Amazon reviews

3.5

60% would recommend to a friend

(209,107 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

50% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

Amazon has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 209,107 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Amazon employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

209K reviews
3.0
Feb 16, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's pretty cool to work for a company where you can call yourself a customer and an owner. Amazon truly does think about the customer first, and all business decisions are generally made with the customer in mind. It's nice to have access to some of the creators of one of the best (if not the best) product recommendation tools. Amazon definitely has the power of a large corporate company (along with all of the red tape that goes with that), but that strong corporate brand name alone helps secure meetings with potential partners. The Amazon discount is small, but I suppose it's good that you get one!

Cons

Amazon is a very top-down focused company. Upper management scrutinizes and edits every small detail in a presentation or proposal, and lots of unnecessary time is spent making an unimportant item perfect. The company talks a lot about being able to think of an idea, develop it and implement on the site quickly, but there are layers upon layers of approval needed. Management definitely works a LOT of hours, and expects all team members to do the same, so the work-life balance is fairly nonexistent. Employees are expected to be available at pretty much all times, but then they won't pay for a Blackberry or email-enabled phone.

4.0
Feb 5, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Growth, good compenstation, great place to learn. Name recognition when moving on never hurts either, I received a pretty outstanding offer and the competition for the next level doesn't appear too fierce. As you get further up, the peope surrounding you get smarter and smarter until it's almost intimidating!

Cons

Very little initial training with lots of "tribal knowledge" to get through and somehow learn. The company is extremely data-criven, which allows them to make decisions, but sometimes it seems that people can get lost in all that information. The hours can be a bit tedious too. 60 hours is not uncommon even during medium-busy times.

4.0
Feb 4, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you are on the right team, your work will have a tangible impact on millions of people, and as an engineer, it is interesting and gratifying to work on the large scale, difficult software problems. Direction is still very much set by Jeff Bezos, but to his credit he has made a lot of bold but correct decisions in the lifetime of the company. While the startup culture has faded a bit, that does mean that you can maintain a surprisingly good work-life balance while still working on interesting things.

Cons

The culture at Amazon is notoriously frugal, and that can feel penny-wise, pound-foolish after a while. The startup culture that existed in the early days is also not as prevalent, which can make staying motivated somewhat challenging when surrounded by people of varying levels of motivation. In the technical career track, Amazon does a pretty poor job developing and enabling the growth of their employees, aside from the very early stages of an engineers career, unless the employee is inclined to move into a management track. This lack of career development can be compounded by the large operational responsibilities of many teams, which makes it difficult for engineers to find the time to interact with groups outside of their general are and explore other opportunities that could help foster career growth.

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Glassdoor has 250,438 Amazon reviews submitted anonymously by Amazon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Amazon is right for you.