Amazon Software Development Engineer III reviews

There is a lot of freedom, and the sense of ownership is really valuable. Groups are small and usually pretty nimble. Logic usually prevails rather than politics. The customer focus feels nice, and the scale things operate is great. There is always more to learn on both the technical and business fronts, and you don't have a multi year personal backlog then you've got blinders on. If you like a challenge then it is a pretty nice place to work.

The problems you have the opportunity to solve are large and unavailable at most other companies. It's extremely exciting to see your project talked about all over the tech press and to think about how many billions of times a day your code is being run. At Amazon someone who is right out of college can easily have the opportunity to design a big system from scratch without being told what to do by other more experienced people (although this is a negative if you are that experienced person having to clean up after the newbie). This of course allows you to learn from your own past mistakes since you are allowed to make them. And, after you eventually leave Amazon you'll have that recognizable name on your resume.