Ex-Amazon employee shares tips for working at the company

Charles Stover
2 min readSep 6, 2022

An ex-Amazon employee using the handle Ja_r00l shares their learnings for success within Amazon in their farewell post on social media website Blind. As an ex- and current Amazonian, I’ve paraphrased Ja_r00l's advice below, as I believe it shows great insight into healthy career growth.

Always be learning

Next to your total compensation, learning is the most valuable thing you can get from your Amazon experience. Once you reach mid-level and above, you should always be looking for teams and organizations that allow you to learn something new or build from scratch. This is the most valuable thing you’ll be able to sell when you decide to leave Amazon.

Chasing promotions is not worth it

The only value promotions bring is the ability to beef up your resume. If you’re already doing the work expected at the next career level, then just go ahead and add it your resume. You don’t need Amazon’s stamp-of-approval to say you are capable. Apply to those next-level jobs externally and talk yourself up. Promotions rarely come with a noticeable compensation bump. Do not lie on your resume; if you are confident that your scope and output is already at the next level, then you should capture that on your resume.

Getting promoted

Report to a manager who also wants to be promoted. Avoid reporting to managers at the same level as you. If you are a level 6…

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Charles Stover
Charles Stover

Written by Charles Stover

Staff+ front end engineer | Tech lead | Architect | quisi.do

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