Ownership culture, interesting technology, and a bright future
Pros
Amazon is an amazing company - I haven't seen anything like it. It's a place where you're encouraged to "Think Big" while still having to focus on the details and deliver results. There are truly incredible people working here, and it's easy to reach across the organization and benefit from their knowledge. This is a company where displays of true ownership are rewarded. If you see a problem or an opportunity, don't wait for someone else to give you permission to look at it - go and see! Sure, you shouldn't go off for two weeks working on something new without telling anyone, but management is open to hearing about ideas about what needs to be done. The Vancouver office is a "remote" office in that it's a few hours away from the corporate HQ in Seattle, but the culture here is very much Amazonian. The leadership principles are consistent across the company (although occasionally open to interpretation), and as we continue to grow the office feels more and more like a "1st class" Amazon office every day. Amazon has had a bad reputation about operational load, but I can only speak to my own experience - the load is minimal. It is very rare that someone on my team gets paged because of an issue, and almost always that takes place during business time. Having the team handle operations, instead of sourcing it out to a dedicated support team, instills a strong quality ethic in the team and as a result the software is of much higher quality.
Cons
Amazon is great place, but it's also a huge and varied place. Your Amazon experience will depend largely on two things - how much of a self-started you are, and what team you're on. There are a lot of opportunities, but you need to reach out and grab them. Very little will be spoon-fed to you unless you are at the lowest levels, and even then there is an expectation of motivation and initiative (or "bias for action"). Waiting for the action to come to you is not a successful strategy, be it interesting projects, new technologies, promotions, or anything else. Amazon is relatively decentralized, meaning that it's up to each organization, division, and even manager to run their group the way they want. Sometimes things will be circumstantial - inheriting a legacy system, etc. - but often a manager's or organization's policies will greatly impact how much you like work here. Luckily, people are relatively free to move around within the company, so unhappy teams will bleed developers to teams with better reputations.
