Amazon reviews

Unfortunately, even though I was paid more than what my position usually commands (a red flag right there I should have noticed), it just wasn't worth it. There are a *lot* of reasons I'd recommend not working here; but the two that stand out are the culture and the hours. You will work a lot of hours in whatever dept. you're in, almost without exception. But the real overriding factor in everything that makes it such a horrible place to work - the one that all the other issues grow from - is its culture. Here's the long and short of it: front-line and middle managers here are really the 'bottom of the barrel' types. No self-respecting manager would try to manage any team in this environment (unless they didn't know anything about it when they were hired - ahem!), and that's because of one corporate-mandated policy that destroys any possibility of teamwork: Top Grading. Let me explain... Top Grading sounds like a good idea when you only look at the 'top' part. What that means is the top 10% of performers on each team get the bulk (or all) of the raises for that team that year. This happens every year (depending on your dept., anywhere from Feb.-May), and is something so pervasive in the company that you really do risk your job if you try to stand up against it (pretty much Bezos's idea - so if your chain answers up to a Sr. VP that answers to him, it's gonna happen). But why stand against it? Well, let's say you have a great team, and everyone's pulling their weight. The problem with this policy is, it also includes what some have called Bottom Grading - appropriately named, as it spells out the rest of the truth of the happily named Top Grading. The full truth is, you have to get rid of the bottom 10% of your team every year - period, end of story, no arguments. Basically, Amazon's 'high bar' with 'bar raisers' in interview loops comes down to little more than an inflexible ideology. So just try and make a team in that kind of environment! Even just trying to be part of one is horrific; after all, you could be next. It's either you or someone else on your team - probably a couple or more. And this includes managers and directors. I'm betting you can guess the result: a highly politicized environment, where everyone's going for the immediate win and doing their best to suck up to their boss at every moment, as once you're clued in, you realize your manager's or director's hands are tied. You walk on glass, and try not to *ever* cross them or give them a reason to put your name in the bottom 10%. So that's it, in a nutshell - ideology 'tinkled down' from above loses to allowing managers to manage their own teams independently. Which pretty much explains why no competent managers would stay there, and why I left. And also why their attrition rate is horrible - 10% must go, combined with no healthy team dynamics whatsoever. It's just a real disaster over there.

Amazon's culture is extremely top-down and micro-management oriented. You will not be able to make any important decisions about your product without management approval. Escalation to management is very common -- when you aren't doing what people want (or your work priorities don't fit what a peer wants you to do) employees will quickly give up on working it out between themselves and escalate directly to managers. You literally - I am not exaggerating - will receive customer complaint emails forwarded by Jeff Bezos and even if the issue is small you will have to dedicate disproportional time to it because it comes from the CEO. The micromanagement is absolutely stifling: Your boss will ask you to do something and then ask you again every day if it has been done yet. Your boss will ask to see your press release and will make word-for-word comments and suggestions over and over again until you realize you have been through 10 revisions and a half hour conversation about whether to use the word "user" or "customer". The culture has a sense of fun to it but it masks a disrespect for the people working for management. There is a clear assumption that management knows best in every way, and so they have to watch over every detail to ensure that the dumb workers do not screw something up. This will just suck your soul - there is no presumption that you know what you are doing because you earned the job there. If you do a good job you will be rewarded relatively handsomely, but the pay stinks until after you have proved yourself. Because the company is so small and growing slowly, career options are limited. There is little upward mobility because there are only a handful of senior managers, and there is limited options in the projects available. Would you like to run the DVD store or the Kitchen store or the Book store, etc. Working with Jeff Bezos is not on balance a good experience. He is very smart and you will learn from that but he is detail oriented to a fault. This is part of the reason managers are so anal. You may go into a design review with Jeff Bezos and be thrown off track immediately because you did not label the document in the way that he wanted. Then he will read the document and circle your grammar errors and harp on that and forget to comment on the design itself. Then he will be abusive and call you an idiot. Within the company, the implications of this micromanagement attitude are well known - the company consistently misses goals for retention of its best performing employees and I believe that is because smart and able people do not like having no freedom to make decisions or priorities and do not like being treated like they do not know what they are doing. This brings up the final drawback, which is that people are not as smart as at the best companies. They are certainly above the median, but if you get a taste of working with people at a company like Microsoft or Google you will see the difference. Nearly anybody at Microsoft or Google could get a job at Amazon but not the other way around. Summary: Amazon is a great company and will continue to be financially successful under Bezos' leadership. But it is not an enjoyable place to work. Buy the stock instead.