Pros: Unqualified people will get a lot of money if they are able to fake successfully in their interview.

Cons: Under-Qualified Manager - Software Development Manager doesn't know the basic concepts of OS and still doesn't listen to anyone, screwing up a lot of deadlines in the team. Tries to take ownership of everything that went well and pushes blame for everything else to the developer, not on management, not even on the senior developers who approved changes/designs. No collaboration within the team either. The manager expects developers to coordinate among themselves on their own. Skips meetings a lot and then makes assumptions with half-baked knowledge. Other team members don't care what other people are doing and push changes without consulting others when the changes impact every other team member. Again, blame will be on the guy who got impacted because of this; according to the manager, the guy who got impacted should have discussed it with the team beforehand. No real-life practical problems being solved. All the AWS services are almost saturated, and the non-AWS teams aren't creating any product. Furthermore, people create what is already created by AWS in an inferior way, wasting bandwidth just to add projects under their name. Managers, again being clueless about the system, consider this innovation. No Vision at all. The so-called OP planning of Amazon is where the higher-ups decide what the goal of the period will be. They plan a lot, but most of the things are repetitive, and if there is anything good, then that would be non-business impacting, which will be de-prioritized in the end and will never be picked up. People here live on their image and relation with their manager, and it doesn't get affected by the work they do. There are people who aren't working at all, don't attend meetings, and have no updates in weeks, but still nothing. Whereas if you are on the bad side of the manager, then it doesn't matter what you do; you will end up PIPed. In team speak, the manager scolds team members saying, "I don't appreciate anyone working late nights," while in private calls, they are asking people to finish things up by Saturday or Sunday. At the end (at least in my old team), you are on your own, and you have to defend yourself at every point in time because other people are interfering in your work. Design choices aren't getting approved by the manager even after SDE3 approved them, and then the people started lying when things went wrong because of their decisions, especially the manager. Senior developers interrupt the junior developers' presentations, asking stupid questions just to make fun of them without understanding any of the concepts being discussed. And the worst of all, because managers rely on these senior developers when it comes to feedback, as he doesn't understand anything on the tech side. Those people who understand and know what's going on, they won't speak up for you because of the fear of the manager putting negative feedback on them.

Pros: Amazon has a fair compensation policy (expect a cliff at year 4), and the company culture is treated seriously throughout the company.

Cons: The company has become extremely top-down and process-heavy across the board. It's very hard to get anything done with the amount of red tape and politics in place. Your success largely depends on the impact of the projects you'll be able to deliver, which is good in theory, except that the ability to grab high-impact projects is out of your control. Deadlines are top-down and will drive you to the ground.

Pros: I believe working for Amazon has made me a better engineer. There is a lot of wisdom in decision-making processes and business practices guided by the company's leadership principles, which are actually used on a daily basis and not just a poster on the wall. The focus on operations and customer value is something I had not experienced in past roles. I can see myself retiring at Amazon, but even if I leave, I think my experience here would help me significantly in thriving elsewhere.

Cons: Frugality is one of the leadership principles, so some folks could be disappointed by the lack of some perks offered by other leading companies, e.g., good catering, business class travel, or conference attendance.