An Inefficient Heartless Machine Powered By Bodies
Pros
* Big company, so lots of varied projects theoretically, many teams you can join if you get bored of your current one. * Smart people to work with and learn from. * Your colleagues are generally nice people and can be fun, depends on the team, but there are nice people there. * Initial salary and joining bonus is at the top end (excluding finance), enough to make you ignore all the cons I'm about to give you. And you probably will. After all, why trust me? * Unparalleled customer service from the outside and they do really care about that at least.
Cons
* What does it take to achieve this unparalleled retail service? Read on... * Basically the same as working for many of the big US corporate giants but more extreme in every way. * Totally heartless. All the news articles you read are true. Amazon first denies them, then tries to cover them up, then finally puts something in place to fix it if that doesn't work. Internally this can be seen where they claimed they'd gotten rid of the old yearly review system with a better fairer system. But actually they just reduced what you could write and your manager still has to fight for someone not to end up in the bottom bucket. You'll be placed on performance review if you end up there. Good luck passing that. You'll be offered cash to leave without telling anyone how bad it is. Which you'll take, because you love money right? That's why you joined in the first place. But we absolutely do not do stack ranking here... is what HR will tell you. You'll probably notice this when your manager becomes suspiciously unfriendly nearer review time. If so, you are your team's scape goat, good luck! * Amazon's technology strategy is to throw bodies at a problem. There's a reason they hire so many engineers, the more the better. They know many will only last a couple of years, but they'll get something out of you and they can always replace you. There are so many poor and inefficient tools that are used, with very little effort into improving an employee's throughput. Welcome to one of the slowest companies to work for. Want to go faster? Don't fix things, just add more people. Counter to this are the efficient interview loops. These are optimized to find good bodies to replace the leaving ones. You can see where Amazon have invested their time and money. * Because of the above strategy, you can find whole teams that basically support very little functionality and a lot of the work is not very interesting. It sounds interesting from the outside of course, otherwise how could we attract you? That also happens internally too. Because teams needs bodies. * DevOps is unpaid, you support stuff at the weekends, it's required. And yes that includes Christmas holidays. Have fun if you support a Tier 1 service. Why would they pay you more? You already get paid enough. Don't you love your company? * If you started high, which let's face it, might be the reason you joined, good luck getting more. * Amazon have a leadership principle of Frugality. Amazon does not know the difference between Frugal and Cheap. * The first rule of Amazon Fight Club is talk about leadership principles. A lot. All the time. Over and over again. Everyone knows repetition breeds love. Love them! * Like me, you'll think all of the above is hyperbole. Maybe re-read this after your first year here and see if you agree? Maybe 2 years? Wow, 3 years, well done! You asked the interviewer if they enjoyed working here and of course they told you it's great. They'd get fired if they said otherwise, so of course that's what I do too. Secretly hoping that you find somewhere nicer. Maybe you think I'm complaining because I'm a bottom performer? Why am I even still here? How much is your soul worth? You'll be asking that a lot. I still have some to sell. For now. May this help your decision making and good luck!
