An assistant brain surgeon making six figures a year has opened up about why she ditched the operating theatre to work in an Amazon warehouse.
Helen Xu, 31, from Brisbane’s south, started working as an assistant surgeon at a hospital in Queensland in 2018.
But when Covid hit in 2020, Ms Xu was working tirelessly almost every day, with shifts lasting as long as 30 hours.
As she didn’t have children or elderly relatives at home to risk spreading the disease to, Ms Xu said she was one of the staff relied upon heavily to pick up extra shifts.
Exhausted and unable to spend any quality time with friends and family, Ms Xu eventually left her career in medicine in September 2021.
In desperate need of change, Ms Xu said Amazon bizarrely came into the picture as an option because she was always impressed with how fast they delivered her packages during lockdown.
She saw an ad hiring for the company and by October 2021, she was stacking shelves for the delivery giant.
‘For the last couple of months working in the hospital I just wasn’t sure when I’d get enough rest,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
Helen Xu, 31, from Brisbane ‘s south, started working as an assistant surgeon at a hospital in Queensland in 2018. She joined the team at Amazon in September, 2021
She said that during Covid, exceptional circumstances at her hospital meant that she was on call every day.
‘There was a lot of pressure on those who didn’t have kids or elderly people at home to come in,’ she said.
‘I also didn’t want to take any potential contact I’d had with sick people to my friends and family so I didn’t have much of a social life.’
Ms Xu said work was so demanding that she was called in nearly every day, with sometimes just half a day off as rest between back-to-back shifts.
After starting her role as an Amazon casual warehouse associate, the 31-year-old found herself preparing customers’ orders, loading boxes onto trucks and stacking shelves.
Ms Xu had never worked in a place like Amazon before but said her previous job gave her no social life or even enough time to get a decent rest
In the years since, Ms Xu has managed to climb the ladder at Amazon and is now a full-time operations shift manager.
‘I’d never worked in anything like that before but I was frequently ordering things off Amazon and thought ”why do they deliver so much faster than other companies?”,’ she said.
Entry level assistant surgeon jobs have a base salary of $113,792, according to Salary Expert.
The hourly rate for an Amazon warehouse associate is about $32, with Ms Xu working four to five shifts per week when she first started.
‘I guess when you look at medicine, the pay is on the higher end and definitely there’s going to be pay discrepancies between now and then but in terms of how much time I (now) have for myself, it works out,’ she said.
Ms Xu rents in Brisbane and said she is able to financially support herself in her new career path.
She added the culture at Amazon was worlds apart from the high-pressure environment she experienced at the hospital.
‘It’s very different and is part of the reason why I ended up staying because the work culture is super inclusive,’ she said.
‘There’s no judgement of what your background is or experience. People are from all different walks of life, some have backgrounds in law and education while others own their own businesses.
‘It’s really opened my mind as to how inclusive the environment is.’
As for her time as a surgical assistant, Ms Xu said she doesn’t have any plans to return to the hospital any time soon.
It comes amid a mass hiring spree for Amazon, with 600 seasonal positions up for grabs ahead of the Christmas rush.
Applications open in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Gold Coast, Gosford and Geelong.
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