Big tech jobs are not what they were. Amazon made my career and "my life", but things have changed. Here is the good, the bad and the ugly of today’s big tech job options:

The Good

1. Great Comp.

   1. People may want more, but tech worker pay dwarfs everyone except Wall Street traders.

2. Incredible platforms for scale and impact.

   1. What you work on will be seen and used by millions, possibly billions. A lousy feature from Google or Meta will get 100x the traffic that a startup would sell it's imaginary kidney to have.

3. Slow but consistent growth over time.

   1. Put in the years and you can get the levels and the pay.

The Bad

1. Slow but consistent growth over time.

   1. The days of adding tens of thousands of employees are gone. Amazon grew 100x in my 15 years there, and the stock went up 9082% (I checked). Revenue has grown 67x since I started. Another 67x would make Amazon's revenue larger than the US Gross Domestic Product. It simply cannot happen again.

2. Rocket-ride careers are largely over.

   1. The exception is if you happen to get in early to a hot new division, but your odds of this are no better than finding the next unicorn startup.

3. Increasing bureaucracy.

   1. Every person I coach across Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. tells me of policies, politics, and waiting lists around progression.

The Ugly

1. Most of big tech is either still laying off or not hiring. The pre-pandemic hiring sprees are still being washed out in the name of efficiency.

2. For most of these companies (not all), there is increasing return to office pressure.

3. Big tech still has worse-than-average diversity stats.

Who can benefit from big tech jobs today:

1. People well along in their careers looking for stability and a fat paycheck. You can put the career on cruise control, add a blue chip line to your resume, and pay off the mortgage/college tuition with the comp.

2. Brand new graduates. Go spend a couple of years getting both that blue chip resume line and exposure to the tools, scale, and thinking within these companies. They may no longer be fast and agile, but they are massive and powerful. They are like battleships. They can't turn fast, but they are nearly unstoppable.

3. People like me (at the end) - Those looking for a line of sight to "retirement" or a second career of their choosing.

Who should leave or look elsewhere:

1. Those who can afford higher risk / lower short-term compensation that comes with the potential to grow faster.

2. Anyone who cannot stand being part of a large, slow system.

3. People who have already gotten any "scale" and "top performer" credentials they wanted from a big tech job. Now that you have the "credential", you can "graduate" to something with less overhead and more potential.

What do you think about the current state of big tech careers?