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Amazon Web Services

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You're Just a Number & Only Nepotism Gets Ahead - Senior Inside Account Executive Amazon Web Services Employee Review

1.0
Aug 30, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Once you have AWS on your resume it will open some doors for you. -It is a very thorough onboarding process, but is also a bit like joining a cult with the emphasis placed on Jeff Besos being a genius and the "leadership principles" -You will meet some very smart people. The solutions engineers are great and want to help you succeed.

Cons

- You are treated as just a number and layoffs are frequent and rampant and they do not look at performance AT ALL. A team member was laid off for performance at 200+ % of goal while a team member at under 70% was kept. - This is a place where they ONLY way to get ahead is nepotism. Good work is not rewarded. You have to play the game with leadership and only get opportunities if you network internally - more than you do with your clients or partners. This may not sound that bad from the outside, but it's a toxic culture unlike any I've ever seen. - Their "customer first" leadership principle is a sham - it's ALWAYS AWS first. - The promotion process is absolutely awful, so you better negotiate well before getting in. You have to write a 9-page document tying back your accomplishments with data to a different leadership principle and have senior people at different levels write on your behalf (aka you write it for them like recommendation letters when applying to colleges). Then it goes before a committee and is reviewed by people who may very well not know you at all. And you will only get a promotion when you have proven that you have been performing the work at the level above you for over a year. It's just another way that AWS saves money by exploiting employees.

Explore other reviews about Amazon Web Services

5.0
May 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good work culture Supportive leaders

Cons

No cons Full time onsite is tough

4.0
May 12, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Operated in systems that had real scale, operational constraints, and production consequences.

Cons

Working at Amazon Web Services gave me strong exposure to distributed systems, operational ownership, and production-scale infrastructure, but there were definitely tradeoffs as well. One downside was that, like many large organizations, ownership could become fragmented. You often own a subsystem or workflow rather than an entire product end-to-end, which can limit exposure to broader architectural decision-making unless you deliberately seek it out. There was also significant process overhead. Design reviews, operational processes, dependency coordination, and organizational alignment were valuable for learning rigor, but they can slow iteration compared to smaller engineering teams. Another challenge is that large internal ecosystems can abstract away infrastructure complexity. AWS has extensive internal tooling, deployment systems, and operational platforms, which are powerful, but some of that experience does not transfer directly outside the company. I also found that operational work could dominate engineering time at points. Handling production issues, retries, integration failures, and on-call responsibilities teaches reliability engineering well, but it can reduce the amount of time spent on deeper technical exploration or greenfield development. Finally, there is the perception aspect. AWS is a strong name, but experienced interviewers know there is wide variance between teams and roles. The company name opens doors, but ultimately you still need to demonstrate technical depth, ownership, and strong engineering judgment independently of the brand.

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