burnout
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CW: This post contains some detailed discussion of a suicidal action, if that’s triggering to you, I suggest skipping ahead to the Mania chapter. Just know that I survived and got out of the hospital (and you can too). The New Job When I heard about burnout, I always assumed it was something that could…
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I was successful and high performing, but I still had to quit. I couldn’t take it anymore.I was so close to earning a yellow badge— a badge that Amazon employees are awarded after 5 years of service— but I somehow felt that would be a step too far in losing myself to the company. Lots…
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CW: This chapter details a mass shooting threat. Please read with care or skip ahead to Quitting. Another employee posted a threat to shoot up our office. They cited mental health struggles being ignored by HR, and wishing to kill their teammates. They claimed to actively possess a firearm and asked us not to come…
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CW: This chapter deals with workplace emotional abuse, it may be triggering to some. I got a lot of positive feedback from my performance reviews. Lots of people saying I was smart, talented, and a pleasure to work with. But one comment shook me to my core. I didn’t understand. I got a comment saying…
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After years of pushing myself, I remember my exact physical breaking point.It happened shortly before I made the plan to quit. I woke up one morning and I couldn’t get out of bed. My mind said “Go, we have to get to work.” But my body didn’t respond. I felt like I was trapped inside…
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One time, my Chinese ESL co-worker was getting humiliating comments on his code review. The reviewer in question would never speak to a White native English speaker this way1. Nobody deserves this level of humiliation and disrespect in the workplace. “This isn’t proper English and I cannot understand what you were trying to say.” It…
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I know I’ve talked about some genuine cruelty at Amazon, but the paradox is that’s not the majority of workers you’ll find. Most Amazonians are kind and inspiring. They made me want to be a better version of myself. A helpful teammate. A reliable mentor. A friend.I’ll never forget the engineer who pulled me aside…
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Have you ever had a stranger take a picture of you in public then post it online?It happened to me when I worked at Amazon.I was work-walking between meetings, oblivious to how ridiculous work-walking looks to the outside world, when someone snapped a photo of me and posted it on Facebook. “Working walking? Is this…
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I used to talk about that night like it was a triumph. A war story. The time I solved a problem no one else could at midnight and saved the release. My team called me a hero. But something else was happening. I never really recovered from that first crunch. It eroded my boundaries around…
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While my first official breakdown didn’t happen until years later, I had a mini episode my first year at Amazon. Our team was blocked from launching the release candidate of our application. Three bugs, nested deeply in the code, were causing a break. This launch was critical to the org and had a lot of…