Amazon Software Development Engineer reviews

Your employment will be a blessing or a condemnation depending almost entirely on the team for which you work. I was in Builder Tools on the deployment engine team, and in two-and-a-half years my life was hell. I was forever understaffed, overworked, and unsupported. My manager provided no coaching, no guidance, and no support except on performance "reviews" which were almost entirely full of new information. He was forced out of management, but not before ruining my chances of keeping my job. When I brought the matter up to HR and said I was being unfairly treated, their direct answer was, and I quote, "if we did something about this, we'd set a precedent of letting employees dispute their reviews, and then we couldn't manage." After that, I had no interest in fighting for my job, since it was clear the company had no interest in fighting for me.

-low compensation as compared to lateral hires -promotion politics -no good work