Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

Brian insists that unless any new thing in the world kicks off a self-perpetuating continuous improvement cycle, it isn’t truly innovative. I think this is picky to the point of being batshit,

table centers on whether Sleeping Lady is too pleasant a venue for Amazon to use. “I mean, I’m eating lamb risotto,” says the man who earlier mentioned Patton. “Which is great, but feels almost wrong. Like this is money we could be spending on a better customer experience.” Heads nod all around the table. A certain kind of Amazonian loves to gripe about non-Calvinist surroundings.

And much of the work I’ve left behind is emotional. For the first time since I came to Amazon, I’m not managing anyone, which also means that for the first time in a decade I’m not trying to convince a brilliant woman that she isn’t an abject failure. I didn’t know how incredible it would feel to drop the weight of other women’s self-loathing, to move around campus letting women’s well-being be someone else’s problem. I guess I should care, but I’ve given up. Giving up feels like the smartest way to go, for now.

By the third time, my gaze has expanded to cover the chuckling lot of them. It’s not that I expect anyone to deliver a sermon about sexual harassment being no laughing matter. But could at least one of the jackasses not join in? The kindest explanation is that they think harassment is just, like, a concept, not something that might have actually happened to the woman five feet from them. That because they’ve never done it or witnessed it, it can’t really exist.

The behavior is that you joked several times about being sexually harassed or accused of sexual harassment. They were lighthearted-sounding jokes and I didn’t sense any malice behind them.” I know that if I don’t absolve him of evil intent up front, he might not listen at all. “But being harassed on the job is a common experience for women. I’ve been sexually harassed and it’s made it harder to do my job. So one impact is that I felt alienated by the repeated jokes.” So far, so good. Now for the kicker. “Also, it’s easy to unconsciously assume other people have had similar life experiences. But if that assumption alienates your employees and co-workers, their mistrust could weaken your effectiveness as a leader.”

At entry level, Amazon’s gender split is roughly equal. But by manager level, women have shrunk to a third of the population. At my level they’re a quarter of it, and so on up the ladder above me: the bigger the job, the fewer the women. It’s always seemed like that, but seeing it quantified is still jarring. “What is happening?”

“Women have children,” he says. “Work-life balance is critical for moms.” I catch the eye of the lone female cohort member, keeping my gaze neutral but wondering if she’s as fascinated as I am by the mystical simplicity of “women have children.”

Am I a mom too? I want to ask. Is every woman you see someone designed to spend her life catering to someone else’s needs?

This is the moment it finally truly lands that I will never outrun my gender. Of course on some level I’ve known that for years, but never so starkly. I will never overcome the belief that the presence of women means a slower, softer, weaker Amazon.

I know he’s wealthy to a degree I can’t even conceptualize. I know his company runs on fear and superhuman expectations. I know he’s the architect of practices that have harmed a lot of people and that he has done almost nothing with his unfathomable wealth to mitigate that harm. And yet I’ve been here too long to see him as the planet-owning villain or ominous cartoon character the world at large does.

If you can never outrun your gender here, then you’re off the hook for trying. If you’re fucked, maybe you’re also free.

the hard truth is that saying yes to every outlandish request is Amazonian. It may be ruinous and unsustainable, but Amazon as we know it wouldn’t exist without a thousand tiny acts of self-destruction every day.

Jobs that sit open for six months because the candidates interviewed are merely great, not perfect.

the grimmest anecdotes focus on women. There’s the one who was put on probationary status shortly after a stillbirth, and the one whose boss threw her in the bottom 10 percent because her peers had accomplished more than she did during her cancer treatment, and the one told point-blank that having kids had been a fatal career error. Human biology is a bigger problem for Amazon than I realized.

25 percent: Look, this place is not for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with having kids or cancer or emotions; it just means you probably should be working somewhere else.

His words remind me of how women are encouraged to flounce out of workplaces where they’re harassed or marginalized. They don’t deserve you! They’ll be sorry when you’re gone! Sure. Put your income and insurance and career momentum on ice while you look for a new job.

Even in the best of times, innovation is messy and expensive, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is using it as an excuse to continually blow the basics of existing in time and space.

You can’t outrun it. You will always be a deviation, an alien, a guest worker, an uneasily transplanted organ. You might be tolerated, even beloved and respected, but you will never be a citizen, and the problem isn’t how you look or talk or act. The problem is that there is no right way to be a woman.

The fire in my belly that I’ve rekindled six or seven times at Amazon is going to be hard to light again. I’m just not sure it’s worth it anymore. I think there are better places to strike that match.

Plus I’m a woman in leadership, that population Amazon keeps saying it’s trying to grow. Of course I’ll get a real exit interview, right? I do not. I get a link to a form, with instructions to submit it within two days of my departure.

John, my Big Love: I could thank you for thirty years of adventures, but the truth is that you are the adventure of my life. The rest is anecdote.

Sometimes I imagine an America where people didn’t have to make career decisions based on access to health care, and the possibilities break my fucking heart.