Finally leaving Amazon
I finally resigned from Amazon after spending years in recruitment, and honestly I think the burnout only fully hit me after I made the decision to leave.
Don’t get me wrong — I learned a lot there. The experience, exposure, and people I worked with were genuinely valuable. Working for a company like Amazon also gave me a sense of accomplishment at first. It felt like career progression.
But over time, the job slowly became my entire routine mentally.
I’d wake up thinking about hiring targets. Sleep thinking about pending tasks. Constant follow-ups, meetings, reports, outreach, updates, pressure to improve numbers, pressure to explain numbers.
And recruitment is weird because a lot of your success depends on things you can’t fully control. Market conditions, candidate interest, compensation expectations, location issues, hiring decisions — but at the end of the day, the pressure still lands on recruiters to somehow make things work.
After a while, it starts feeling repetitive and exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve worked in that environment.
I think what got to me most was realizing how normal stress became. Constant pressure just became part of daily life to the point where quiet days almost felt unfamiliar.
At some point I just asked myself if the tradeoff still made sense for me personally.
I have a family, kids, responsibilities outside work, and I realized I didn’t want my entire life revolving around metrics and work pressure anymore.
Ironically, the role I’m moving to is at a much smaller company. Smaller office, smaller name, probably less prestige overall.
But it’s remote, seems more manageable, and honestly just feels more aligned with the kind of routine I want now.
I’m still grateful for my time at Amazon. I don’t regret it at all. It helped me grow professionally and taught me a lot about working under pressure.
But I also realized that bigger companies and bigger names don’t automatically mean better quality of life.
Sometimes you just reach a point where stability and peace become more important than prestige.