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The company has a drive for excellence but lacks the proper means to excel

Software Development Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Amazon for 4 years
March 6, 2014
Bengaluru, Karnataka
3.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros
  • Smart people around, so a very competitive environment.
  • Instills values which they call "Leadership Principles." There are 14 of them, and they try to hinge the company on those principles. If adhered to, those principles focus most on customer-centricity and satisfaction, hence the company will keep doing well.
  • They make you feel special and instill a sense of pride for working at Amazon.
  • Last but not the least, a very flexible process of migrating to the US. Entry into Amazon for a good candidate is nowadays equivalent to a visa to the US, with excellent on-board compensation.
Cons

The company is not at all sorry to screw people's work-life balance for itself to excel.

Worse is, the management thinks it's great to overwork people because they should be obsessed with their work just like scientists. Their tagline for employees is: "Work hard, Have fun (by working hard), Make history (by screwing your life)."

They take pride in scaring people of throwing them away from their job and, in return, make them work hard.

They want innovation, but that should come as an additional achievement. There is not much leeway given to the employee to do innovation, like time, resources, or encouragement.

Last but not least, they will try to take advantage of a candidate who is less demanding in compensation when joining. Once the employee realizes they are paid less than peers, the employee will have to live with it and will never be able to catch up.

Advice to Management

It's the employees who make a knowledge-based company unlike a brick-and-mortar company. The real assets are its employees. Hence, try to understand why the turnover ratio of Amazon is so high and address that. Unless you do that, you will always play a catch-up game with Google, Apple, etc., and will never be able to reach the revenue and profit levels of those companies.

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