Amazon

You get to learn a whole lot of neat technology at Amazon. It is a very vibrant place, and generally, the people you work with are friendly. They do compensate you well, but there is a reason for that, as explained in the 'Cons' section.

On-call duties are the worst. They are very high pressure, in which you have to try to solve emergency situations, often on code you have NEVER seen before. This is someone else's code, and that 'someone else' has probably left the company long ago.

Also, getting help from others can be tough at times since everybody is quite busy. So, you have to find the solution on your own via the company Wiki, etc.

Culture is also important. Amazon has lots of 'young' folks, and you can sense the condescension from them toward older folks. In fact, quite a few of them seem very cynical when interacting with the older generation.

We need to be more realistic: just because you may be an advanced software developer (SDE II, etc.) does not necessarily mean we will have the solution before you even ask the question of solving it.