Good And Bad, But Overall Okay
Pros
Great company. a). Amazon is perhaps one of the best companies when it comes to interesting projects. Almost includes all areas you can think of. It's leading in cloud computing and also releasing new devices yearly. Tons of challenges. Great leadership from Jeff Bezos. I like where this company is headed. b). Amazon has an official dog policy that allows you to bring your dog to work on a daily basis which is really cool. c). Paid time off 6 days. Pretty good. 3 sick days. Okay.
Cons
a). In terms of compensation, average base salary, great sign-on bonus, lame stock bonus over first 2 years(4 years allocation ratio of your stock bonus: 5%, 15%, 40%, 40%) then it's better. No cash bonus ever after the sign-on bonus though. You also won't receive any stock bonus on your first performance review, either. Last but not the least, their salary bump is minimal compared to other IT companies. b). No perk at all. You want free food? Go elsewhere. You want free parking? Go elsewhere. You want office? Go elsewhere. c). No green card for immigrant SDE1s because you are not valuable to the company. SDE2s will get theirs going after half a year of service. Although exceptions can be given from time to time. And usually managers understands it and will help you. d). Oncall experience is different significantly from teams to teams. Cannot say much about that. My team is mostly okay. But I have heard horrible stories, and I am not planning to experience those. e). People move very frequently. Promotion can be a problem when your manager keeps coming and going and nobody has a set of continuous datapoints of you. f). 2 weeks of vacation in the first year. Then 3 weeks starting from your second year. 2 weeks is well below IT company standard. Although they kind of making up for it by adding 9 extra days(6 PTO + 3 sick days)
