My Experience at Amazon

I worked for Amazon for almost 3 years. I decided to leave mainly because of Return to Office (fuck RTO). I changed from a company of 1.5 million employees, to a startup where I was the 5th person 🤯.

Now that I have almost 2 months at Polar, I want to reflect on my time at Amazon - the good, the bad, and the bureaucracy. Now that this is my experience at Amazon Barcelona, other offices may be different.

The Magic: What Made Amazon Amazing

Top talent. The truth about the Amazon interview process is that it works. Most of the people you meet are skilled software engineers (emphasis on "most"). The team that I worked with was the best thing about Amazon: smart, helpful, and open for collaboration.

Also, occasionally you may meet or see conversation of some legends like James Gosling (creator of Java) or Luca Mezzalira (Microfrontends expert) 😍.

Truly diverse environment. Working at a big tech company means stepping into a truly global environment. Amazon has offices in over 60 countries, and even though I only collaborated with people from a handful of them (Philippines, India, UK, New York, Seattle), every interaction taught me something new. Different backgrounds bring different communication styles and approaches to problem-solving. You adapt, you learn, you grow.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and cultural exchanges. Need to sync with Seattle? Prepare for 8 PM meetings because of that lovely 8-hour time difference 😪.

Leading Big Projects My manager trusted me to lead two important projects. Partly because I did good work, but let's be honest, partly because he didn't have many other choices 😅.

The first one was creating a UI for our Payroll Calendar system. Suddenly I was doing everything: talking to customers from Seattle to Philippines. I was influencing what the app should look like, creating all the tasks, managing the timeline, and still writing code. It was crazy but fun.

The second project was even bigger: getting rid of an old third-party system that was bought in the 2000s. This thing had been "going to be removed" for over 5 years! 😱 More than 20 teams were involved, and I was handling piece of it. For months, we didn't even have a product manager. We were talking to customers ourselves and spending 2+ hours every day on calls.

Watching an Organization Grow. I joined as the 2nd SDE in my organization and watched it grow to over 30 people. Being there from the beginning gave me insight into how projects get defined, how technical foundations are laid, and how organizational culture forms. It was like getting a masterclass in scaling engineering teams.

Feedback. Amazon's annual feedback system was good. It was really detailed feedback from colleagues that felt meaningful and helped me understand my impact beyond just code commits.

The Reality Check: What Nobody Tells You

Fight for good projects. Want to work on something interesting? Better fight for it. Good projects don't just get handed out: you need to advocate, negotiate, and sometimes get lucky.

The Rotation. People change teams and companies constantly. Need information from someone who worked on a project six months ago? Good luck, as their account is deactivated. This constant rotation created knowledge gaps and complicated promotions.

When Simple Takes Forever. Basic projects take months. Add any cross-team collaboration, and it will take years.

Bureaucracy Everywhere Want access to production? You'll need approvals. Want to add an SQS queue to your architecture? Prepare for a long review process. I'll admit it: I became more of an "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" person. Sometimes you just need to move fast.

Too Many Meetings. We didn't have a product manager for two years, so we had to talk to customers ourselves. Two hours of calls every day was normal. Between status updates, planning meetings, and team syncs, actually writing code felt like a bonus.

A Good Manager Changes Everything. Having a good manager at Amazon is crucial; most of the time it's just luck. Bad manager? Your time there will suck. Good news: you can usually change teams. Bad news: see the "people leave all the time" problem above.

Locked Down Laptop. You get a MacBook, but you can't use the cool features like copying between devices or unlocking with your Apple Watch. It's like getting a race car that can only go 50 kmh.

Top-Down Decisions. In a company with 1.5 million people, your voice doesn't matter much. Decisions get made way above you, and there's not much you can do about it.

Tool Frustrations. No public frameworks, no GitHub, documentation that ranges from sparse to nonexistent. But hey, at least you get unlimited AWS! 🤷‍♂️

Startup life now

At Polar, where I'm the 5th employee, everything is different. Every voice matters. Every decision can be changed. Every project feels like it actually makes a difference.

Amazon taught me about working at scale and with smart people. But it also showed me the cost: tons of bureaucracy, feeling like a small fish, and losing the simple joy of building things fast.

Would I do it again? Yes. Amazon was a great learning experience that got me ready for what's next. But am I happy I left? Also yes.

Sometimes the best career move is knowing when to close one chapter and start the next one.