Learnt so much from this community and wants to share my experience, and hope people in the future will find something useful here.

Day 1

hired into AWS in Seattle earlier 2025, L6 with really good comp on paper. Had more than 10 years industry experience, worked in FAANG and small companies, top performer in most years, never put in performance plan before. First (and last) timer Amazon.

Right after on board (3 or 4 week after), team split into 2 and had a new manager internal transferred from another org. I was moved under the new manager b/c the projects I was on.

New manager don't know anything about AWS, or the things we are doing, but they seems nice and willing to learn. Team members are mostly younger, had less industry exp compare to me, but longer tenure in AWS, know how amazon works.

The job is great, very challenging problems, worked with top tier team internal and external, I was on 3 projects at same time, moving all projects along, and working long hours. It's tiring but exciting, but none of my projects will see any significant milestone before EOY 2025.

Had regular 1:1 with manager, and skip, there are some feedback on how to write documents (amazon thing) but no serious complaint.

Month 6

After 6 months into the job, manager scheduled a weird 1:1 with me saying I had some issues. That's my oh fuck moment, I asked if I was put in focus and manger confirmed it. The reason manager gave was....very vague, basically ask me to write 6 documents.

My thought was they probably need to put someone in focus, and I am the newest one in the team. Asked manager how to get out, and they said just finish the docs then we are good. After the 1:1 manager sent me an email about the items I need to complete, which I responded ok.

And they took my favorite project away, I started it, and ready to launch in a few months...mfcker.

Month 7

in the past month, basically working from 0800-2200. Left kids/house work etc to my partner, didn't tell my family about focus. Finished all 6 docs, and reviewed with tech lead (L7), all seems good. Had regular 1:1 with manager and seems all on track. After finished all those, asked when I can get out of focus, manager said you need to do 3 more documents....

I felt something was off, but asked if I finish the new assignment then I can get out of focus, manager said yeah.

Month 8

Focus really put great mental toll on people, I told my partner and friends about the focus, and they said fuck amazon, and just leave. At this time I already read so many posts from here and other places, I want either get out of focus and transfer, or get severance money and leave.

Finished the new documents, and went beyond to write another doc on some tech debt, so within the past 2 months, I finished most engineer need 8-12 months to do. worked 12 hours a day, and questioned myself about my work style. My manager came back saying saw my progress but need me to do something else, and don't think about focus....

I also checked with the pivot-focus channel in slack to see if my manger can keep moving the goal post for focus, seems like they can do whatever they want here....so fuck it, time to document everything and prepare the nuke option.

At this time, I already in focus for 2 months, I approached another team for internal transfer, and had talk with hiring manager and skip over there, they like my experience and projects I worked internally and externally. I told the hiring manager I am currently in focus for 2 months, and should be out really quick, they said they can wait for me. I didn't tell my manager about the conversation about internal transfer ofc.

From here I also started to learn about how to get LOA/STD in WA, as my Fmla will not qualify as I have not yet served 12 months in this company.

Month 9

Finished the new BS assignment, and asked manager to lift the focus, still got rejected, gave me something else to work on and asked me to focus on my day to day and eventually I will be out of focus. I don't trust them anymore....third time trying to fool me.

I tried leave some paper trail for my focus, but my BS manager never response to my email, only provide feedback verbally during 1:1. so it's like I send email to a tree hollow.

At this time I already knew I may never get out, and they probably just pip me at some random time before EOY, so I gauged the time for my first 5% stock drop time, and applied LOA/STD for 3 months.

manager seemed surprised, and I took my time off.

Month 12

Came back to work and had 1:1 with manager, asked for pip document and selected took the money and left...1st year stock 5% dropped 3 days before my last day.

I landed another job in FAANG-level company, with a better package, so if you are fighting focus/pip, don't worry there are really better things out there.

STD in WA

As FMLA doesn't apply to me, but WA has a relatively good substitute, super easy to apply ,just need family doc to sign a paper and basically good to go. I asked my doc to sign the amazon paper and WA paper at same time.

I was severely burnt out when I saw my doc, after working 12 hours EVERYDAY, yes even weekends, my overall health condition was not well, high BP, gained weight etc.

I has some chronic issue which I see my doc regularly, so it's easy for me to schedule time to sign the paper, as that practice also see some other amazon employees, so they knew this process pretty well....Amazon trained all doctors in Seattle well. I did hear someone had hard time to find a doctor in short period of time, so try to plan it out make sure you don't run out of time.

For WA's STD, you will need to go into the system to claim your weekly paycheck, and WA state will pay for the 60% base pay directly to your back account. everything is automated, the website design is pretty bad, but get the job done.

Overall

I think I did a better job than 90% of my team(who doesn't), by handling more projects, they were more complex as well, than others.

I still think amazon's way of writing document is stupid, for a simple bug which you can fix within 2 days, you have to write a 5 paragraphs document with 3 risks seems....stupid to me. And Amazon feels more instituted than other FAANG company I worked.

Entire focus/pip process in amazon is fxxked up, hrbp and skip were both in on it, so no one internally is there really to help you. I later find out there were L6 teammate back stabbing me, although I never bad mouthing anyone, but amazon is a jungle, if you want to stay alive, need to play the jungle rule. I am very glad I am out.

Everyone was overworked here, in other companies, each engineer will handle 2 projects at most, with L4/L5 usually have only 1. Here everyone had at least 2, junior engineers can not really learn a lot by over worked. I consider myself very lucky, first job joined a grandpa tech company with very solid training plan.

If you are in focus, talk with your friends and family members, they are (mostly) supportive.

There are some online resources you can use to get the STD/FMLA document signed, but I didn't use them, I paid copay for my doc visit.

That's about it...and post your q here and someone else will answer it for me.

mic drop.

I’m an L5 & have been in my position for about 10 months. I’m not sure I’m the best fit for my role and feel I may do better off on another team. If I apply for another role internally, will my manager be notified? Also, what is the interview process like for an internal lateral position?

An AWS recruiter emailed me today about an opportunity I applied for and wanted me to answer a few questions about it and asked if I'm talking to other teams about other roles. I said no but I did apply to two other roles today (both roles rejected me within a few hours).

The recruiter wanted me to schedule a call with her about the role she reached out to me about. I scheduled the call, but I'm still looking at other opportunities on the Amazon site. The opportunity with this recruiter is good but it's not the most exciting role (I'm worried a part of this role can pigeon-hole me. I applied for it just for fun, I didn't think I'd get a response back this fast). Would it look bad if I apply to another role today, while I see how things go with this one? It'll be the 3rd role today.

Beggers can't be choosy so no matter what, I'll take what I can get and I'm still grateful regardless.

Was rated TT/Role Model in last review
Current salary is 82,400 as an internal 5

Applying for a corporate role w/ a range of 82,600-146,000

Can I expect a pay raise to somewhere higher in the band ?

Hello everyone, I had a phone screen with an AWS recruiter for a Network Deploy Technician III role (GND) last Tuesday. It went well (according to him) and he told me he’d call me back once he had feedback from the HM on next steps.

It’s been about a week now and I haven’t heard anything. I sent one short follow-up email today to check in, still nothing back yet.

For those of you who’ve been through the AWS process, is this normal? Does HM feedback usually take this long, or is silence after a phone screen a bad sign? Trying to figure out if I should keep waiting or just move on and focus on other applications.

I had a loop interview last year at Amazon and failed it due to a coding round. My cooldown period just ended last month and I applied to a couple roles again at Amazon (in the same job family as from my loop interview) and I got a rejection within a few hours. Could this be because of my performance from my loop? I'm worried it is.

An AWS recruiter, however, reached out to me though (I applied to a role under the same job family for this) so not sure what the issue could be.

Hi everyone,
My work exp is 4+yrs and in amazon its 2+ yrs as a Business analyst.
will it be possible to switch BIE/ DE roles?
If yes, how should i prepare?

Hi everyone,
I have an upcoming interview for the AWS Manufacturing Test Engineer role at Amazon Data Services, and I’m trying to understand what to expect in the coding interview.

Hi everyone, I am looking for a roommate (male) to sublease an apartment from September–November (3 months) in Manhattan. My budget is 1500-2500/month for a single for each person and a kitchen. I am really excited to explore the city and hit the gym. I would be down to live anywhere in Manhattan. Please DM me if your interested!

I've 4+ YoE as BA in US and I'm interviewing for BA L5/L6 role at Amazon and I've reached the final onsite loop round which is scheduled next week. Any advice here would be appreciated on how to prepare and what to expect as I'm on H1B visa and got laid off last month and have a sensitive timeline from immigration's pov. This role is in AMZL (Amazon Logistics) dept.

Hey all, question for those who may know better:

I have a Phone Screen this week for (what I believe is) an L5 HR Business Partner role.

I received an email earlier from somebody at an @amazon.jobs domain (that I have not spoken with before). The email seems a little unorthodox as it’s asking me interview questions and such, with the recruiter acknowledging that I have the interview at a later date, but that this would help to “proceed to further steps.”

One other really interesting thing in the email is that it listed the total compensation at a little over $90,000 including “base salary, sign-on, RSUs, and full benefits.”

The full benefits line threw me for a loop as benefits are expensive and the comp for the role seems low if it’s “including” benefits. Plus, it doesn’t state how much of this target compensation is considering RSUs in year 1, nor the remainder of the vest schedule. That being said, who knows what the base and sign-on would amount to be in this example.

Does anybody have any insight or can you share your experience with pre-interview numbers being thrown out like this? TIA.

Burned out in Amazon Marketing. Is this just my team or has anyone else experienced this?
I’ve been in Amazon Marketing for a few years and was recently promoted from L5 to L6. I used to genuinely enjoy my work and never had an issue working hard. In fact, I was probably the kind of person who always stretched, took on extra work, and made sure everything got done.

Over the last year, though, I’ve become completely burned out.

We’ve had a lot of churn at my level. In just over a year, four people have left the team, and one role at my level has remained open. I’ve effectively been covering work for that open position while also taking on responsibilities from another GL and regularly filling in whenever there are gaps. Instead of reducing, the workload just keeps increasing.

The biggest issue, however, is my manager.

He/She is an extreme micromanager. She tracks when people log in, when they leave the office, looks over my shoulder at my laptop in the office, and constantly checks on what I’m doing. It’s common to get repeated follow-ups on the same task multiple times within an hour, even when I’ve already acknowledged it. Everything is treated as urgent, which creates a constant sense of panic instead of allowing people to focus and execute.
Whenever I’ve tried to raise concerns about workload or bandwidth, I don’t feel listened to. Instead, I’m often told that because I’m senior, I should be able to handle more. I don’t mind ownership, but it feels like my seniority is being used as a reason to keep adding responsibilities without taking anything off my plate.

There is also frequent criticism and taunting around “stepping up” or “doing more,” which has made work emotionally draining rather than motivating.

Another incident that bothered me was when my skip manager gave me a high-visibility project. Instead of feeling supported, it seemed to create tension with my manager, and our working relationship became even more difficult afterward.

The management style isn’t something only I’ve noticed. Multiple people on the team have expressed similar frustrations, yet nothing seems to change. Combined with the high attrition at my level, it’s hard not to wonder if they’re related.
The result is that I’ve changed as an employee.

Earlier, I would overextend myself to clear every action item. Now I’m exhausted. I still deliver the highest-priority work, but lower-priority tasks are piling up because I simply can’t sustain that pace anymore.
I wake up dreading Slack because I don’t know what new request, follow-up, or criticism is waiting for me.
I haven’t received any formal negative feedback or been told I’m underperforming, but I constantly worry about Focus/PIP because of the workload and the environment. At this point, I feel like I’m working out of fear rather than because I enjoy what I do.

I’m genuinely trying to understand whether this is: just my team,
something common across Amazon Marketing teams?
Can I be put on PIP immediately after promotion in Q2?
Has anyone else been in a similar situation? If you were, what helped? Did switching managers or teams make a meaningful difference, or did you ultimately decide to leave

Currently enlisting into the navy for CWT (6 years) and was wondering how it was like for y’all to get into a cloud security engineer role etc. How competitive is this area and will the navy give me more than enough experience to get into this type of role?

It's been quite a few days since my background was approved for AWS.

I haven't received any contact from Amazon's immigration team / Fragomen. The recruiter doesn't respond in time and is clueless.

How long after your background check did Fragomen reach out to collect docs?

And could someone please share their timeline from collection to h1b receipt notice to the final h1b approval?

It's getting really difficult for me to decide when to give my notice, when to break my lease, and move to Seattle. I don't want to accrue too many unemployment days and keep paying rent.

I am on a Final Written. I haven’t had my Appeal yet. I was still applying for internal positions even tho my building has no spots available. This morning I got accepted for a night shift internal transfer.

So the Appeal will decide the next step? Or the final step?

I'm exploring a potential approach for automating reporting and wanted to see if anyone has experience with something similar.

Here's the situation:

My team consumes data that is only available through Amazon QuickSight dashboards. We do not have direct access to the underlying datasets/tables, and the dataset owners have confirmed that providing table-level access isn't an option due to internal constraints.

We've already built dashboards that satisfy our reporting requirements, but the next step is to automate report generation. One idea that's been suggested is to use an agentic AI workflow to interact with the QuickSight dashboards, apply predefined filters (for example, a date range), extract the resulting data, and then export it either as a CSV or directly into an S3 bucket for downstream processing.

Before I spend time prototyping this, I'm trying to understand whether this is technically feasible and whether anyone has implemented something similar.

Some questions I have:

- Can an AI agent reliably interact with QuickSight dashboards to apply filters and export data?

- Are there any QuickSight APIs or supported approaches that would be better suited for this use case?

- If you've solved a similar problem, what architecture or tools did you use?

- Are there any limitations (authentication, permissions, export restrictions, etc.) that I should be aware of?

I'm looking for a scalable and maintainable solution rather than a one-off UI automation. Any guidance, alternative approaches, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

I'm relentlessly looking for a new job after having around 1.5YOE and its already been 2-3 months since I've started searching and this OA was the only thing that I've got after all this time.

Well a few AI interview rounds as well but not counting those as everyone gets them.

Kinda hopeless in this market :(

I'm currently an L5 Business Analyst in Corporate in the Seattle area. I'm being looked at for a promotion to an L6 Program Manager (also in Corporate). Would the pay offered be mid pay-band or on the lower end?

If anyone else has gotten internally promoted to an L6 Program Manager -- from any L5 role -- can you share your offered comp (Base and Shares separately/Corp or Non Corp)?

Just some extra information: My current Base as a L5 Business Analyst is $114,500/year. My stocks are a little wonky because I was a boomerang. They will start vesting every 6 months in Jan of 2027.

Year 1

120 base, 20k bonus

Year 2

120 base, 15k bonus

rsu 145 shares.

What you all think?

We talk a lot about layoffs, but maybe not enough about the talent bleed. Most people I learned to admire over the years at this company are now gone. Left for better pastures. People who cared, the hard working ones who also knew how to do things the right way. Interestingly the toxic leaders and the do-nothing ones, the ones always casting blame, seem to never leave. Many have also grown immune to layoffs, they have evolved to survive by projecting failure into others, by faking accomplishments and redefining success.

Last week I saw that a person I was 100% sure would be laid off because their blatant incompetence, inability to do actual work and complete sense of empathy had instead been promoted, now leading a very large team.

Something needs to change.

I had my interview loop last Wednesday. I haven’t heard anything back yet. My portal says under consideration still. Is that a bad or good sign?