Pros: A fun project to work on.

Cons: I am kind of shocked by how poorly the organization is run. Red flag: "we run like a startup"... I've worked at startups and big companies, and nobody runs like that. They just mean, "we're incompetent". A major problem I see is that there are too many different groups, and their focus within each is too narrow. If there's a cross-group issue, then good luck; nobody will pay attention to you outside of your group. There are clear bugs that I've reported, significant things with easy fixes, and other straightforward performance issues that simply were not addressed because they weren't directly inside my team (they were "adjacent", so to speak). There's a tradeoff between safety and aggressiveness. Both have advantages and disadvantages. * SpaceX (Starlink specifically) moves quickly, but they just push things forward warts-and-all (they do very little evaluations before deploying). * Government contractors move slowly, but they do all the validations and have a high success rate, but end up taking a long time. So, both strategies have their advantages. Kuiper chooses the worst of both. They jump forward trying to move quickly, and then try to back-fix all the issues they would have caught if they had done preliminary validations. Often these issues are of little importance and should not gate anything... but the individual incentive is to do "stuff", even if it's not helpful as a whole. In other words, it's easier to rise within your organization if you're showing you're doing "something", even if it's ultimately unproductive as a whole. This is probably also why they're so overstaffed - it looks better to grow an organization to be "growing", rather than to just do your work. As a result of these kinds of cultural/organizational issues, Kuiper as a whole is simply not able to execute. Still on my contract there, so posting anonymously for obvious reasons. They want me to join as a permanent employee, and I'm split on this. Although I come off very negative here, I'm sure, there is a lot of good stuff going on too. It's just frustrating to see how badly run everything is, and how trivially easy it would be to improve many things if the structure was improved.

Pros: You will work with some of the smartest people in the industry and get a chance to make a difference in the world's leading retailer and web services provider. You will be challenged like never before. They live by their leadership values. Although they are sometimes in conflict (for example, Bias for Action can compete with Earn Trust), this is a company that practices what they preach.

Cons: Don't expect business as usual. You will be constantly pushed to perform or fall to the bottom of the barrel and eventually be managed out of the company. They are constantly raising the bar, so yesterday's standard is not good enough. There is no coasting at this company; the workload is always greater than the available resources. You will receive very little recognition, so your reward is your payday and whatever job satisfaction you take away.

Pros: - Good exposure to large-scale operations and high operational standards (2 years is enough to gain such experience if you haven't before). - Working with highly skilled individuals everywhere. - Mobility in the meaning of moving between teams, countries, or roles (it is very wise not to stay in your team after promotion). - Interesting challenges that you won't see in smaller companies. - The location of the Dublin office is good. - Budget for conference attendance and trainings.

Cons: Worked in Dublin office for more than 4 years. * It is not a global company, and I don't think they want Amazon to be one. Shutting down all offices except the ones in Seattle today would mean it continues 99% of its operations fine. * If you are not based in Seattle, accept limited visibility and slower career progress for yourself. * All the tools you will spend nights figuring out are internally developed, so there is no use of this experience outside of the AWS services you are exposed to. * Due to internally developed tooling everywhere, you will be working far from open-source or commercial solutions that exist on the market. * Contradicting leadership principles allows your manager or peers to knock you out or praise you, depending on what he or she wants to do. * The high-performance culture is internally interpreted as a "step over others to climb up" culture unless you are a genius. * If you are the type of individual (a political animal) who will not mind crushing anyone in your path to succeed, Amazon is a great place. No one will stop you as long as you have enough political (not technical) skills to project how good you are and how bad others in your team are. * If you are the type of individual who cares about his or her team and team goals, you will be penalized for your good intentions in the process. When you question it, you will be thrown a couple of leadership principles and told that your career is 100% your responsibility. So, unless you end up with a good manager (actually, good ones don't last as the culture doesn't want them to be supportive and good to their directs), you are always in danger and eventually going to leave. * The office environment is pretty bad in terms of positive energy. Burned-out engineers who never smile at work are shouldering heavy on-call duties due to a duct-taping approach to bad solutions everywhere. * Anyone joining as a level 4-5 engineer in an office outside of Seattle should expect to spend 8-10 years being promoted to Level 7/Principal, even if they exchange their life for it. * If you are not based in Seattle, accept that you will hear important details after you've missed the opportunity to react or grab it, and nobody will care, as everything in Seattle is awesome. * Work/life balance doesn't exist, and it will drain you quickly. * The stress of covering your corner every day doesn't feel worth it. * Health insurance for family is not fully covered. * Pension plan is below average (3% if you don't contribute).