I quit and went back. "Boomerangs" are extremely common. The golden handcuffs are hard to shed. Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people.
> Also, Amazon has its problems (mostly cultural, as of the last few years), but it also has a lot of upsides and fantastic people.
yep, working at Amazon (AWS specifically) is like playing for the 2000/10s Patriots. Belicheck will work you to the bone and indoctrinate you into the AWS Leadership Princip... er, I mean the "Patriot Way", and your SVP Tom Brady will chew you out in the "correction of error" process. But if you want to be at a place where people want to win at all costs--with all of the pros and cons that entails--there's no better place to be.
Amazon hate comes from people who don't see a problem with getting the Washington Commanders giving you a $100 million contract to put in the bare minimum effort. To some people that's a dream deal, but not for everyone. To each their own.
Given the average tenure of an NFL player is relatively short, wouldn't it make more sense to go for what would offer the highest reward with lowest CTE risk?
A hundred million dollars is a hundred million dollars. Washington doesn't even have income tax.
That's what I mean, it depends on what the "highest reward" means for each person. $100m is $100m, but what's Tom Brady remembered for, and what's Albert Haynesworth remembered for? One is near-unanimously considered the greatest of all time, and the other is known for being one of the worst free agent acquisitions of all time. They both have more money than they know what to do with, but one probably feels a bit better about his career.
This isn't a perfect analogy with Amazon since they also pay near top of market, but in terms of what you can potentially accomplish, it's similar. Some people are willing to put up with demanding work and long hours in order to be able to say things like "I built S3" or "I built RDS", which gives you instant credibility. To some people that doesn't matter and they're perfectly fine building an internal enterprise app that nobody will ever see if they have less stressful hours. And that's fine too! There's room on the planet for both types of companies, thankfully.
That average is dragged down by certain positions and also the great number of practice squad players that get pulled up for a game or two. I think to the "average" "good" nfl player, 20 vs 30 million lifetime doesn't make as much difference as being a champion. Probably a great many players would trade some lifetime earnings for a ring. I imagine most nfl players also don't manage their own money, so they are even more inured to the idea of making a couple million more over 3 or 4 years.
