Any bad rumor that you have heard about abusive workplace, no work life balance, zero perks is ABSOLUTELY correct.
If you have not read the New York times article please READ it now before joining amazon. You'll thank me later. If have any other offer or prospective offer, reject Amazon's offer. You'll thank me later even if the other job pays much less.
There's no work life balance at amazon whatsoever. You will be FORCED to work after hours and over many weekends. You'll have to sacrifice your family and your social life. Of course, there's no explicit request for this but mangers implicitly whipping their yearly review process along with their unrealistic deadlines will leave you no other choice.
Most of the mangers are not engineers and usually have business and project management background and have little to no interest or in depth understanding of software development process. They ONLY care about how they look in front of the higher ranking mangers and how large their annual bonuses are. If something goes wrong it's your fault as an engineer but if everything goes well your managers will pat themselves on the back and you won't hear a simple sincere "thank you".
As for perks, No free food. No free snack. no free parking. no hotel discounts. No any kinds of discounts. You have to even pay for Amazon prime membership. literally zero perks. It's extremely cheap company with little respect or care for employees. The only thing you get for free is office coffee and that's the end of it.
Be very cautious as recruiters and current employees can be deceitful. They are thought to reply with memorized " talking points" to attract potential candidates and to twist the facts.
All in all, I regret pouring my life and energy into Amazon and highly discourage you from making that same mistake.
