r/amazonemployees

I'm an L5 and my manager just brought up starting promo doc and talked to me about how I should focus on getting feedback from L6s and to strategize those relationships

What does this mean? What does it not mean? What are the timelines I should be thinking of?

does anyone have advice
took a month long loa because of back pain. my dr says just exercise and swim and will not sign my loa
he said im gonna get fired and theres nothing he can do. dls wont allow me an extension and its due in 3 days. should i just resign? im completely panicking please any advice

Has anyone here recently joined Amazon as an SDE II in Vancouver?

I’m trying to get a sense of the current comp range for this level/location — base, sign-on, RSUs, and overall TC.
Also curious how much flexibility there usually is on negotiation for SDE II offers in Canada.

Would appreciate any recent data points. Thanks!

If you have read the recent email properly, from July 1, for L4+ roles, they have stopped the free cab service. Meaning. If you take more than 2 rides, 4000 will be deducted from your base salary and if you don’t use it, you will be given 4000 extra
For example: if your salary is 10000 per month, if you use the cab, you will get 6000 and if you don’t use the cab, you will get 14000 from July 1st, 2026

Any thoughts on this? Or am I wrong?

I tried to move internally in Amazon US as a PM. I wanted to move to a managerial role to get EB1C as H1B lottery is evasive. I spent 5 years at Amazon in another country. I am Indian too (not South Indian)

However, my next Indian hiring manager (new to Amazon) told that he would collect feedback from current Indian manager and I thought that he will only ask if I was on some focus plan (which makes me ineligible to switch). But my current manager gave negative feedback and the hiring manager decided not to take me.

After all this, my current manager decided to FOCUS me due to 'poor performance'(in his words). Later I came to know that every manager has a fixed firing quota/stack ranking and they generally fire employees who are unable to hide their plan about switching team.

Nobody shared these hidden processes with me. I had spent 5 years at Amazon in another country, but nobody told me about this.

Suppose if my flatmate was Indian from Amazon, would he have told me about this?

Well I completed my internship recently on 26 June and my manager has left me in an ambiguous situation in the last 1:1 he said he doesn't know whether I am inclined or not and the next steps I'll hear from the HR. Can someone help me out and make me understand what actually has happened what he actually meant.

I have a master’s degree and i am on an active job search. I do have a legit job now but i have been applying to multiple roles at amazon through careers page, but rejection is all i get from amazon. Even the jobs that exactly match my profile they are sending rejections. I do get some assessments and i gave them many times but they got me nowhere. Not a single interview!!!

Thing is i am on student visa here in USA. I feel my profile is getting rejected even before i get an assessment. Because i should get at-least an interview because many jobs fit my profile and matches my current job responsibilities. I am looking for an upgrade which is amazon. But they simply don’t care because i am not a US Citizen!

Fuck this! Everything is Rigged! This is Unfair!!!
I am losing hope!!!

Hi Amazonian’s,
My tenure is 10 months and I am blue badge. I would have to go to meet my mom out of country, she is a heart patient and she is not feeling that well and I can’t see her like that. I have lost my father too and can’t leave her in such condition. I have booked my ticket for August 2nd, but I don’t want to lose my job as I have to pay my bills. I have got to know from my fellows that Amazon pays you for 3 months if your tenure is 12 months but I will be 10 and a half by then. Do you have any suggestions how can I get paid in this situation so that I can cover my expenses. Thank you

I think I've hit my limit. How would you handle this?

I'm an L4 SDE on a seller-facing team.

When I joined, the team had 2 SDE1s who'd been there for about 6 months, 4 SDE2s, 1 SDE3 (shared across multiple L7s), around 12-13 contractors, and about 6 other new-grad/junior SDEs who joined around the same time as me.

Within my first two months, almost all of the senior engineers left. We were left with just my SDM, two SDE2s, and a team mostly made up of junior engineers.

Things have been rough ever since.

One SDE who tried to transfer internally was put on a PIP shortly after telling our SDM she wanted to leave. She ultimately managed to transfer because the hiring manager backed her up, but it left a lasting impression on everyone else. She also made her submit medical certificates.

The work itself is relentless. On-call usually means dealing with 5-6 Sev2s at a minimum. On top of that, there's an enormous amount of process and documentation. It feels like I'm constantly writing Page 0s, OE documents, EEs, design docs, operational reports, or preparing for reviews. Sometimes it feels like I spend almost as much time writing about work as actually doing engineering.

Then there are the politics.

Earlier this year, around February, leadership made a decision that honestly shocked me. Almost all of the SDE1s were loaned out to other teams, while several SDE3s were temporarily brought in from those teams in an attempt to complete an entire year's roadmap in a single quarter. I ended up being the only SDE1 left on the team.

To be fair, I do think my manager wants me to succeed. But I can't shake the feeling that it's because the team is under constant pressure to deliver and because having high-performing reports reflects well on her.

People on this team seem to get promoted relatively quickly (around two years from what I've seen), but there's also a noticeable pattern: they get promoted... and then they leave.

I'm starting to understand why.

Over the last year I've learned a lot technically, but the expectations have become overwhelming. I'm expected to own ambiguous problems, know our systems inside out, and be available whenever something goes wrong.

I've gotten to the point where I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I've been paged or messaged. Sometimes I have dreams about work. Last Friday I woke up at 7 AM to a message from my manager and immediately felt a wave of anxiety before I'd even gotten out of bed.

Over the past few weeks she's been especially critical because I haven't been able to solve a particularly ambiguous problem. She wants me operating at a significantly higher level than I currently am.

I spoke to the engineer who transferred after almost getting trapped in a PIP, and I also reached out to several seniors who left during my first few months. Every single one of them said the same thing: life got dramatically better after they moved.

They described working normal hours, actually having time to think before coding, learning instead of constantly firefighting, and working on projects they genuinely enjoyed. Many of them moved to Python or AI-focused teams, which honestly sounds much closer to the kind of work I'd like to do.

The thing is... I don't think I'm burned out because of software engineering.

I think I'm burned out because of this team.

I'm not passionate about the seller domain. I don't care about the business enough to spend my evenings and weekends thinking about it, yet that's almost what's expected. I hate feeling like I'm supposed to know every corner of a massive system in exhaustive detail while constantly juggling operational work.

What I actually want feels incredibly simple.

I want to work normal hours.

I want to go to the gym consistently.

I want to spend time with my family.

I don't want every weekend to become catch-up time.

I don't want to get random calls because production is on fire and be expected to immediately drop everything I'm doing.

Recently I also found the results of our internal tech survey, and one thing that stood out was that concerns about overwork and micromanagement existed even before I joined. That made me realize this probably isn't something I'm imagining or something unique to my experience.

Tomorrow I'm taking a sick day because I honestly don't think I can function. I've reached out to an L7 on another team for an informal chat since they're hiring, but I'm terrified about what happens if my manager finds out. I haven't interviewed since joining the company, so even the idea of switching teams feels intimidating.

I feel anxious almost every day now, and I'm realizing it's starting to affect my health outside of work.

Has anyone been in a situation like this?

Would you try to transfer internally as fast as possible? Would you just start interviewing externally? Or am I overreacting and this is just what some high-performing teams are like?

I'm honestly not sure anymore.

Was told during my midpoint that at this time they are not inclined to give me a return but by delivering on all the action items planned out for me and working on some of my growth areas they believe I can turn things around (not sure if they are just saying it to say that or if they truly believe in me). But there's nothing I can do but try my best to get the inclination for a return and try my best to grow in the ways that are directed.

My questions are the following: how likely is it to be able to turn a no inclination to an inclination for a return, if the recruiter receives the midpoint evaluation from your mentor and skip, and if the results of the midpoint evaluation directly impact your chances of getting a return even if the end result is positive?

I had a question... If AWS Loop feedback says it gives candidates no feedback, how come they themselves send out an interview feedback survey expecting candidates to fill it in? Bit one sided no?

I’m a L4 operations manager who interned at a last mile site for the last six months. Now that i got my PPO i have been allotted the same site and I’m not much inclined to go back there due to some reasons. How do i navigate through this ? The site is far from my hometown and i will really appreciate getting transferred to my hometown
So how does Amazon go about this process what’s the hope here? If possible i would want to transition into seller side of things
Does the call remain with my manager
My ex-skip manager is now my hiring manager and my ex manager sounded excited to have me back but i do not resonate with that
I’m so confused as to what to do going forward
When is the earliest I can start looking for the internal transfers

Your inputs will be highly appreciated thank you so much

Am I being lowballed? I received an offer with an $86,000 base salary, a $15,000 bonus, and 125 RSUs. I have four years of networking experience, one year of leadership experience, an MBA in IT Management, and several IT certifications. Does this seem competitive for my background?

I don’t know if I’m in the right spot for this, but I’ve been trying to create an account for Amazon seller and they have been the most difficult company to work with. This billion dollar company can’t even provide seller support? I’ve been trying to make an account for 3 weeks and they keep rejecting us. I’ve sent a crazy amount of proof they could pose as us and no one would know the difference. Why is it when I need a verification issue it’s only via email and 2 days to get back to you. No phone number support, and the Chat agents are useless. They basically read from the wiki and when you actually need help they say sorry, go kick rocks and we’ll send you to the agents who can help you via email ( another 24-48 wait)

I can’t be the only one loosing my mind, trying to open an account in the USA, and I can’t find nothing but the same people having the same issue. Anyone know what I can do?

I’ve had 3 of 5 loop interviews and have been getting between 4-5 questions per interview. I’m not talking about follow-ups (of which of course there have been) but individual new prompt questions. The problem is that although I prepared about 14 STAR stories (with a few backup prompts for myself) I’m starting to run out of my best stories. I also had to dip into one of the project I planned to present for my portfolio review (I’m interviewing for a video producer role and have to present 3 projects I’ve done). All the loop interviewers will be dialing in to the portfolio review

Is that amount of questions atypical? Should I be concerned about reusing stories especially since my remaining 2 interviews are with the BR and HM? Am I overthinking this?

What do folks do with their RSUs? hold or sell it and diversity into VOO/QQQ?

I recently finished my TPM L6 loop for Amazon India. I was well-prepared with 10-12 solid LP stories.

My HR emphasised that the System Design (SD) round is highly critical. However, during the actual SD round, he explained the structure of the interview and timings, and the interviewer spent 40 minutes doing a heavy technical deep-dive into my LPs/past projects. With only 10 minutes left for the actual design question, he asked me to just explain the flow. I quickly drew the HLD/LLD as much as possible while keeping him engaged, and he seemed satisfied with it.

All my other rounds went really well, except the Hiring Manager (HM) round, which I felt was just "okay" (not super strong, but not bad either).

My questions for the community:

1. Has anyone experienced this heavily LP-skewed SD round? Is a 10-minute SD discussion a red flag or normal if the LP dive was highly technical?
2. How heavily will an "average" HM round impact an otherwise strong L6 loop? Is a down-level to L5 a possibility here?

Any insights or similar experiences would be helpful!