Amazon

The work at Amazon is interesting and challenging (in a good way). While there are some "legacy systems" which are a pain to deal with (depending on your org), overall, the internal move to more and more AWS-centric design isn't a bad thing at all.

Pay is OK, but with the drop in stock prices, nowhere near what it once was. I took an effective 6-figure pay cut just due to the stock price drop. They did increase many people's base salaries, which helped a lot, at least.

Jeff Bezos made the company. He had a vision.

Andy Jassy lacks the vision and strength Jeff used to build the company. His RTO announcement is a prime example of where leadership goes wrong in the company.

Just the day before the infamous "RTO" memo was distributed, there was a company-wide all-hands meeting (done in a mix of online and in-person). He stood on stage, spoke well about the work we have been doing, and gave no hint there was a change coming. Instead, he spoke highly of the overall situation, then delivered the bad news, not in person, but in a memo (which had comments disabled internally, a virtually unheard-of action).

Rather than stand up before his audience and announce the bad news (potentially taking boos), he chose to use a comment-forbidden forum instead. Even then, the reasons make no sense: Many (like myself) don't work anywhere near our teams, so would be coming into the office just to sit in video meetings. This is good because "it fosters the culture." How does someone sitting isolated at a desk, surrounded by people they don't work with, foster anything other than annoyance over arbitrary rules?

Jeff Bezos may well have made the same decision, but he would have been honest and up-front about it. The current senior team has been anything but, and has inspired zero confidence among engineering staff.

Get rid of Andy Jassy. He is a liability for the company. He and his senior team have turned Amazon into a "day 2" company.