Amazon Software Development Engineer II reviews

- though Vancouver office strives for work life balance, politics from Seattle come into play - can be perception that you’re “doing less work” even if its just better planning. - hard to get visibility with management chain in Seattle - if you’re not constantly putting out fires you’re not visible and delivering - not so good long term retention - lot of people churn (benefit of this is getting to know the smart people and where they are going) - after signing bonus is up, bonuses afterwards are underwhelming - many just stick it out until vested - stress from on call rotation - you’re not just a developer but you’re also the one who gets paged when software your team owns breaks (rotates among the team). Good in theory to get issues and customer problems resolved quickly, but adds a lot more stress to an already fast paced environment. - Good luck getting promoted, especially if you’re in Vancouver and someone in Seattle needs to approve it. So much complexity and red tape here, it seems like it would be easier to quit and get hired into next level than to get promoted.

Too many distractions, split focus. This has been working well for amazon but for newbies, it can be difficult.