I would like to tell my story of burnout at Amazon, considering the fact that there is so many stories out there on both sides of the issue. My story is also on both sides of the issue, and I've had a lot of time to think about why people can see the same culture but come away with completely different conclusions. This is a throwaway because I still work there and I don't plan on changing that, and I don't exactly trust the company to take this in good faith, despite the fact that I mean this as a purely constructive criticism for a company that I really do like.
I am an autodidact (my formal education only tangentially describes what I can do), and a polymath (capable of holding my own amongst PhD-level Operations Researchers, Statisticians, Econometricians, Data Scientists, Computer Scientists, as well as Software Engineers). I love to solve real world problems, and in many ways am the perfect type of person for Amazon's culture. I started in a level 5 position, but felt from the beginning that I warrant