Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

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.

When I was in elementary school and my father thought I was acting up, his standard MO was to ask, “Who the hell do you think you are? Who?” over and over, waiting for a real answer while I, a first grader, stood frozen by the enormity of the question.

Because Mitch gets to throw toddler fits while I’m not allowed to show emotion at all, I am angry but I think it’s shame.

“I don’t know what it means for your future,” she says. “I haven’t gotten that far ahead. First I need to sell Ron on the whole idea. So to that point, it’s really important that you don’t tell anyone this is even a possibility. I don’t want to destabilize people until we have solid news for them.” 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. A nitrousy numbness is moving down my neck into my upper back. “Of course,” I say. “Not a word.

I mumble, and flee in the slightly shamed hermit-crab shape my body will still assume a decade later when I think about how it started and how it ended and the dignity I will never get back.

Everyone stares silently at their handouts for at least fifteen seconds. Finally, a Web Services director speaks up. “Pipeline,” he says, hands up in a what-else gesture. “Start girls coding as young as possible.” Yesss, I’ve won my bet with Brian that the pipeline would come up right away. One hundred percent of the gender discussions I’ve witnessed at Amazon have involved men agreeing we need to teach girl fetuses to code so we can hire them seventeen years later. This is one area where “move fast” does not apply.

Brian verbally delivers a performance review so glowing that I can feel the last traces of APub flop sweat vanish. It will set me up beautifully when I start interviewing for my next role, or at least it will once he types it up and enters it into the system, which he is always one day away from doing. Within a few months I understand this is never going to happen; my best Amazon performance review is never going to be written down for me or anyone else to see.

And then a guy named Nick pipes up to tell us he’s just posted a rebuttal on LinkedIn, which I click on like a big old dummy who doesn’t care if she drowns in her own cortisol. Nick is pretty darn mad about the Times article, and he

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. Maybe move across the country. Pull your kids out of school.

My father is shaking his head. “Let me guess: men are jerks.” I hug him too. “I love you. I wish we hadn’t had to pretend my world would be like yours.” At First Avenue I see a cop on horseback. “Did Amazon make you a drunk?” he asks. “No,” I say, “it just let me map the edges.” “What did you find at the edges?” asks the horse. “The erasure of all my traits,” I say, a sugar cube on my open palm.