Amazon reviews

First of all, Amazon recruiters will give you a very inaccurate, over-glossed, rosy picture of HR opportunities at an Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC). They will almost resort to sleazy, car salesman types of tactics to sell you the job. It is very common for experienced HR professionals to come here and share their sentiment of complete shock and awe upon realizing what the true day-to-day job entails. For many of these individuals, the decision to take the position quickly becomes a regret and a mistake. The real day-to-day ground zero experience for HR at an Amazon FC is highly dysfunctional, disorganized, chaotic, and surprisingly embryonic. This is not what constitutes work for the field of HR. Forget strategic HR business partnership, this doesn't exist in the slightest and the company has a long road before HR at Amazon FCs can reach that state. HR at Amazon FCs is purely transactional, secretarial, administrative, low-scope, and demeaning. HR Assistants are doing administrative assistant work, HR Business Partners are doing HR Assistant work, HR Managers are doing HR Generalist and HR Assistant work, and so on. Your time is spent here putting out fires and reacting. There is also a very high volume of low-scope investigation and employee relations issues work. Also, be ready to get buried in hundreds of emails per day and thousands of emails per week. This is not an exaggeration. I barely see any hint of work that is planful or proactive. Then on top of this, when there are widespread performance problems from other members of the HR team, it exacerbates this condition even more. I question some of the hiring decisions that are made and some of these entry-level HR Assistants that are brought on. It is not uncommon to find yourself surrounded by an excessive degree of professional immaturity. It is not easy to formally address performance and carry out performance management for problem-performing HR team members due to lack of support from leadership. This ties in to the culture overall at Amazon FCs that is too employee-friendly leaving around long leashes instead of placing firm accountability for someone’s performance. I also question the true effectiveness of some of the senior HR leaders in the Amazon FC HR world. There is a high amount of volatility and instability for HR teams at Amazon FCs. New buildings are opening up without the main HR leader position being filled which leads to a lot of other downstream consequences. There is an extremely high amount of negative turnover amongst HRBPs and HRAs (as high as 50% or more). Many who join leave within the first year. The repeated job postings that you see posted that seem to be on an “evergreen” state is not all due to growth and the addition of new positions, a lot of this is to backfill and to recoup from all the turnover that exists. The strong individuals leave on their own volition yet the problem performers stick around for too long. With these conditions, it is truly difficult for one to be set up for success here as an HR professional. The recruiters do a very poor job of presenting a more balanced picture of the job. Work schedules for HR professionals at Amazon FCs are also not a positive point to highlight. You do get made aware that the HR operation is “24/7” and that you aren’t going to be working the traditional M-F 8-5 job but there are still nuances of work schedule requirements that leaves you feeling imprisoned. You almost feel like you are working an hourly, mall job and are stuck in a specific work schedule without a lot of the flexibility and latitude that you would see for other senior-level HR positions. The company is always in reactive mode so there are a lot of last-minute decisions that get made which affect your work schedule and thereby affect your personal life. Also know that during the Peak season, you will be working a 6x10 schedule in HR doing the low-scope work I described above. This does not get shared with you from the recruiters. What also doesn’t get shared from the recruiters is that you may start out on one specific work schedule (i.e. Days) but it’s common that HR team members will rotate through schedules 1-2x per year so even though you start on Days, you may be on Nights before the year is over. The recruiter didn’t share that variability up front. I also noticed concerns with the leadership culture at Amazon. The Leadership Principles seem to exist in theory only but not applied in the real world. Many managers tend to be aloof and do not know what it’s really like to develop a true, meaningful work partnership. It is not uncommon to walk by another manager and not receive the slightest hint of acknowledgement, any eye contact, the slightest smile, or a “hi, how are you?”. There is a lot of this type of aloofness going around in multiple buildings. I question the excessive degree to which the organization is employee-friendly as it puts a damper on management being able to effectively run operations and leads to entitled, untactful employees running the show. Don’t be fooled by the glossy picture painted by the recruiters and the shiny job offer package with high compensation, generous sign-on bonus, and unprecedented stock options. It’s just the strategy to attract and retain talent but then you get in and see how things really are. Think long and hard about your decision before it becomes a decision that you may likely regret significantly after.

Before I go into the cons I’m going to say that this is based upon my personal experience during my 3 positions on the retail side of the company. No Work Life Balance 60 hour work weeks are normal. Meetings at 5:00 happen and people regularly work past 7:00. It feels like I go to work, get home, work some more, go to sleep, and repeat. On the weekends I get a bit of a break, but I still am required to work as I have certain reports and other tasks that have not yet been automated to complete. Amazon work kills all hope I have of an outside life. Always on call Even being on vacation doesn’t matter as you’ll receive high priority emails management wants answered right away. Holidays are no exceptions. I was called once at 6:00 AM on a holiday because of a promotion running at a competitor I had to match. I finished all tasks associated with the promotion at about 8:00 PM. I didn’t have a holiday as a result, but customers were able to get a good deal on the retail products I was in charge of. Single People Preferred Do not expect to see your kids or significant other regularly. If you mention you have to leave early, like 5:00 (which is a normal 8 to 5 day) to pick up your kids or go to a dinner date, expect to be mocked by your boss after you’re gone. I’m regularly late now to almost all after work events because of work that is given and required to be completed after 5:00. Too Much Work This is great as you’re never bored, but it also means you’ll constantly be working. Lunch normally doesn’t happen as you’re in a meeting during that time, completing something for later deadline, or rushing for a fire drill. It’s basically survival of the fittest here. You will need to automate your tasks or risk drowning in a pile of endless work. There are a lot of improvements needed to be made at Amazon and management wants them done now. High Bars Once you’ve automated your work and reached your goals, you’ll be asked to surpass that the next year. Eventually your goals will become impossible to achieve. I’ve mentioned this to management and their answers are normally along the lines of “I’m not sure how you’ll be able to improve, but you need to.” Small Raises I’ve been lucky that I’ve achieved high ratings on my reviews and so my raises have been just above inflation. Even so, they’re laughable. Raises occur only on your base pay and your base pay is relatively a small portion of your compensation. Golden-handcuffs Amazon entices you with a bonus your first two years and stock every year afterwards. If you leave the company before the end of the year in which you received a bonus you’ll have to pay it back. If you leave during one of the years in which your stock vest it’s like you worked for nothing. My stock is almost equal to my base pay for example. This keeps you working for the company. Low Base Pay Living off your base pay is also terrible as the cost of living here in Seattle is rising. You’re income on paper will look like you make a decent amount of money, but only because of your stock/bonuses. If you choose not to cash out of it when it vests you’ll be living by meager means as most of your pay will go to rent and other expenses. Having a low base pay also puts you in a different bracket for loans as they don’t consider your grants and bonuses reliable income. Frugality Only the bus pass is free. Parking is not and parking is expensive. Amazon will reimburse up $160 worth of parking, but at over $25.00 a day it doesn’t go very far. If you can get monthly parking you’ll pay less, but there’s a long wait list. On the bright side most people leave after 2 years so you may get a spot if you stay long enough. There are also no employee perks that I’m aware of, except free coffee and tea in the kitchen. Performance Improvement Plans PIP is very real at Amazon. A certain number of people in your department every year will be put on it. Essentially the weakest link will be eliminated. If you don’t perform better than someone else you’ll be let go. Politics are very real and active as well. Consider it similar to Game of Thrones. Make sure someone owes you a favor and preferably that’s someone at a higher level. Promotions Lateral moves are common, promotions are not. Most people rotate after 1-1/2 years. Getting promoted requires laterally moving to a high job level. Once in that level you will need to perform the job better than coworkers doing the same job at the level you’re trying to get promoted to. This accounts to doing a much harder job with more work at a lower wage than everyone else until you’ve proven yourself. You’re also competing with other coworkers at your level and job for the promotion. This works great for the company, but makes you feel like you’re way underpaid for the job you’re doing. Turnover I’m not sure the exact numbers as Amazon is constantly hiring new people, but it seems high. I’ve seen lots of people leave Amazon that I’ve worked with. The average stay seems to be about 2 years. After that people leave for better opportunities. Consider this place a stepping stone to the next job. Also expect your workload to increase each time someone leaves until they fill that position. You may be moving on before that happens though as Amazon has a really high bar for hiring.