I am using a throwaway account and withholding some tech info as this may uniquely identify people involved.
I joined a high-profile machine learning research team within Amazon. On my first day, I knew something was off immediately -- the manager literally gave me a laundry list of micro-tasks to do with an exceptionally strict timeline. Of course, the list was unrealistically ambitious to make him look good. This is a research team -- most research attempts simply aren't successful at first tries. But he wanted to push with his "perfect" schedule. I frequently stayed after midnight to meet the schedule. When this schedule wasn't met, I was publicly humiliated in front of other team members.
He loved to micro-manage, and he insisted on literally sitting behind me for hours to see each word I am typing into the terminal. I worked at several companies before this, but this level of micromanagement was not something I had seen before. This certainly was not a pair programming session (which I normally enjoy actually), as he was not actively contributing to the problem at hand. It was just...watching me work for hours in a small room.
One time, a friendly team member saw the difficulties and kindly offered to give some technical tips. This manager came to us and started to raise his voice how ignorant people should shut up [his words]. This was in the middle of large office. I got dragged into a small room after that, and I was verbally abused for an hour because he thought I made him look bad (technically incompetent) by talking another team member for technical tips. He was so upset that he was red and almost crying.
After surviving this environment for a while, I decided to leave. I told the manager and the senior manager politely that it was not a good fit. Of course, they can't just let me leave voluntarily -- they have to "fire" me or reject me otherwise so that it would be them finding a fault in me, not me in them.
The sad thing is, as I was told, how this is normal at Amazon.
I am using a throwaway account and withholding some tech info as this may uniquely identify people involved.
I joined a high-profile machine learning research team within Amazon. On my first day, I knew something was off immediately -- the manager literally gave me a laundry list of micro-tasks to do with an exceptionally strict timeline. Of course, the list was unrealistically ambitious to make him look good. This is a research team -- most research attempts simply aren't successful at first tries. But he wanted to push with his "perfect" schedule. I frequently stayed after midnight to meet the schedule. When this schedule wasn't met, I was publicly humiliated in front of other team members.
He loved to micro-manage, and he insisted on literally sitting behind me for hours to see each word I am typing into the terminal. I worked at several companies before this, but this level of micromanagement was not something I had seen before. This certainly was not a pair programming session (which I normally enjoy actually), as he was not actively contributing to the problem at hand. It was just...watching me work for hours in a small room.
One time, a friendly team member saw the difficulties and kindly offered to give some technical tips. This manager came to us and started to raise his voice how ignorant people should shut up [his words]. This was in the middle of large office. I got dragged into a small room after that, and I was verbally abused for an hour because he thought I made him look bad (technically incompetent) by talking another team member for technical tips. He was so upset that he was red and almost crying.
After surviving this environment for a while, I decided to leave. I told the manager and the senior manager politely that it was not a good fit. Of course, they can't just let me leave voluntarily -- they have to "fire" me or reject me otherwise so that it would be them finding a fault in me, not me in them.
The sad thing is, as I was told, how this is normal at Amazon.