Wow – I can’t tell you how familiar this sounded. I didn’t work for Amazon, but what she is describing here is almost exactly what my experience was at a different top 25 high tech company. She left early in this down cycle to pursue more healthy environment, while other coworkers stayed only to be laid off.

It brought up the point of how long does one hold on before moving on?

• Mass hiring during COVID that was not justified for the work being done nor profitability
• Senior engineers that spend the majority of their day not doing technical work but stuck in roadmap, planning, alignment, turf war meetings to get real work done. Meanwhile not one thing is shipped on time.
• Senior leadership using ‘investing in AI’ and return-to-office mandates as ways to trim headcount to cover their over-hiring. (Using AI every day for work now is a real thing – but not as justification for the kinds of layoffs we’re seeing).
• Culture rot: moving from an innovation driven environment to one more focused on headcount and political manuvering.
• Feeling hollow and empty realizing you’re spending 60-80% of the average day doing planning, paper shuffling, org alignment, and meetings instead of real work.