Amazon

A highly effective organization that knows when and where to cut down on bureaucratic crud to maintain speed and flexibility in spite of its enormous size.

You will learn what it's like to work with the best in your field. Amazon is a great place to see what truly strong employees are like if you have not previously been with a company with a similarly high hiring bar.

Very effective at driving employees to constantly improve themselves. Very fulfilling if you have a compatible personality type.

Very impressive and effective internal infrastructure. Huge emphasis on enabling efficiency makes many routine processes quite smooth, and the smart complexity of the internal tooling is a sight to behold.

Very high bar for customer service extends to internal customers. Turnaround time for matters depending on other departments of the company is generally very fast.

The company is a juggernaut and has a very bright future of continued growth. The company's reputation and hiring bar for corporate positions makes it a very solid resume line regardless of your field.

Past a baseline (but high) level of competency, you are judged on your willingness to bend and put in extra hours instead of any outstanding technical or directly job-related skills you may have.

Work-life balance is often OK on paper, but the degree of dedication expected out of the office means work never really leaves your mind. Your mileage will vary significantly depending on your team, and finding the better ones requires extensive networking.

Entire culture is oriented around maximizing employee productivity with little genuine regard for long-term well-being. Unapologetically churn and burn - average tenure is less than two years, and experienced employees are rare outside of management.

Power politics were apparent at times, and everyone is careful with what they say, who their friends are, and being aware of who holds a personal stake in what.

Most coworkers were not particularly technically savvy or interested in technical subjects. The work in many parts of the organization is not technologically cutting-edge and instead demands a much greater ability to be operationally efficient and manage many competing tasks and priorities. However, I have heard the AWS org is different in this regard.

Compensation is lower and benefits far fewer than companies with comparable hiring bars (all food and drinks are full price, etc.). Not any worse than a standard workplace, but disappointing compared to other companies they compete for talent with.

Amazon has a distinctive reputation as a demanding and prestigious place to work.

Shift the working culture and benefits in a direction that improves Amazon's ability to attract and retain talent.