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Amazon is pretty okay

Software Development Engineer II
Current Employee
Has worked at Amazon for 2 years
August 10, 2016
Seattle, Washington
4.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Decent benefits. Competitive salary.

No dress code and dog friendly.

If you are self-motivated, you will do good. Lots of opportunity for growth and learning. You get to make a huge impact on business decisions!

Good computer equipment (huge monitors and top-of-the-line Macbook Pros).

Cons

Frugality is a leadership principle, but sometimes Amazon takes it too far. You get 10% off merchandise on Amazon.com (sold by/shipped by), but this is capped at $100 a year. There's no free Prime. There's a disparity amongst teams since some teams get things more than others. I know one team that gets free food on Fridays, but mine never does. Some teams have high operational work, but prioritization is always on delivering new features, not fixing the old ones.

Advice to Management

Consider taking the $100 max off of the Amazon discount. Consider giving employees free Prime.

Stop placing so much of the SDE total compensation on the ever-increasing stock, because your competitors are moving into SLU and are generally offering a higher base salary (however similar total compensation).

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