Amazon

I have worked for Amazon for over 4 years now, and there are reasons that I have been here that long without getting a thought of leaving, even once.

1. In the first year itself, I was awed by the sheer intelligence of the folks around. Due to the high bar of hiring, Amazon tends to hire the smartest workforce, and that's why I have always had learning opportunities from 360 degrees. There are people who are much junior to you and yet are smart, and there are folks above you who you can learn from, which is unique to all other employers I have had.

2. As my journey continues with Amazon, I started loving the fact that promotions and raises are tightly tied to performance. Promotions are a rigorous process, but if you are a good performer, then all falls in place for you. Politics does not play in; the processes and mechanisms in place ensure that the deserving folks get to the next level. The icing on the cake is that there is no time-in-role requirement to get to the next level. If you can perform at the next level, you will get there.

3. The last and most important reason that I have started appreciating in the last couple of years is that the yearly planning process is bottom-up. In most companies, the goals are decided up top and then they flow down. Not true here! At Amazon, each tech team decides its own fate and proposes what great things it will do next year, and then that planning process flows upwards. Which gives tech teams autonomy to do stuff, which makes it super unique.

The first year at Amazon can be difficult sometimes, mostly with the fact that it has a unique culture of rigor, as well as people being brutally honest. If you put together a poor-quality doc (no presentations at Amazon) for a review, you will be told that in the meeting. If you can't deal with it (which is difficult at first), then you will have issues.

The best way to deal with this is to first get a mentor who can help you see through these situations. Next, try to imbibe the Amazon Leadership Principles. They are amazing, and if you see things through the lens of these principles, then you will understand why people behave in the way they do.