The cons to this place are all small but it's a death by 1000 cuts. Each department is so walled off from another even though the work done is likely directly related to a neighboring department. Since each department is so walled off and autonomous this creates glaring gaps because work is managed so differently amongst different departments. An example is if a ticket for a password reset makes it to a support team, the team reviews it but since the teams are siloed the only thing the average agent knows is that this ticket does not belong with their team so the ticket gets moved to another team (the agent's best guess) and if they guess wrong the cycle repeats. This sort of thing becomes very obvious when you review AWS documentation. You will frequently find pages for new services that have either just launched or are close to launch and that page will reference another page for "more information" but the other page then references the first page as the place to go to get more information. I feel the worst for the new customers trying to work within various AWS programs. These are multibillion dollar customers being told something is launching next week and they ask AWS a question like "How do we check this on our bill" and the team running the launch tells these customers "We will get back to you when we know more". Every project is just an attempt at a promotion so that the individual being promoted can leave the department or leave AWS for something better.
There is also a brutal work culture there where you find yourself with more work than can actually be done within the hours you have each week. This is by design. Now that Amazon's only KPI is stock price they prioritize laying off workers and they only send some generic email about it out to those of us who avoided being cut but the warning is clear, if you don't work yourself to death then you are next. The catch is you dont have time to look for other work because you're busy keeping your job.
Amazon is definitely not what it once was and is now just playing catch up with other companies. The products and services are half baked and the primary argument made for decisions that no other business would make due to a variety of negative effects to customers, trust, company image, etc is the phrase "We can do it because we're Amazon". This company has begun to pride itself on being able to make less than wise choices and get away with it. I don't recommend working here.
