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
Dec 24, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I get to witness some good software processes that help to ensure work quality. You are encouraged to voice out your thoughts, opinions, but of course back it up with data and constructive solutions always. There are endless stuffs to work on; challenges to overcome, unchartered work that no one has done before. If you are one is a self-starter, one who strives in "no one know this, you have to figure out yourself" situations, you got this. Take it in a positive way, there are many problems in this world that no one has a clue how to solve. Someone has to take it on head on after all. I cannot say much for the rest of Amazon, however there is no talk down approach from management in my current team. Counting my blessing on this. Yes, we are frugal, no free lunches but we have occasional Friday happy hours, team activities to bond us. Most importantly, we get to meet some of the smartest, hardworking folks in Amazon.

Cons

It is true that our work performance are measured by how many lines of codes one is changing, how many code reviews one has done, how many tickets solve one has solve and many more. Most say data don't lie, true to that. But do consider data don't speak the stories or reasons behind it. A doctor who has a death rate in his hand, does not mean he is not a good doctor. He might be sought after because many terminally ill patients go to him for final hopes. Likewise, a developer who did not do much code changes, because he might be too busy working on one of the "no one want to get involved" tickets that don't get measure in the performance metrics. My point is we are humans, not just some data points. Improve on that.

2.0
Dec 12, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1) Good learning 2) Salary 3) End - End product development 4) Smart people

Cons

1) Exploitation of SDE in the name of competition. 2) Zero work life balance 3) No Growth. Only growth possible is from SDE-1 to SDE-2 4) Extreme harsh work culture. 5) Routine work after a while. 6) on-call and operation burden

4.0
Dec 3, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ Great brand name + Good compensation + Smart and motivated colleagues + Interesting work and markets Overall this is a good company to be an engineer at. If you are looking for vivid colors and rainbows and candy, look elsewhere (hint: Goog...). You learn a lot and it changes your perspective of what it means to be an engineer. There is no separation of tester, dev ops, and sde, you are all of them all at the same time. You take full ownership of your projects, and your career here.

Cons

- You pay for subsidized parking (huh?) - Health insurance slightly worse than other tech giants - Although better now than the past, public facing teams still haunted by overworked culture - Stack ranking is still alive (even if they say it's not) - Hard to maintain work/life balance overall if you want to go up the ladder

Viewing 733 - 735 of 955 Reviews

Glassdoor has 251,102 Amazon reviews submitted anonymously by Amazon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Amazon is right for you.