The only light at the end of the tunnel

I am a current employee at Amazon. My department recently had a new Sr. Manager arrive from another org who had been an Amazon employee for nearly 10 years. Every interaction I had with him was excellent -- he was very, very intelligent and did a great job of challenging us without breaking confidence. He knew Amazon's technologies very well and wanted to be on a first name basis with everyone under and around him. I was really looking forward to working with him.

About a month into his tenure, he announced he received US citizenship. A week after that, he took three weeks of vacation and left the company two days after his return. He got out of there faster than fleas off a cat during a flea bath. I assume he was just biding his time until his citizenship was approved to go away, but knowing Amazon's work environment, I wouldn't surprised at all to hear he was muscled out by inept management. (It's no coincidence most the stories that have called out a particular org have been Marketplace.)

Like that manager, I am just biding my time until I hit my next work anniversary, and then I will immediately quit the day after that anniversary comes. Until then, I'll continue to play the games you need to play in order to be successful here. I'll continue to play unnecessary politics, manicuring my actual statistics and output to make sure I look good even though I'm actually a mediocre engineer. I'll continue to pretend to put the company first and put in the usual 60+ hours/week just to keep afloat, at the cost of my physical health and sanity. I'll continue to only care about getting myself a promotion (so it'll look better on my resume when I leave to go somewhere else) at the expense of others in my department.

Every Monday, my phone calendar sends me a notification of how many weeks I have left to go until I can put in my two weeks notice. It's the only light I have at the end of the tunnel.