Pros: Part of something big and generally good - Amazon is truly a customer-focused company that has brought some real value to the marketplace. Ability to have large-scale impact in your work: stuff I've worked on has been deployed on hundreds of machines and handled $100 MM+ in business. Colleagues are smart, pragmatic, and get things done. The colleagues here are some of the best that I've worked with in nearly 10 years in the industry.

Cons: Operational overhead - If you're lucky, you will be on a newer team without much operational overhead. Most likely, you'll be spending a significant portion of your time dealing with operational issues (pages, data backfills, investigating production alarms, resolving issues with other teams, etc.). Work-life balance is hard to maintain. Very little professional development - Aside from internal speaker sessions, there are few opportunities for professional growth and development. Email - I have grown to despise Outlook more than ever before. How can people read this much email? Development process - Some teams do Agile; some operate in a chaotic code-and-fix mode. There's little support for best practices across the company. If you are coming from outside and have done some reading or practice in software engineering processes, this place will feel like a gigantic step backwards. HR - There is essentially no human resources department in this company. For almost all questions, you'll be talking to an email alias. Ridiculous upper management escalations - Seriously, do you need to critique form layouts when they've been designed by a UI expert? And your background is in what, again? Internal build tools and frameworks - Outdated, can be frustrating, little documentation.

Pros: Great attitude towards customers at all levels and all job functions, resulting directly in very happy customers. Very smart colleagues. Fun atmosphere. Excellent tools. People do try to do the right thing.

Cons: Having very smart colleagues means it is harder to stand out. While pay and stock grants are pretty good, other benefits are basic. The company maintains a culture of disciplined spending/frugality. I don't really think this is too much of a problem, although other people seeking the "Google" perks will probably be disappointed.

Pros: 1. Lots of learning opportunities 2. Working on new technologies 3. Good pay and work-life balance

Cons: 1. Work can get hectic sometimes. 2. Company attrition rate