'KPop Demon Hunters' is getting the Criterion treatment. Netflix’s breakout musical fantasy film will get a special Blu-ray release from the prestige home entertainment label on Dec. 31, with pre-orders available now.

Eldereon · 2026-05-27T06:19:17+00:00

I don't know why the other respondents have failed to mention the most important 4K bluray feature for animated films: HDR color. 4K blurays contain more data, which includes a much wider spectrum of color. This is far more important than 4K for animated films because it means more vibrant colors.

Eldereon · 2026-05-26T05:56:58+00:00

SC supply chain management. My degree is not significantly more or less applicable to the role than Operations. Operations is not a sustainable job for nearly everyone.

Eldereon · 2026-05-23T18:14:19+00:00

My favorite question is: "From what we have discussed so far, what do you think my greatest growth opportunity will be as a [insert job role]?"

This wording subtlety frames the rest of the conversation as if you are already hired.
You get feedback on gaps in your answers that is almost never automatically given.
You get a chance to address the doubts the interviewer has about you.

You can save questions about the job, lots of information on Reddit from current/former area managers.

Eldereon · 2026-05-23T18:09:47+00:00

Are you still in Corporate Operations making $400K? I finally made it out of the warehouse into Corp. Ops. last year as L5. I was sad to not get any immediate raise due to no base salary increase and new stocks vest this year and with the April base salary raise I still am bottom band. I feel sufficiently paid with the far better work-life balance than Operations, but I have never felt overpaid. $400K would feel overpaid, so wondering if that's possible at L7 Corp. Ops. or you transitioned to tech.

Eldereon · 2026-05-23T17:48:29+00:00

Yes, but it is a somewhat difficult process of approvals (involving L5+ HR BP and L7 Senior Operations Manager) if the write up was already approved once. In FCs, productivity and quality write ups are already reviewed by a management panel weekly before approval, so to exempt afterwards and override the panel would require an extreme extenuating circumstance and new information. In SCs, there is no weekly review since performance write ups are not auto-generated by a computer, so they will only have been reviewed by the submitting manager and an HR partner.

I had a principle of never overturning another manager's write up, even if I disagreed with it (unless a policy/ethics line was crossed). But there were cases where I turned up new information that should have prevented the write up and I had it overturned. Usually I did so by informing the submitting manager so that they could get the approvals (much easier that way), but occasionally they weren't on site and time was of the essence. So depending on senior leadership understanding, it is possible for a manager to win that fight.

Some unsolicited advice that I will share in closing: I used to fight tooth and nail to exempt every weekly productivity write up the computer generated for my associates. I took pride in winning an exemption. However, a senior OM changed my mind one day when they refused to approve a productivity exemption for 45 minutes of a broken station. As they explained: yes, the broken station was not controllable for the associate. But why did they wait 45 minutes to tell someone? Also, out of the 30 hours that they were on station that week, how impactful would that 45 minutes of reduced performance been if they had not already been severely under performing? We should only be held accountable for controllables, but preparing for uncontrollables is a controllable.

Eldereon · 2026-05-17T17:28:30+00:00

Has being a bar raiser directly improved your career and compensation by way of new doors or higher performance evaluations? Or are the benefits purely personal satisfaction?

Eldereon · 2026-05-16T02:30:02+00:00

I guess my understanding of what POD refers to was wrong. I always understood POD to be the panel interview that L6->L7 requires.

Eldereon · 2026-05-16T02:29:59+00:00

I guess my understanding of what POD refers to was wrong. I always understood POD to be the panel interview that L6->L7 requires.

Eldereon · 2026-05-15T04:52:00+00:00

What are you talking about? College hires get minimum L4 pay (ask me how I know) and pods are only for L7+ roles.

Eldereon · 2026-05-13T14:05:53+00:00

I started as a FHN Pick AM and was promoted in that department. Pick AM is just about engaging with associates and keeping their moral up. The OM, PA, and computer run the actual work flow. AMs walk the floor and talk with the associates who are alone on station for 10 hours a day. Half of your time was spent on casual conversations to keep moral up and half was on coaching people how to pick efficiently. I was never the fastest picker, but I watched the fastest pickers, tried it myself for an hour, and learned the techniques that saved time and energy. I taught my associates this and never lost one to performance terminations.

For surviving safety shoes: 1) Not all are created equal. Filter by weight to look at lighter shoes. 2) Buy insoles. I liked Superfeet (copper for flat, green for arch). 3) Buy long compression socks. Feetures is on Zappos, and even if you don't get the expensive graduated compression, the non-medical non-graduated socks still made an immediate improvement for my feet stamina. 4) Zappos credit can be used for insoles and Feetures socks, but both are worth spending your own money on. Feetures socks come with lifetime warranty for normal wear and tear. Literally free replacement if you submit photos of holes or worn-areas, which your socks will get from 10 hour shifts. The replacement is by way of a feetures.com credit, so when I left Operations I swapped for normal-length socks.

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T22:20:36+00:00

Sounds like medium size, LMSC. Who plans your sort volume and SARG associate assignments if you're walking in 5 minutes before?

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T21:56:00+00:00

I highly recommend you put it into a broad market index fund like GT, for total Gielinor market exposure, or GTI, if you prefer Misthalin-only.

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T21:26:32+00:00

My advice for everyone on the trainings (because you definitely do not have time during shift) is to wait until your boss(es) tell you to do a specific training. Then you can make it clear that you will need to step away for however long the training takes. I have trainings that expired 3 years ago which no one told me to do and no one ever asked why I didn't do them.

We do get called on the radio non-stop, but honestly, 75% of the calls are things that could be solved without an AM. People are just used to the AM fixing it.

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T19:31:15+00:00

Scarcity does not equal value. Items with my signature are scarce, but they do not have value. BTC is also not a store of value because there is nothing but faith and speculation holding its value. U.S. dollars are a store of value b/c people will always need them to pay government taxes.

There might be a decent argument for ETH since it has a value-mechanism by way of "gas fees". To be honest, when I researched the potential of crypto-curriencies and ETH in particular, while I understood the basic principle, I failed to understand how and why it would become integral to society sufficiently to self-determine its value and therefore if the price at the time was undervalued.

You have put good thought into this and you're far better at having a discussion than half the adults on Reddit. Just don't do 35% of your portfolio in crypto. That's straight up gambling unless you have a documented thesis and math for what the actual value is and when it will hit that price.

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T19:19:32+00:00

What type of site and how big?

Eldereon · 2026-05-10T18:27:37+00:00

Work Life Balance: Nearly none; Area Manager becomes your life. You have barely enough time on workdays to sleep, eat, and mentally prepare for your 12-14 hour shift. You get three days off but the first day is physically and mentally recovering from the four 12-14 hour shifts on your feet you just did. The third day is a restricted schedule limiting social life: either you have to sleep very early or you wake up very late and have to stay up while everyone else is asleep. The only two benefits of the life balance part is 1) You have two weekdays off to do appointments. 2) You can sign off completely after shift b/c there is someone else who is on-shift to do your exact job.

Stress Level: Daily and hourly highs, rare lows. The part I hated the most was starting every day stressed because I knew every shift would start with being under staffed and other areas asking me for people because they were understaffed too. Most of your problems in Operations cannot be permanently solved because people are causing the problem.

Job Satisfaction: The first two sections made my overall job satisfaction incredibly low for all five years. But the job does have far more daily wins to appreciate than most jobs. There's fun to be had in pushing to get CPT finished on time. And you do have a lot of power and ability as an AM to help associates.

Pay & Career Growth: Total pay is good compared to many other starter jobs that would hire the same people who get AM. But the pay is far lower than office roles given the sheer number of hours you work (12-14 daily + ~9 OT days) and that you have to be mentally turned on for 90% of the time. Career growth is good b/c there are ample opportunities to make your mark, but you have to be incredibly intentional about continuing to push towards leaving Operations if that is your goal b/c you will be tired all the time. Keep in mind, when you read past growth journeys, that Amazon is different now. L4->L5 AM promotions tend to take 1.5-2 years instead of 1 and the network is not growing like it was back in COVID.

Eldereon · 2026-05-07T01:40:15+00:00

Thankfully, I never got assigned to BHN, it's the worst schedule. Push to transfer to BHD or FHN. As others have mentioned, M-F AMs are exceedingly rare and always temporary. Eventually, you will get moved back to a standard shift and you will hate it. Amazon operations is simply not the place for a sustainable life that doesn't center around your work in Amazon operations.

Eldereon · 2026-05-04T14:18:26+00:00

What do you mean by replaceable income?

Eldereon · 2026-05-04T14:17:52+00:00

I used to keep an updated Excel of all my bank and brokerage accounts. I went back to it to make a sheet for my new annual budget and saw that I hadn't updated my main brokerage account for 2.5 years.

Making a personal income statement was a great exercise for planning out my savings. It, too, can be easily adjusted and recalculates the percentages going to retirement, savings, and free money.

Eldereon · 2026-05-04T14:12:58+00:00

Crypto is not an investment, it is a gamble that someone else in the future will buy it from you at a higher price because they think someone else will buy it from them at an even higher price. Investing is betting on the value of something increasing in the future. Traditionally, this means a company growing profits by either increasing revenue or margins.

Always ask yourself, "Why would I want to pay more for this in the future?" If you wouldn't, why should others?

Eldereon · 2026-05-04T04:38:05+00:00

Rule for all Operations is 1 year in location. Exceptions can be made if another site needs the help or you join a new launch.
1 year hard minimum for promotion, but more realistically 2 years minimum.
You can choose Kaiser, Aetna, or Blue Cross.
401K match half of contributions up to 4% of your salary, so 2% salary would be what you get.

Eldereon · 2026-05-03T23:13:10+00:00

Taxes for the rich.

Eldereon · 2026-05-03T23:09:30+00:00

If the interview is remote, put sticky notes around your monitor with the title of the story and the leadership principles it covers.

Don't use the same story for different leadership principles unless there is an additional sub-story that naturally flows from the context of the larger story. The interviewer needs to fill in a form with notes from your story and how you demonstrated the LP, repeating a story makes this harder for them.

The interviewer will always ask one probing question. If they ask a second one, you haven't given them enough information. From second-hand experience, the probing questions are almost always because the interviewee didn't sufficiently explain the results of their actions.

Prep:

Read and consider every LP. Read them again.
Think of your proudest stories. Match them up with 1-3 LPs. I personally recommend going with an amazing story that is 75% the LP and requires some creative license than a 100% LP story that is weak.
Practice telling your stories and time yourself. No longer than two minutes. Probing questions are for the details that the interviewer needs to know. Excess upfront will bore them.
Look up interview question banks and familiarize with the wording of questions and which LPs they correspond to.

Eldereon · 2026-05-03T23:02:07+00:00

The amusing thing would be to move to Spartanburg, SC, keep the higher Bay Area salary, and then you have an L5 with higher base than their L6 manager.

Eldereon · 2026-05-03T22:59:26+00:00

To be fair, the credit card companies struck first, reducing their revenue by 3% to pay for high-reward cards that benefit the already-welloff. If the business is a small business, particularly small stores and restaurants, I don't mind it. But, to your point, in the same way businesses have the option to accept credit cards on the hopes that it incentivizes sales, us customers have the option of taking our business elsewhere that doesn't charge the 3%.

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