> I followed my heart. The universe took care of me.<p>Survivorship bias. Other people have followed their hearts and the universe didn't take care of them, but their posts aren't likely to be posted on HN and upvoted to the front page.
> <i>"Another new MBA was hired in my group. I found out her salary was higher than mine, although I had been told that my salary was “standard for new MBAs.”"</i><p>Heh, replace "MBA" with "engineer" and this was my Amazon experience circa 2011. I was 2 years into the company, getting rave reviews and kudos from management, with pitifiul 1% "raises" a year... and then I found out they're paying a fresh undergrad more than I was making.<p>Oh, and verbal promises of an upcoming promotion... and then nothing come review-time.<p>[cue sad trombone]<p>I did the same thing as author, except I found a 30% raise at another company before leaving ;) Damn it felt good when I gave notice.<p>For those not in the know: Amazon's attrition rate is sky-high, and while management acknowledges this and has some token measures to try and mitigate it, nothing major is being done (i.e., none of the big, big reasons people quit are ever addressed - pay, advancement, on-call stress, etc).<p>Now that I've got some distance between myself and Amazon, I consider the whole thing a learning experience. 'Twas my first job out of college, and I suppose learning to read poor advancement, bad pay, and bad management at that stage of my career was better than doing it later.
I think the advice is actually good, all around. I also think it takes a certain degree of courage for a CEO to advise workers to quit on this sort of basis. Bezos's stature just grew a bit in my eyes.<p>Additionally it's a bit of an inspiring story.<p>There's another time and place to quit too which seems to me to be touched on in the article. If you are in a position that is well below your skills, very often times HR won't give you a chance to work to your capacity. It's usually better to quit and later re-apply than to try to work your way up within a company. I saw this at Microsoft and have reason to believe it happens everwhere else.
Nice organizational insight: Yes, in theory the higher up managers should do something about the bad boss, but they don't know there is a problem, and a conflict is hard to solve, since you don't know who is to blame (and tend to side with the boss, because he is more like yourself, and you probably know him better)<p>High turnover, on the other hand, is a good signal of failed management, and if you can find another job, then you'll probably do better that way.
I think the point of the article is connecting to the emotional (and sometimes spiritual) experience of quitting.<p>I think everyone should quit or get fired from a job at least once in their life. People talk about starting this or wishing things were better, but until you've gone through the utter terror of quitting/being fired, you never know how resilient you can be moving on to the next challenge.<p>It's kind of like starting a business. You can talk all you want, but until you do it (or it happens to you), you don't get it.<p>The universe might have taken care of him, but that is because he realized it's not about how you fall down (even if you jump down), it's how you get up. If you keep getting up, the universe WILL help you out.
I agree that you should quit when your 'boss is bad', but in a way I also think that what you did was also stupid.<p>Amazon is a great company and with effort you would have climbed the ladders there if you were good enough. Jeff Bezos -is- a smart guy and he is taking the company in the right direction as opposed to Yahoo!, which is a giant of yesterday.<p>You had been there for six weeks and had a problem with someone else being hired who got paid more? Why did she get paid more? I've been in the industry long enough to know that salaries are never equal. They are part of the negotiations and are often affected by the situation the new employee is in. A lot of companies pay more for certain employees because of their background situation. If an employee is qualified and shows promise, then companies often offer a supporting hand, because otherwise the employee simply could not afford to work there. A lot of companies pay more to an employee if the employee asks for it when it is about 'their value' and not about value of someone else.<p>It was incredibly stupid to complain that someone else is getting paid more, when you had been there for six weeks. You didn't sound much smarter than your boss there.<p>I would never allow a new employee march in after six weeks and ask for a raise, unless they invented the next iPhone or iPad. You did spreadsheets. You would have gotten a 'no' from any and every executive I know of.
I was feeling sympathetic with the author regarding the raise until I realised he was asking for it a few weeks after joining. I think his boss was right, he accepted the salary when he joined; if he didn't like it he should have negotiated at the time. I'm sure a raise would have be considered after a suitable period.
Quitting a job and following your heart during the largest tech boom in human history, when jobs were jumping out of windows onto unsuspecting passer-bys, might make for a great story, but I'm not sure it's great advice for young kids today, with under-25 unemployment in the 20's in the U.S. and much higher elsewhere.<p>Unless you've got something lined up, or a lot of cash set aside, I'd advise being very conservative in this environment.
This is really hard advice for a lot of people to stomach. That free-falling feeling you get the morning after you quit, and the bittersweet terror of being unemployed are brutal realities, but you're usually better off quitting in the long run.
It would be interesting if the author ever went back and figured out whatever happened to Bill, the horrible boss. People like Bill often don't last long in a swim or sink environment like Amazon.<p>If you're not a superstar, and I'm as un-superstar (sic?) as you can get, and you've been around long enough, chances are you've held a job with shitty pay and shittier boss.<p>Whether you depart for greener pastures or try to stay put make the best out of your situation and work on improving yourself and the company, says a lot about you also.
If there is anything I'd tell a new college grad it would be build a financial cushion as fast as humanly possible. I don't care if you are in debt from your loans... build one - immediately. And yes it is hard when you start out.<p>Why? You will hate your job one day and probably sooner than later. It just happens, its part of the learning curve. I don't mean that you are always going to hate your job but you inevitably will end up in a situation with a crappy boss doing something you didn't realize you signed up for.<p>Your cushion will give you perspective. Instead of looking at your crappy job as your life raft and clinging on for dear life, you will be better equipped to realize you have options. If you really don't want to go to that job anymore, you can reasonably wake up and stop the next morning.<p>Another thing that nobody talks about is that having a cushion can inadvertently gain you more respect in your workplace. I used to work for a group where one of my work buddies was pretty financially independent (this doesn't mean fabulously rich) and unlike everyone else who was desperate to keep their job my work buddy would speak his mind to management. When projects were unreasonable he would tell them to take a hike. Well guess who got all the interesting work and respect.<p>Seriously build a cushion if you are new to the work world - it only makes your life better.
More people need to do this. It seems that among adults, the most effective message you can send is "goodbye". Sad, but, in my experience, true. Even then, some people will never learn.