Amazon

Amazon is undeniably a fantastic place to learn and grow technically. The sheer scale and complexity of the systems you work on expose you to a wealth of challenges and opportunities for development. You're constantly pushed to learn new technologies and improve your skills.

Promotion at Amazon, despite your best efforts, can feel largely out of your control due to several factors:

• Subjective Leadership Principles: Demonstrating the Leadership Principles is crucial, but their interpretation can be subjective. What one manager considers "Dive Deep" might differ from another's view. It takes time to understand the definition of leadership principles of the leaders in your team. However, the leaders can move teams while you chase your promotion.

• Only the documented effort matters: Even if you perform exceptionally, if you don't document it well, it hurts your chances.

• Manager Advocacy: Your manager's advocacy plays a significant role in the promotion process. Their ability to articulate your accomplishments and advocate for you can significantly impact the outcome. This means for promotion, you have to be working hard and lucky to be with a manager with great advocacy skills.

• Team and Organizational Factors: Impactful projects in one organization might not be treated as impactful in another. If you have changed your organization internally, you might lose the benefit of some of your past work.

• Peer Review: Peers are not often ready to look at your past work to comment on your promotion. The peers who work closely with you often switch teams and companies, making it difficult to stay on the promotion path.

• Organization Restructuring: Amazon frequently undergoes organizational restructuring to adapt to changing market conditions and business priorities. This can lead to unexpected team changes, even for high-performing employees.