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Would NOT recommend

Software Development Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Amazon for 1 year
March 21, 2015
1.0
Doesn't RecommendPositive Outlook
Pros

Salary is reasonable.

Extras include a health plan, signing bonus, and share options.

A highly dynamic environment – free use of AWS services with no real cost limits.

The intensive hiring process means you will work with lots of smart people.

Cons

Extremely hierarchical. What matters is meeting deliverables and pleasing the higher-ups.

No work/life balance. Meetings scheduled outside work hours are quite normal; deadline pressure is significant, and you'll be expected to sacrifice your personal life to meet them, regardless of how stupid the original estimates were.

On-calls can be hell. Depending on your role, it may mean doing occasional quiet shifts once every few months, or you may find yourself in a role where you are almost always on-call. It's hell when you can't be away from the laptop and find yourself being paged out of bed at 3 am to handle problems or join conference calls.

Frugality is considered a corporate value – it means they're cheapskates.

The Amazon values are repeated in cult-like fashion, as though they are deep insights rather than the banal corporate drivel they are.

Advice to Management

Spend more time and energy on staff retention, and maybe there'd be less need to continuously recruit. That means considering the happiness and well-being of your staff, and not simply meeting the demands of your directors.

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