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Horrible place for a new hire

Software Development Engineer Intern
Former Employee
Worked at Amazon for 1 year
August 24, 2019
Seattle, Washington
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Design, develop, test, and deploy – you get to learn how to do all these in a very short span of time.

Various technologies to learn in a short span of time.

Cons

Zero appreciation - Throughout my internship experience, I never received recognition for my work, even when I worked late nights or early mornings to meet sprint deadlines. When I shared this with my mentor, she asked me to check if the reason for overtime was due to my bad productivity.

Zero work-life balance - The work-life balance was so bad that I had to work until 10 PM almost every day and return home to work until 2 AM, and sometimes 6 AM. It was so bad that it affected my health severely. It's been 2 weeks since my last day, and I couldn't recover completely.

Low pay - I worked in two major MNCs before but never was I asked to handle the job of 3-4 people for such low pay. I had to design for my feature, develop and test it completely, and launch it myself, also doing quality analysis.

Favoritism based on nationality - My mentor and other Chinese developers showed favoritism to their country, and they always tried to talk in Chinese.

Many Chinese developers in Amazon's Seattle headquarters cannot speak in grammatically correct English, even for 30 seconds. When you ask the same question repeatedly so that you can understand them, they question your intelligence and share it with your hiring manager.

When my mentor's English was bad, and I shared it with my manager, he asked me to "figure it out on my own." How should I figure it out on my own? Should I teach her English?

Advice to Management

Don't torture interns; give recognition to their work.

Try to speak with your interns or new hires and understand their problems.

Do not form an opinion based only on the negatives shared by biased individuals.

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