Amazon

The work culture and leadership principles made me a better professional.

I gained an insight into doing things massively, properly, at scale, and leading the industry.

Managers are usually ex-engineers. I've had three managers, and they all have been fantastic.

An obvious one: Amazon is killing it lately and looks great on your resume. The long-term prospects are also good.

Things do change internally.

I loved the corporate events and outings – shout out to the events team.

The nature of work itself in operations is absolutely horrendous. The only good thing about the role was transitioning out of it. Literally, every conversation I had with my managers where I raised concerns was turned into "Work harder and get promoted out of this" talk. Engineering-wise, this has been the most demotivational role in my career.

Stress-driven operations. You're subjected to stress, and that's how it's all meant to work.

You're pushed to work extra. While it is not explicit, the annual performance reviews, career progression, and customer obsession are designed in such a way that you will fail without going overtime. I had committed a bulk of my personal time to get promoted once and succeeded – and it was totally not worth it. Very little had changed in terms of my work (or compensation for that matter), and the conversations with my manager then turned into "Now, work harder and get promoted into the next thing" (goto con #1).

Pigeonhole. It's a big corporation, and the roles are very well defined and specialized. I think you can really boil down any job spec to three main responsibilities that you will do day-to-day. Training is advertised and provided; however, it will likely be after hours for you, as your time is already 120% full. Training is not how things are learned anyway – it's training + PRACTICE, and you won't be practicing any of that at work – you will be right back in your pigeonhole after the training.

An unpleasant surprise (or, borderline dirty move) in the way the stock benefits are accounted for in your annual reviews.

Overall, I would strongly recommend against getting on board if you're a junior or mid-level professional. You will get way more technical experience and interesting projects in other companies. Here, you will be selling your time for a big name on your resume (and then recovering your rusty technical skills later).

You have a really well-oiled and successful system in place, and don't need advice from me. I won't be a part of it, however.