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All work and no play

Software Development Engineer I
Current Employee
Has worked at Amazon for 2 years
September 6, 2014
3.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Good starting salary.

Stock that unlocks the more you stay with the company.

Top-tier company with a great name on your resume.

Interesting work.

Cons

Bad work-life balance. Being on-call can kill your plans for the weekend. Management spins this as taking ownership of your projects, but really, it's just Amazon being too frugal to hire support engineers.

Depending on the team you join, management can be either a pleasure to deal with, or a complete pain.

The company is stack-ranked, which leaves room for co-workers to inflate their accomplishments at the cost of others. You really have to fight for your promotion here, because others will fight for theirs.

The company is very frugal when it comes to basic office resources. Things like dual monitors and quad-core desktops are hard to come by, and you're supposed to make do with whatever you have.

Small, if any, salary bumps per yearly review. It doesn't really matter how hard you work at this company; the increase in pay you receive year over year is usually negligible.

Advice to Management

Invest more resources into your employees' happiness and satisfaction with work. Eliminate the stack ranking that occurs.

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