Amazon

Amazon does have a unique way of barreling ahead and building with many teams in parallel, and it's useful to learn how to live with chaos. I personally never had to work crazy hours, but the hours I did work were stressful due to dysfunction. I joined at a good time, and the stock did well; those days seem to be over.

I've worked mainly in "new organizations" at Amazon that were trying to solve problems that hadn't been solved before.

The main theme I've run into is a high degree of bureaucracy, politics, and poor leadership judgment and project execution.

I have been a part of many projects that were canceled after huge expenditures, after people finally realized they were never going to make any money, which was obvious to most of the team very early on and ignored.

The engineering caliber at Amazon is also below what I expected, and technical leadership is lacking. There are good people there, but it's rare. I guess it's like anywhere else in that 10% of people make things happen.

There's not a huge incentive to ship anything, and teams turn over very quickly. The promotion process is also frustrating, especially at higher levels.