The way to Hell

After I got my Amazon offer in 2012, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Only now do I realize that I was really on my way to hell. 

Working at Amazon is extremely frustrating due to the politics. I started hating going to work in the morning, which never happened to me earlier in my 10 year career. I started hating the people around me and developing a bad attitude.

No matter how smart or hard you work or how much you deliver, you are always expected to do more. It's this way because you are not one of the few favorites chosen to get a good review, so they have to keep increasing your metrics targets so that they can justify ultimately firing you for failing to meet your goals. The only way you can get lucky and survive for a while is if your team is missing its hiring goals, so they might keep you around a little while longer until they do hire your replacements. I survived this way for over 3 years until it finally caught up with me after 2015 holiday peak was over. The favorites who got good reviews did so much less than me, but it didn't matter because they were friends with our director and VP and that's all that matters at Amazon.

There are a lot of better companies out there, so please don't let Amazon ruin your attitude like it did to me. It took me a long time to start trusting my new colleagues at my new job after leaving Amazon since I had been burned so badly. Don't let this happen to you!