Amazon reviews

3.5

60% would recommend to a friend

(209,034 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 209,034 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
1.0
Jul 12, 2008

Recommend Against Working There

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazon is a great company in many respects -- the core retail website and Amazon's customer service operations are outstanding. Given it's established status as a successful online retailer, it's in an advantageous position to sell digital media which will of course become an increasingly huge market. The company also has an extremely driven, hands-on, engaged CEO.

Cons

The management style in many departments is almost comically top-down. As a result, it often feels like Amazon hires a lot of smart people to perform tasks that don't really have a lot of strategic significance -- a lot of tactical decision-making gets made at a very high level. So while everyone is working really fast, things tend to happen slow. As much as anything, I think this explains the very high level of employee turnover at the company.

4.0
Jul 10, 2008

Opportunity with responsibility

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazon is doing a bunch of things that are really at the cutting edge of information technology. Massive scale? Check. Cloud computing? Check. Utility web services? Check. Internet media? Check. You get the freedom to do amazing things. (Mind you, along with that comes the responsibility to do them right.) That's from the engineering point of view. I can't really comment on the retail and supply chain parts of the business.

Cons

You own what you build, which means that you own the operational burden. Also it's a secretive place (not surprising given the retail angle), so don't expect to become an open source hero or A-list blogger. It's frugal - retail margins will do that - so don't expect Google-style goodies.

3.0
Jul 9, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The best reasons to work for Amazon are that it's the best experience builder and resume builder you will ever have. A year at Amazon is like a dog-year - it's worth 5 of anywhere else. I've had no trouble getting my foot in the door elsewhere simply because I worked for Amazon. Right now also the pay is pretty good because of the stock options, though that didn't use to be the case and certainly there is a belief that Amazon does not share the wealth the way it should.

Cons

Work life balance is not possible at Amazon. Everything is on "Internet speed" which means all the type-a people who work there run around like they are on some kind of amphetamine. Usually this is unnecessary and causes of lot of unnecessary churn and drama. I was at an all-hands meeting where Jeff Bezos said to the entire workforce that if you want to spend time with your kids then working at Amazon probably isn't for you.

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Glassdoor has 250,345 Amazon reviews submitted anonymously by Amazon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Amazon is right for you.