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It& #39;s time. After over 7 years, today I& #39;m giving notice to my manager that I will no longer be working at Amazon after June 4th. If you& #39;re a potential employer and you see this thread and it disqualifies me as a candidate: good, it& #39;s mutual. TW: suicide I guess
This was me. I sent this DM. I actually knew the answer but I wanted to see the conversation unfold and cement what life would be like for me outside this place. https://twitter.com/quinnypig/status/1382705991188381697?s=21">https://twitter.com/quinnypig...
I had a bad performance review for taking that parental leave. I eventually took over the team I was on to do better as a manager than the managers I have had. What I& #39;ve found is that it doesn& #39;t matter how good the people you work for and around are.
It matters what the company policy is. What the senior leadership believes. I& #39;ve fought for years trying to make this a better place to work for myself and my employees. I came out at work and everyone was verbally supportive until...
I had a mental health issue during the pandemic with my second puberty peaking and watching Black Lives Matter unfolding (again) and watching my friends get tear gassed in Seattle. My management had no idea what this was like.
Not a single one of them knew anyone personally who went to the protests. They pat themselves on the back by putting Black Lives Matter on the website and moved on. I asked for a leave of absence to take care of my mental health and was sent the HR policy on pay during leave.
Which is to say, they planned to underpay me for the audacity to have medical needs. So I worked through it instead. I suffered through it to make my paycheck because I came from far less income than where I am and there is no one in my family to save me if I screw up.
For my reward, I got a "meets expectations" rating for the year and told I won& #39;t make regular staff manager level in 2021. I& #39;ve been doing management work at Amazon for 4 years, at least. Officially in a role as a lead and then manager for 3.
Apparently I need to show "consistency" for over a year and having a complete mental health breakdown last year means the consistency was broken. Also because my teams charter changed at the beginning of the year, I can& #39;t show consistency starting from my after the break.
Sorry, if you& #39;re going to feel suicidal, you have to take FMLA or we have to rate you on your work. I wanted to die rather than implicitly support what we were doing in the warehouses. I still can& #39;t believe we cut hazard pay before vaccines existed while raking in record profit.
I& #39;m still pissed about @marencosta and @emahlee but I have a toddler and a spouse to take care of and I couldn& #39;t walk away on the spot. I can& #39;t sleep some nights because I keep thinking about how many people died making $15/hour while I got stupid tech money.
So now I only had 6 months of consistency with *that* roadmap and now I have a new one that I have show consistently for a year. So starting over. All this is what my manager is telling me about how the policy works. He accidentally called me a senior engineer while explaining it
He knows I& #39;m actually already at the next level. His hands are apparently tied because of bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is there on purpose to shave pennies for the company. It also means I get left out of staff hiring decisions. I can& #39;t recruit senior engineers.
Because senior engineers aren& #39;t allowed to report to me without matching their level. And I get dinged for not hiring fast enough, as if my pool of potential poached employees from other teams after 7 years isn& #39;t all senior engineers or engineers who need that opportunity soon.
As if we don& #39;t have some of the worst benefits from the top of the industry so we& #39;re peoples last choice if they have a clue and can pass our gatekeeping. As if we haven& #39;t designed our hiring process for the opposite of diversity.
I haven& #39;t even finished my interview rounds at my next company and I already know the right decision was to pick a day to walk away anyway. I hope I end up with work lined up without much gap (although I could use a small break) but I just don& #39;t care anymore.
I want the company policy at the next place to do right by me. I want to be able to do right by my employees. My *team*. I don& #39;t want to be asked to "rate against the curve" someone who went through hell during 2020, or at any point, really.
I don& #39;t want to tell my high performing employees who got leave denied "Hey, let me fight the medical leave denial for you" and have them know that I won& #39;t win and quit without their next role lined up rather than keep fighting. They get a pay cut anyway if I do win.
I& #39;ve worked with a ton of brilliant and empathetic people, and a few stinkers. It doesn& #39;t matter if the company chooses to operate like this. I can& #39;t stay here just for them. And I barely even touched on my problems with handling of the warehouse employees.
I don& #39;t know exactly what the future holds for me but I know for sure it& #39;s something better.
Thank you everyone who has messaged with support or job listings. Right now I am following up on two interview loops but if those don& #39;t pan out I will keep all these other leads in mind. I am also going OK mentally, I posted this from a place of clarity, not depression
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