Taro Logo

It's like a pirate ship

Software Development Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Amazon for less than 1 year
May 28, 2010
Seattle, Washington
2.0
No CEO Opinion
Pros

Many challenging technical problems to tackle as an employee. They give lots of room for you to shine, but also rope to hang yourself.

It's a very dynamic culture and promotes the best solution at the time. This could be bad, though, since it also means a lot of bad solutions are introduced before the best comes out.

Cons

Be prepared to move groups every year or two. You will get managed out if you're in the lower end of reviews. Middle management changes direction too much. It's a very operations-oriented culture, which means pager duty for everyone. Depending on the group, you could spend a lot of time fire-fighting.

Advice to Management

Gain some stability in management's own hierarchy. It's like a revolving door every year, and this trickles down such that teams have constant churn.

Was this helpful?

Amazon Interview Experiences