Google vs Amazon

Joining Google months after quitting Amazon was "the opposite experience" — and it shaped how Navi thinks about company culture and promotion.

Amazon PTSD and the Google reset

He arrived at Google in "Amazon PTSD mode", having extrapolated his two-month Amazon experience to all of big tech: don't ask questions, don't be friendly, just work intensely 18:22, 18:51
People were friendly; he reciprocated, but was still too scared to ask questions and worked mostly alone on a project that turned out harder than intended 18:51
Ironic outcome: doing everything solo made his manager and team see him as "independent" — exactly what's needed to go from junior to mid-level. He got promoted in about a year, very uncommon at Google, and only then felt comfortable asking questions 19:14, 19:35, 21:03
Host's observation: engineers carry ingrained reflexes from previous company cultures, and the industry rarely accounts for how hard adapting is 20:06
Culture mapping is real: Google Cloud leadership came largely from Amazon; Googlers distrusted Amazon-bred managers (frugality vs. Google perks), and Google slowly drifted that direction with the layoffs 20:24, 20:44

Junior → mid-level is mostly about working independently; it gets harder at each level above 21:03
His formula: put in the work + be reasonably smart (most people are) + right team, right project — "you could be a 10x, 100x engineer, and if you're working on relatively easy stuff", there's nothing to prove 21:25, 21:47
Google's documentation culture (metrics, artifacts, design docs for everything) produces too many design docs, but it's a "necessary evil" — otherwise engineers would work on whatever they feel like with no quantifiable business impact 21:47, 22:10