Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

Like a lot of people, I rose to management by excelling as an individual at tasks that have fuck all to do with running a team.

But I keep reminding myself there’s a difference between feeling stupid and actually being stupid.

“It’s just interesting,” I say. “Because I took the job with the mandate to solve editorial problems, and then I got here and realized they were actually operational problems. And now I’m starting to think, no, they’re cultural problems.”

“We probably couldn’t prove with data that a typo hurts the business,” she says, “but they’re still wrong, because they make the brand look dumb, and dumb isn’t trustworthy.”

“Being tough isn’t the same thing as being mean, you know. I think you need to internalize that.”

Most of my female colleagues are childless, and I sometimes wonder whether Amazon attracts women who are inherently uninterested in motherhood or if it just chokes the interest out of us once we’re here.

We took a thing that had been one way for decades and changed it, just because we thought it should change.

“Yes, but don’t you think that means my luck is due to run out?”

She deserves a real conversation, though I suspect it will sting when she doesn’t beg me to stay.4

I had no idea at eighteen that my basic bodily autonomy would still be in jeopardy at forty-two. No one tells you it will never, ever stop.

Amazon didn’t create our yearning for recognition, but it exploits it for maximum return by holding the rat pellet just out of reach and then frowning on any rat who looks hungry.

Maybe I don’t count as people, because Lorna has just destabilized the fuck out of me and doesn’t seem a bit bothered about it.

But what’s too hard to explain to them is that we don’t feel overpaid. Amazon could be depositing a million dollars a month into my checking account and I would think, Yes, this seems about right, given the fear and the chaos and the ugly surroundings and the endlessly escalating demands and the way no one ever says thanks.

Worry less about actually overcoming impostor syndrome—everyone has it, even men—and more about acting in spite of it.

I’d be a failure, I think. But suddenly the word looks so small. Okay, let’s say you run screaming and become a failure. Do you care? What if you just … let yourself fail?

But I store away the idea that failure could be exactly what I need.

You try so hard to be good at things you don’t actually want to do. You never ask yourself if maybe you should just stop doing them.

Q. Why did you stay on the team? A. I thought no one else would want me.

And of course it’s 90 percent men, which says something about who Amazon is investing in.”

“But, you guys, what’s happening at manager level? Just getting women into the pipeline is not going to solve for how they vanish into thin air as the levels go up.”

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.

At dusk, I walk to the bottom of the falls and tell myself to please remember this day when just being myself did not in fact lead directly to doom.

All I can think is that if I hadn’t quit drinking, this wouldn’t be happening, because the drinking me didn’t write.

“They’re just doing what the organism wants. If the organism wanted employees to be sane and healthy, the people would do things differently.

and not even over Josh’s decision itself so much as the lack of thought behind it.

or a man says “Just to play devil’s advocate” about a topic that genuinely does not need the advocacy of the devil.