Amazon Software Development Engineer II reviews

3.6

58% would recommend to a friend

(955 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

19% approve of CEO

53% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer, II employees have rated Amazon with 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 955 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer, II professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer, II professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

955 reviews
4.0
May 23, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've heard everything from horror stories to "best job ever" stories; bottom line is, your experience will probably vary a lot by the team and position. That said, here are some things I've enjoyed on all of the teams (4 so far) I've worked on: - Working with smart people. At every level, in every position, my teammates have been outstanding, really inspiring me to raise my own game - Working on interesting problems. There's a huge breadth of work to be done, and finding a team that's working on something interesting has not been a problem.

Cons

- Team experience varies widely across the company. I've heard stories similar to the worst of them: folks working insane hours on unreasonable deadlines, etc. I will say it's gotten better--the market is so tight right now that those teams either adapt or perish - Amazon-scale is a double-edged sword. The problems you get to solve are like no other in the world. But on the other hand, everything you want to do is enormous and complicated. Systems are broken across teams, and every new thing that you want to do is likely to require contacts across multiple teams and even multiple organizations. Luckily, Amazon has a formal mentorship program to help newer folks navigate

1.0
May 8, 2017

SDE II

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good money, lots of perks, and a sign up bonus. Get to work in a high-pressure environment, writing production-level code at a fast pace.

Cons

Ugly code base. The tech stack isn't something you can really apply externally. Horrible work-life balance (on-call), and demanding executives leaving very little breathing room. You always get the feeling that you're another dispensable number, and upper management can cut you and your team at their whim if you don't deliver.

5.0
Apr 19, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will be forced to think big and innovate beyond your limits. You will be pushed to grow as a leader throughout your tenure. Limitless potential to make change. Relentlessly high standards. Take any number of leaves when you feel like. Work from home whenever you want. Come to office when it suits you, leave when you feel like. As long as you make sure you deliver results. You'll be forced to "own" what you work on. Great internal engineering culture. If you join as an SDE, your manager will either be an L5 or L6. Many of them are extremely smart and will propel you to grow. Many won't be as effective. But the good thing is, you can do it yourself. You will have enough independence to make an impact and grow in your career. In fact, you are encouraged by the company to do projects outside of your day-to-day, work with other teams for short durations, have mentors from different organizations etc. ALL L7+ managers I've interacted with have been highly competent and sharp. These are the folks you will look up to and seek to learn from. You can't bullsh*t anybody. You will be found out.

Cons

Teams in amazon are very, very independent. So much so that some of them might as well be in a separate company for all intents and purposes (some of them technically are). So there's bound to be bad teams and good teams. In the good teams (which I believe would be most of them), the high standards and expectations push you to transform yourself into an extremely well rounded Leader+Engineer. But, the same standards can crush you if you aren't smart enough. If you're having to work 10-12 hours a day to keep up/stay ahead of the curve, then you aren't smart enough.

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