Amazon Web Services reviews

After laying off 18K employees, Amazon continues with a secret blood letting hiding attrition from stockholders. AWS is the wild west. The Unregrettable Attrition program targets good employees based on how much they cost the company (thanks to data driven metrics). This policy targets older and expensive employees. AWS burns 'em, and churns 'em. There is absolutely no loyalty to employees. Favorite abound. Sales leadership is heartless. They take good employees meeting targets, and through the UA program give them impossible tasks to dance to. One example is an employee asked to increase sales by 300% in 20 days. This physically and mentally hurts the good people that were smart enough to get into AWS in the first place. The culture is completely toxic. They are the farthest from the Worlds Best Employer there has ever been.

The interview process is overly time-consuming and ultimately requires sitting through at least one 4-5 hour interview loop with 5-6 different people where you are grilled on the same generic "tell me about a time when.." question over and over. Once hired, you must fully commit to a stereotypical corporate culture which includes constant doc writing and following the leadership principles like a religion to have any chance of success. You are regularly expected to respond to emails on weekends and join late night calls for non-critical items that could have been an email. It is very typical to be on the phone with people who are dialing in from their child's sporting event, a doctor appointment, while driving etc. because of this always on the clock mentality. Despite the high expectations, you only receive a meager two weeks of PTO, which is a joke is today's market and a death sentence for working here. It is widely known and discussed internally that the average lifespan of someone at AWS is only 1-2 years before they burn out and leave and it becomes immediately clear to see why as the extreme stress that is induced by leadership unsuprisingly leads to consistent backstabbing and infighting amongst teams. Overall, a job with AWS may be worthwhile as a stepping stone to something better, but be prepared to sacrifice your mental wellbeing and personal life along the way.