You might enjoy Amazon, but don't join as a Web Development Engineer (WDE)
Pros
- Work-life balance isn't as bad as critics say. It depends where you land. Know that it's *your* responsibility to find the right team and switch teams if necessary. - Really interesting projects: experimental "moonshots" and apps with billions in revenue. Millions of people will benefit from your code. You can easily move among teams to gain varied experience. - Smart co-workers. You will learn a ton. - With Amazon on your resumé, you can get an interview with pretty much any other company - There is a new front-end engineer (FEE) role aimed at modernizing front-end development at Amazon. The WDE role is being phased out. It is VITAL that you apply for FEE and not WDE. Do not accept a WDE offer because it comes with significantly lower comp., and it is being phased out.
Cons
- Frontend developers are second-class citizens. You will not receive the same respect, opportunities or compensation as backend developers at Amazon. There are efforts to change this, but changing culture takes time. - On-call can be hellish depending on your team. Ask about operational load when you're considering different teams. - Pay is great relative to non-tech jobs, but weak compared to other top tech companies like Google, Facebook and Airbnb. I nearly doubled my salary by moving to Airbnb.
