Amazon Software Development Manager reviews

3.4

48% would recommend to a friend

(485 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

27% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Software Development Manager employees have rated Amazon with 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 485 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Manager professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Manager professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

485 reviews
1.0
Jun 30, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good salary. Other than that I dont see much of pros in the company.

Cons

Amazon is big on its culture. It has set of Leadership principles that every employee is asked to follow and measured against during performance review. Amazon stresses on taking data driven decisions. Engineers are given more value than their Managers, because companies strength is its engineers. Performance is based on 360 degrees feedback where engineers give skip level feedback about their managers. Although above three principles are great, the problem comes in applying these leadership principles and priorities in Indian culture where engineers are not matured, professional or honest compared to US. Here are the few issues that I have observed. 1. Engineers are mostly fresh out of college, don't have any maturity. But they are given power to judge whether their manager is good or not. 2. There is a lot of bias and favoritism. Agarwals, Guptas, people from Delihi dominate the company. 3. Yearly reviews are a circus. They make their decision first and then use data to either to ding you or promote you. They make the decision based on other reasons and then make up the data to support it. 4. Quality of work is not great either. Everything is automated. Most of the juicy work is done in Seattle. Your work mostly involves using the tools and frameworks developed in Seattle. Work involves mostly modifying UI widgets and some minor changes in existing services. Nothing to be really proud of. 5. Lots of overhead for managers. You need to spend most of your time "pampering' engineers. 6. If you rate some one in your team as a low performer, team can gang up against you and give you bad rating in 360 review.

5.0
Jun 27, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Bottom-up culture. As a manager, I have full autonomy to get things done and drive my short and long term vision, hire fantastic people, and take large risks

Cons

* No Paternity leave * Healthcare benefits have much higher premiums and deductibles each year * Stock grant policy can limit options at times

4.0
May 19, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I had great leaders who empowered me to take ownership over my space and drive the direction. The team of engineers and designers I worked with were sharp, had a strong sense of ownership and advocated for the customer.

Cons

The challenge with ownership is that when things go wrong, you will be in the limelight. It can often feel like your days are event driven.

Viewing 448 - 450 of 485 Reviews

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