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Comment by jacalata | Hacker News Reader

I know a lot of people who have left Amazon, and are very bitter about how it was to work there. I know some who are waiting out their signing bonus. I also know a lot who've left Microsoft, but they definitely have a lower average bitterness about the company.

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I know a ton of people like this. 70% of the people I know didn't stay at Amazon past 4 years.

I don't rub shoulders with BigCo devs, but of all the SmallCo devs I know, the only ones that reach 4 years tenure are the ones that own the company.

If you don't work at Amazon, there's a pretty big sampling bias in your data. (You are wildly more likely to work with someone who has left Amazon than someone who has happily stayed there, and in casual interactions, you're more likely to hear from the strongly disgruntled than the happy. In the same way, current Amazon workers are likely to know a higher than average percentage of long-tenured and happy Amazon employees than is reality in overall population.)

Is it unreasonable to want to try something new after 4 years? I don't really imagine staying with any company for more that 4-5 years.

I didn't bother waiting for my signing bonus. I paid them to get out of there.

I was done after a year and a half.

Owed them for moving expenses, etc. but I really didn't care.

I spent 6 months doing nothing before I even considered getting another job.

Easily the worst experience in my life and completely colored my entire impression of the tech industry negatively. I went from loving what I did to just doing this as a job for a paycheck (even at another company now that is leaps and bounds "better") with an ever-present need to get out of the industry entirely (but no real plan to do so).

Which office was this?

Based in Seattle (well, probably a fairly obvious point there). I shifted offices once while I was there, but spent the most time in Varzea (where everyone was packed like Sardines).

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