When Graham was hired by Amazon, it sounded like his dream job. He was brought on as a research scientist to help develop features for Alexa, the company’s ubiquitous voice assistant. Graham, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, assumed he would soon be using his expertise in machine learning to work on cool, new features that would make Alexa more personal to every user. But within four months of his start at the company, it became clear that Amazon had no idea what to do with him.
He spent the next two years bouncing around — switching teams, watching project leaders get promoted despite, he said, producing nothing of substance, and generally spinning his wheels. Graham was paid more than $300,000 a year but had little work to show for it. Feeling adrift with nothing to do, he gradually disengaged from his job and was eventually put on Amazon’s formal performance-management plan.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.