Words of advice from a 10+ year employee
Pros
When you venture into a job with Amazon, you are likely not going to be prepared for what you experience. Amazon is a place where you will have very challenging work for a very good cause, customer experience. I have a career of working in the customer service business and I've learned more and achieved more in my time with Amazon than with any other organization. People are passionate about the work which does result in sometimes heated conversations, but those conversations are all grounded on one thing, "What is the best experience for customers?" It is refreshing to go into discussions with this same grounding as it enables you to walk out of the room and know the debate was not personal towards an individual, but focused on doing the right thing for our customers. I also appreciate the focus on excellence in written communication. I have learned even more about the power of the written word than I knew coming into the company. By applying your focus to writing a document, you enable a clarity of thought that isn't seen through power point. Writing in a narrative format forces you to think critically about your proposal or update and forces you to think about the questions that others will have on your document. While it may be a painful adjustment in the beginning, you will quickly realize the value and will never want to go back! The last big Pro to working at Amazon is that you never know what's going to happen next. In my time with the company I've seen us grow from a retailer to disruptor in the reading industry to disruptor in the tablet industry to a disruptor in the creation of digital content to who knows what is next to disrupt. It is very exciting to work for a company that is constantly evolving and becoming a bigger part of the digital ecosystem while also challenging conventional thoughts about any industry.
Cons
No company is perfect at all things and there are certainly things Amazon can do better. First is correcting the perception that there is no work/life balance. i have been in roles in Amazon where there was very little balance and I've been in roles where there is a good balance. What I've come to learn, is it is generally on me to draw those lines and stick to them. The company does need to do more to help employees achieve a proper balance rather relying on the the good intentions of the employee or their manager. If you don't live/work in Seattle, get ready to adjust your life to the Seattle timezone. At Amazon, the world revolves around Seattle and, in my opinion, is the chief reason why work/life balance is a struggle for those in the field. There are not enough people in Seattle that think about other timezones when setting up meetings and such. A 10am "check-in" on a Saturday morning Seattle time during the holidays is a far cry from a 7pm "check-in" on Saturday evening when you work on the other side of the globe (and it's summer). While you can certainly speak up about it, you may be the minority that is impacted that way and without senior leaders thinking about this, you will generally suck it up and do it to avoid being a "complainer". A peer once chastised me (to another peer) when I was working internationally on when I would stop bringing up the international locations in our discussions to which that peer responded, "probably when we start thinking about the international locations on our own." If you have a role that requires extensive international travel, realize that all of those trips (no matter how long) will be in coach. I've flown in coach for over 24 hours (in the air, not counting time in airports) for several required work trips a year. While you may get to travel to some really great places, there is a cost to your health. This is done to be "frugal", but is one of the areas where I believe we are just cheap and senior leaders are scared to challenge it after seeing how leaders in the past were treated after challenging the policy (you can read about it in "The Everything Store"). I am in no way advocating for first class trips across the board, but if the company is requiring you to travel where you will spend more than 8-10 hours in the air, the least they can do is spend money to ensure you are comfortable and will arrive ready to get to work. Rather, most employees leave on these longer trips a day earlier than they otherwise would so there is time to recover once you arrive. When I've brought this up to VPs, the common response is referring to the example discussed in "The Everything Store" and that it is "career suicide" to challenge this policy at an executive level. Once you travel frequently, you can use the miles you've accumulated for business travel to get upgrades but you are subject to the airlines upgrade policies which are very restrictive for international flights and sometimes impossible (coach tickets are bought at the cheapest fair possible) unless you pay out of pocket to upgrade the coach ticket to a fare that is eligible for complimentary upgrades. The compensation philosophy is focused on base pay and restricted stock units. While this is a great retention tool and drives ownership in employees to help the stock price improve, it is painful for employees to have such shifts in their pay year to year that is largely driven by sways in the stock market. When it's good it's GREAT, but when the market corrects itself it makes for a painful compensation discussion with your employees in the following years. There is little done to really educate people on the philosophy outside of standard training at annual review time that is not very effective at helping people understand the value.
