Taro Logo

A great decade

Principal Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Amazon for 20 years
March 13, 2018
Seattle, Washington
3.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

I love the smart people I've gotten to work with regularly. The customer-obsessed culture is inspiring, and the leadership principles we strive towards are a deep guiding light for successful productivity in any job role. The stock's long-term trajectory (nearly 30% YoY since inception) has been very lucrative for those who have stuck it out. The performance culture is stressful if you're struggling, but generally means you will routinely only be working with highly effective and motivated people. As I've grown in my career, I've always had bigger and broader opportunities presented to me, and have enjoyed the same overall growth that the company has enjoyed.

Cons

The benefits are inferior to most major tech companies. The 401k, for example, has a lowly 2% match. It routinely fails non-discrimination challenges (due to no default enrollment across the company and low participation of FC workers).

Even if we try to contribute the maximum ($18,500 in 2018), then we get a mandatory withdrawal and refund check (of ~$3,400 in 2017), and of course this negatively impacts our taxes.

It also does not allow after-tax contributions, as is possible at a Microsoft or a Google. These gaps can be seen across the entire benefit package. Given that the HCE refunds have happened for over ten years, it's clear the company has no interest in fixing root causes of enrollment gaps to pass the discrimination tests.

Advice to Management

Address the benefit gap between major tech companies.

Fix the highly-compensated-employee failures of the 401(k).

Was this helpful?

Amazon Interview Experiences