- Navdeep Singh is a former Amazon software engineer who experienced anxiety because of the pressure at work.
- He said deadlines at Amazon were aggressive and that he felt he wasn’t allowed to ask questions.
- Singh quit and says leaving behind his salary was worth it.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Navdeep Singh, a 25-year-old former software engineer at Amazon. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I grew up with my mom and two brothers in the Seattle area. We didn’t have a lot of money, and I always believed that I needed a high-paying job to support my family.
In 2020, I graduated with a computer science degree from Washington State University. While I enjoyed studying computer science, my priority wasn’t to enjoy what I was doing. I wanted to get a degree that could get me closer to financial security. My family didn’t really know anything about tech jobs, so when I told my mom I could make over six figures as a new grad, she didn’t even believe me at first.
I was really happy I landed a job at Amazon right after graduation and felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. It was my dream to get a high-paying job and I felt like I had made it. I wouldn’t need to worry every time I bought something (I used to worry about even spending $10) and I could now afford to pay off my student loans quickly.
I was aware of Amazon’s reputation as a stressful place to work after reading posts on Reddit, Blind, and other news outlets, but I assumed that only the worst cases were being reported. I thought, on average, working at Amazon is probably not as bad as people say it is, and the negative stories must be outliers. It wouldn’t be that bad if I prepared well and worked hard.
On my first day of work, my manager told me to try not to ask questions
Because the team had their own deadlines and was a bit burned out, I was told to not ask them questions. And the first team meeting was awkward, too. My manager asked icebreaker questions, but people gave really short answers, and no one cracked smiles or made any jokes.
As a new hire, I had an assigned mentor — a more experienced team member — to guide me on tasks. As I was setting up my computer, I asked him about which option I should select for setting up the service, and he told me to figure it out myself. He could have easily spared one second to tell me which options to choose from since he already had his system set up, but he chose not to. Then, I ended up spending a big chunk of time setting up the service independently.
The situation became confusing and contradictory to me. On one hand, I was assigned a mentor to receive guidance, but on the other hand, it appeared that I wasn’t supposed to be asking questions as much as possible.
The deadlines were aggressive
At Amazon, when someone submits a code change, an automatic email notification gets sent to everyone. I could see that most people on the team were working on weekends, sometimes as late as 9 p.m. Seeing this made me realize that this working schedule wasn’t going to be sustainable for me.
Our deadlines were also set up on a very structured and detailed timeline — it felt a bit like we were being micromanaged. My manager specified what tasks should be done that day, then the next day, and then the next. The deadlines were aggressive for a new grad like me — I had never used the technology before, and I didn’t get the time to learn the technology either.
I don’t think new grads should be thrown on a project’s critical path so quickly, or, if they are assigned such roles, they should at least have more support and be able to ask any questions. Even though I had an onboarding buddy, I felt discouraged from collaborating with them.
It felt contradictory when managers told me that I didn’t have to work on weekends or late nights, but also pushed for certain deadlines. It seemed like if I didn’t think I could complete a task by a specific time, I’d have to work outside of normal work hours to get it done.
I remember seeing an experienced engineer complain in the team chat: “It feels like a thankless job.” After he said that, our manager met with him. He came out of the meeting singing a different tune and apologized for the message he wrote in the team chat. It looked like he was being forced to change his attitude.
I was afraid to make mistakes at work
I felt almost paralyzed: I couldn’t ask questions because I was expected to solve the problem by myself, yet I was afraid that I would make a mistake. During this time, my team hired more new grads, and I couldn’t help but compare myself to them and think I was the worst one among them.
With each passing day, I gradually lost my self-confidence. Soon, I found that even the simplest tasks became impossible to solve because I was so afraid to make errors. I could feel the anxiety when I tried to read the screen. Every time I typed out some code, I over-thought it — what if this is wrong? What if they fire me if I mess up this email? What if they fire me if I ask this question in the team chat?
I also couldn’t concentrate. I felt something in my brain break, as if the glue that was holding everything together was coming apart. I’d never experienced something like this in my entire life and, at that time, I remember thinking I would do anything to make this feeling stop.
Choosing to quit was a difficult decision for me. My managers were surprised when they found out I was quitting and tried to convince me not to leave — they even said they would be more supportive.
But the next day, I got on a call with my mentor and another experienced team member. During the call, I asked them a question, and they said they had already explained it to the other new grads and they didn’t want to explain it again. I was caught off guard and it again felt like they were saying one thing but doing another.
I decided it wasn’t a good work environment for me, and I didn’t feel like I was going to succeed at that point — so I finally quit.
After quitting, I experienced depression and even tried LSD
I thought things would get better, but it didn’t. Two months after quitting Amazon, I still didn’t feel like doing anything. I expected that I would have tried to look for a new job by this time, but I didn’t really feel like doing that. I felt like my future in software was over and that I should just give up and do something else. I realized that I might be depressed.
I read that LSD and other psychedelics could be used to treat depression and that researchers are testing them in clinical trials, so I tried it out myself. I wasn’t seeing a doctor, but I thought I didn’t have anything to lose. It was a horrible decision — it made me feel even more depressed and even paranoid for a while.
I eventually started feeling better, and the biggest thing that helped me was doing one LeetCode problem every single day. The consistency and predictability of doing that one thing really helped. After a year of doing that, I landed a job at Google.
In hindsight, I don’t think quitting Amazon was the smartest thing to do since I may have missed out on a lot of money. Had I been fired instead, I could have received severance. But walking away from my salary or potential severance was worth it for me — working at Amazon really made me question myself and whether I was dumb.
After Amazon, I started my YouTube channel, which turned out to be a lot more successful than I could have imagined (and I’m truly grateful for the success). I just wish I had known sooner that what happened while I was at Amazon didn’t define me or my capabilities.
Editor’s note: An Amazon spokesperson, August Aldebot-Green, told Insider in a statement,“We appreciate this as an account of one employee who was with Amazon for a very short time, but it shouldn’t be used to broadly characterize Amazon’s workplace culture. The reality is that Amazon is one of the world’s most sought-after employers, ranking first on this year’s LinkedIn Top Companies list. We care deeply about employees’ well-being and provide world-class health insurance as well as mental health resources for those who may be struggling, which they can access from their first day on the job. Still, we recognize that there will always be people for whom Amazon is not a fit, and we support those employees in their desire to seek out fulfilling roles at other companies.”
If you recently quit your big tech job and want to share your story, email Aria Yang at [email protected].
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