[rgbrgb]

I quit amazon as soon as I had enough to live on (very frugally) for 18 months and a team who was willing to go full-time on our app idea. We had made a little prototype but not released and no traction or biz model. A lot of my confidence came from the 2 extremely talented co-founders who were willing to do the same.

We had realized that it would have been basically impossible for us to hit the milestones you mention without going all-in, full-time. That was the carrot.

The stick was that I didn't like my job very much. I loved my co-workers at amazon and the pay for a new grad broke college kid was kind of surreal, but my inflated ego could not stand being such a lowly cog in such a giant machine. I had just spent almost 3 months on a 3 line tax calculation in a checkout flow (had to work on several continents and query a silly amount of internal java services).

It also made me feel pretty safe that I had just done well in a perf review and my manager told me I could come back any time.

Beyond my own story, I'd add that I've now seen many people do this and none of them have expressed any regrets despite most not getting a win with the startup. For a certain type of person there's just nothing like the high of building something you own and the way that stretches you abilities.

[glimshe]

By the way, "spent almost 3 months on a 3 line tax calculation in a checkout flow" sounds about right. You say it yourself "had to work on several continents and query a silly amount of internal java services".

A problem in the scale of a giant company like Amazon is a different problem altogether. Getting these 3 lines wrong could have, I suppose, catastrophic impact so spending 3 months on it makes total sense for Amazon.