This is eerily similar to my experience at Amazon including how I feel when I look back. Even the years are same :-). I somehow feel joining and leaving Amazon when I did (2005-2012) was the best thing to have happened.
What makes it more special was the stellar team that I got to be a part of with whom I’m still in touch with. It’s like being part of a secret club.
The only thing we used to discuss among colleagues most of the time was solving some hairy interesting engineering problem. That changed as years wore on, it became more gossip and internal politics and who got promoted how and when etc.
The funny thing (to me) is that 4000 people already seems unwieldy to me - I run a company of 5 and can imagine managing maybe 20-30 people, 100 at a stretch but I have no idea how to run a company with anywhere close to 4000 employees (nor what would so many people work on).
What makes it more special was the stellar team that I got to be a part of with whom I’m still in touch with. It’s like being part of a secret club.
The only thing we used to discuss among colleagues most of the time was solving some hairy interesting engineering problem. That changed as years wore on, it became more gossip and internal politics and who got promoted how and when etc.