<story><title>My Amazon Burnout Experience</title><url>https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsunamifury</author><text>It seems obvious that this person is aware they don&amp;#x27;t work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot.  He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that &amp;#x27;got in his way&amp;#x27; were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospective naiveté smacks of narcissism.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying Amazon is a great place to work -- but its clear this person isn&amp;#x27;t a great person to work with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amzn_throwaway</author><text>I wasn&amp;#x27;t planning on responding to anything, but your comment has enough truth that the criticism is worth responding to.&lt;p&gt;I &lt;i&gt;am&lt;/i&gt; aware that I don&amp;#x27;t work as well as I could with others, especially those who hold lots of power but little technical aptitude. Its not out of a smug sense of superiority...I recognize these people are very much my superior in other ways. It is probably limitations of my vocabulary and inexperience at conveying complex ideas with common language. I have no problem claiming to possess numeric and analytical intelligence, but social intelligence is a daily struggle. I even recognize that I was probably hard to manage from a higher-than-direct level, especially when I let my frustrations get the best of me.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, I find that to be beside the point I am trying to make.&lt;p&gt;I was sold on a meritocratic position under a boss who believed in a meritocratic ideal, and &lt;i&gt;I thought I could do that job well&lt;/i&gt;. As the job was described to me, and as I was told of my criteria for promotion, I actually &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; do that job well. However, I was judged by a standard that was opaque, never communicated clearly (in fact, some internal rules prohibit a more clear explanation), and I languished for several years in absolute naivety and ignorance while believing every line they fed to me hook, line, and sinker. It took someone who actually cared about me as a person to open up and explain how it all really worked before I got it.&lt;p&gt;My story &lt;i&gt;absolutely&lt;/i&gt; is one of being hard to work with, having naive expectations, and going about things all wrong. But it is also one about being lied to repeatedly about how to do my job right, destroying my quality of life in the pursuit of the game as it was communicated to me, being cast aside for people who played the deliberately obscured game better, and getting burnt out by it. And given the recent statements by senior level executives about how Amazon is so meritocratic, it is a story of how even those who rise to the high performance meritocratic expectations that they talk about can get obliterated by aspects of the company culture that those same executives claim do not exist.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not perfect, but I knew well before I started that political intelligence was a weak spot for me...and if I had any indication of how insanely political the promotion process was, I probably would have never accepted the offer. I wanted the meritocratic Amazon that was sold to me.</text></comment>
<story><title>My Amazon Burnout Experience</title><url>https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c1f6419d54d80af6c079</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsunamifury</author><text>It seems obvious that this person is aware they don&amp;#x27;t work well with others, and actively refuses to try to do better -- while writing a self-aggrandizing story about how he is both the smartest person in the room and most everyone around him was an idiot.  He seems to believe there was no one else smart at Amazon either, and all projects that &amp;#x27;got in his way&amp;#x27; were created my simple minded peons. This type of retrospective naiveté smacks of narcissism.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying Amazon is a great place to work -- but its clear this person isn&amp;#x27;t a great person to work with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slunk</author><text>I stopped reading a few paragraphs in when all the author had managed to convey was how great they are. I also find it strange that someone so competent who wants to remain anonymous would reveal so much information about their situation in the company. What little I read seems like it would be enough to pinpoint them within the organization.</text></comment>