Amazon

One of the best things about working at Amazon (especially AWS) is that the scale creates really interesting problems for software engineers. It's very motivating to see academic problems on a daily basis. There are really smart people around, and the culture is very open and encouraging people to learn from each other.

Every AWS product is an art of engineering. It's an excellent chance to get to know the behind-the-scenes.

Teams are independent and can iterate really fast. Every engineer partakes in the decision of what to do next. There's almost zero bureaucracy. It's great to be responsible for the operations of the software. Being on-call adds another dimension to software engineers.

Sometimes work/life balance becomes all work and no life, especially when time gets closer to big events (like Black Friday or AWS Re-Invent). I don't think there's any tech company out there promising good work/life balance throughout the year. There are no shiny perks like free lunch, etc. Internal developer tools are too centric, hard to use, and hard to learn.