Top reasons former AWS employees are coming back

Alina Andriianova left AWS in 2021 and rejoined AWS as a principal technical program manager for AWS Trust & Safety in early 2022.  

“You can take a person out of AWS, but you can’t take AWS out of a person,” she said. “I missed my ex-colleagues, the culture, Leadership Principles, org structure—I liked all of these things at Amazon.”

Jen Letourneau, who returned to AWS in 2019 after five years away from Amazon, said she missed AWS as soon as she left because of what she describes as an “organic culture” created by the Leadership Principles, the pace of innovation, the scrappiness, and the lack of politics.

“Most of all, I missed the incredibly smart people who challenged me and kept me on my feet every day,” said Letourneau, a senior technical product manager at AWS.

Another boomerang Thiago Tietze points out that because AWS has so many opportunities for career growth, if you’re not feeling challenged or energized by a particular role, there are plenty of teams and jobs you can move into internally to continuously grow your career.  

“You can find your place better inside than outside,” he said.

Hermann Schloss, who used to work in the Luxembourg offices during his previous tenure, recalls remote work as a distant dream. Now, he has a home office and appreciates that AWS now supports hybrid work, based on Director-level guidance.

Letourneau enjoys the company’s values on work flexibility and work-life harmony. She said the emphasis on self-care, emotional intelligence, and diversity, equity & inclusion reinforce the importance of employee well-being and work-life balance.

“We’re encouraged to take time off when we need to, and to not bother others when they take time off,” she said. “And we’re encouraged to learn, grow, and take breaks when we need to.”

From initiatives and partnerships that help develop diverse talent from a young age to mature internal programming and training that creates safe spaces for all employees to feel welcome, boomerangs have noticed positive momentum when it comes to building a more inclusive workplace.  

Like other teams at Amazon, AWS has implemented “Candid Chats” into the interview process, which allows job candidates to connect with current employees to ask questions about company culture, DEI, employee-led affinity groups, work-life balance, and anything else on their minds. These 30-minute chats are intended to be a safe space where job candidates can ask any questions.

“The interview is a two-way street and you want to get a real sense of the organization,” said boomerang Inbal Shani, general manager of Elastic Containers at AWS.

Tietze said what makes AWS unique is that it consistently gives builders the freedom to work the way they want. There’s always an expectation to raise the bar and deliver results, but AWS gives builders the space and autonomy to do so.

This “peculiar” culture enables Amazonians to break free from conventional wisdom and think differently when building customer-obsessed products and features.

Tietze jokes that everyone in the company should have a sticker that says “keep Amazon weird” on their laptops because the culture allows every individual embrace their differences and be who they are.

“That culture is energizing,” he said.

It’s a culture that’s hard to find elsewhere, said Ankita Shah, who first worked as an India tech internship program manager for Amazon. She left to focus on her personal life and then worked across different domains and industries before returning to AWS in 2021 as a recruiter for early career talent.

As she considered returning, she recalled the feeling of being valued and the ability to contribute first-hand to solving customer problems.

“There’s a belief that everyone can make a difference, no matter where you come from or what your previous role was. The confidence your manager and peers bestow on you is what pushes you to achieve the impossible,” Shah said. “This faith that nobody is perfect, but they will learn and do wonders, is what I always found special here.”

At AWS and Amazon, it’s always Day One. Founder Jeff Bezos describes it like this: “Day One is both a culture and an operating model that puts the customer at the center of everything Amazon does."

Many boomerangs found that customer-obsession was missing when they joined other companies. Ravi Bhatta left AWS in 2016 after being recruited by a former colleague to go work for a tech peer. As an enterprise solutions architect at the time, he was frustrated with the slow progress—from his customers at the time—in adopting the cloud so he left to be more involved in pure cloud projects.  

“After leaving AWS, I realized how much I missed Amazon’s Day One culture, Leadership Principles, long-term thinking, and data-driven approaches to decision-making,” said Bhatta, who is now a senior solutions architecture manager. “I also found that the customer-focused strategy is key to long-term success. The key reason I came back was the alignment of my own values with Amazon’s customer and Leadership Principles. We’ve kept the Day One culture and haven’t become ‘just another’ successful technology company.”

Bhatta left AWS in 2016 and returned in 2019. AWS had not only grown in size, but Bhatta noticed considerable growth in its capabilities to scale, all while keeping the same Leadership Principles in place.

“There were many improvements in internal systems, processes and mechanisms to scale. AWS organizational structure, positioning, and services were in alignment for large enterprise customers,” Bhatta said. “AWS platform had many new innovative services that made cloud adoption possible for a wide range of customers.”

Shani’s appreciation for Amazon mechanisms grew when she worked at another company. It’s these mechanisms that help us think bigger, in a more structured way, that contribute to successes in scalability.

“There is no other company in the industry today that has the scale,” Shani said. “Our ability to deliver a service that will impact so many people—really, there is nothing like that today anywhere else.”