lowiqengineer

Same at the top schools. I've never heard of someone at a top school be proud of going to Amazon - it's only something they do if they have no other options in my experience.

If your parents don't talk about it (as mine don't, presumably because they're ashamed?) I don't know if it's "nothing to be embarrassed about".

What did the top 1% do? What did your valedictorian(s) do?

I see. I don't want to come off as harsh, I work at Amazon myself and know a lot of these people but didn't grow up in the peer group.

I had my first quarter life crisis at 18, when I came to grips with the fact that I had accomplished nothing in my life so far, as evidenced by my lack of good college admissions - I graduated only 2nd in my class with just a 1500 SAT, which isn't good enough for top schools.

Unlike OP, however, it was less of an aimless drift and more of an aggressive, angry depression. Had another one at 20, when I realized that not getting into a FB internship would probably set me back permanently from my goals.

Now I'm 24, work at Amazon and widely considered a disappointment to people in OP's social circles. The pain has waned a bit, but the crisis is just constant now, like the roar of an engine on a long airplane flight in coach. Eventually the discomfort of the resting your head on the window and the anger you feel at the people with lie-flat seats paid for by Google and Facebook overpowers the rest.

> but I caught myself sleuthing on your github and LinkedIn and feeling that familiar sense of envy

He works at AWS? Is that considered particularly impressive to be envious over? Sure he went to Hopkins but that's not atypical in the Princeton area.

I'd imagine for most of his peers from high school he's considered a disappointment for working at "only" AWS, they're probably all ML Engineers at FB or Google or Two Sigma, etc.

Would you say the same if he was a member of ISIS but hadn’t committed any terrorist acts yet? It’s no different.

I agree, I think 1 billion Americans is a worthwhile goal.

Yikes the Amazon numbers are really low...

Those two examples are fundamentally different and it’s silly to conflate individual action with coercing the app stores to discontinue supporting the app.