Amazon Software Development Engineer (SDE) reviews

3.6

59% would recommend to a friend

(3,133 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

49% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer (SDE) employees have rated Amazon with 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 3,133 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer (SDE) professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer (SDE) professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
May 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Massive scale — you work on problems most companies will never see, and the resume signal is real. - Strong internal mobility; transfers between teams and orgs are common once you're in. - Compensation is competitive at senior levels, with meaningful RSU refreshers if you perform. - Ownership culture means you get autonomy early — no one is holding your hand, for better or worse.

Cons

- On-call and operational load is heavy; work-life balance depends entirely on your team and manager. - Frugality principle shows up in tooling, travel, and perks — expect less polish than peer FAANGs. - Stack-ranking and PIP culture (URA/Focus) creates real anxiety, especially in years 2–3 when RSUs cliff. - Bureaucracy and doc-writing overhead (6-pagers, narratives) can slow execution to a crawl.

Viewing 7 - 9 of 3,133 Reviews

Glassdoor has 250,259 Amazon reviews submitted anonymously by Amazon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Amazon is right for you.