had to repay their hiring bonuses and relocation expenses

Amazon was always a very stressful work environment every single day. Two weeks after I started working there, I developed some stress related body pain which didn’t leave me for a minute until I took my first vacation 18 months later and it came back as soon as I returned to work. All Amazonians are expected to work long days then go home and work from home at night and then also be on call overnight and also work almost every weekend. 

My worst memories were having to work over my first Christmas break because of an emergency release which ended up getting bumped for several months anyway.  I also remember getting phone calls in the middle of the night, so I’d have to get up and start working on stuff that managers and directors thought could not wait until regular business hours. Amazon is full of political “emergencies” which Amazon management uses to torture staff who they are trying to rank low in the next review cycle, in order to justify their ranking. They set their friends up to get promoted and all others to fail. It’s so painful for so many people…