Amazon Software Development Engineer reviews

3.5

51% would recommend to a friend

(3,319 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

35% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer employees have rated Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 3,319 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
3.0
May 26, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazon is a dynamic, interesting company with a unique structure. Pay is competitive, but hours are long, depending on your group. Interview for the GROUP you're working for, rather than the company itself. There is some room for mobility within groups, but the longer you're in the same one, the harder it is to move around. Some groups definitely work harder than others, and some make better software than others.

Cons

The hours can be long and the work can be boring (mine was). But again, it all depends on the group you're a part of. It is also clear that some people are just there "putting in the hours" while others really care about developing their careers and the company.

2.0
May 25, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Part of something big and generally good - Amazon is truly a customer-focused company that has brought some real value to the marketplace. Ability to have large-scale impact in your work: stuff I've worked on has been deployed on hundreds of machines and handled $100 MM+ in business. Colleagues are smart, pragmatic and get things done. The colleagues here are some of the best that I've worked with in nearly 10 years in the industry.

Cons

Operational overhead - if you're lucky you will be on a newer team without much operational overhead. Most likely, you'll be spending a significant portion of your time dealing with operational issues (pages, data backfills, investigating production alarms, resolving issues with other teams, etc). Work-life balance is hard to maintain. Very little professional development - aside from the internal speaker's sessions, there are few opportunities for professional growth and development. Email - I have grown to despise Outlook more than ever before. How can people read this much email? development process - some teams do agile, some operate in a chaotic code-and-fix mode. There's little support for best practices across the company. If you are coming from outside and have done some reading/practice in software engineering processes, this place will feel like a gigantic step backwards. HR - there is essentially no human resources department in this company. For almost all questions you'll be talking to an email alias. ridiculous upper management escalations - seriously, do you need to critique form layouts when they've been designed by a UI expert? And your background is in what, again? internal build tools and frameworks - outdated, can be frustrating, little documentation

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