Amazon

Compensation - Overall compensation is in line with other tech companies, which is a lot of money. There are still some cool areas of tech which only the big boys can afford to fund.

Amazon has the lowest standards for engineering practices, too often trading short-term gains for long-term pain.

People only care about the next promotion. If it's not a promo-worthy project or something that can wow a VP, they don't care.

You will inherit neglected, years-old software relying on deprecated libraries and be asked to keep building onto it because they won't support work that improves the quality of services and tools.

Amazon's internal tools are the worst-in-class. The work tracking, ticketing, and internal meeting tools are all trash.

Amazon has half a dozen horrible solutions to problems that competent companies solve better.

There is a dearth of leadership at Amazon. You will constantly get mixed priorities all the way from the top, and nobody will articulate a real vision.

This way, they can always claim some measure of success in the VP's eyes. It's pathetic.

Amazon compensation is largely based on stock compensation. If you joined when it was near the peak, your overall compensation dropped by as much as 25% this year, and they do NOTHING to make up for it.

Internal staff stack ranking will turn even your closest allies against you. People will steal your ideas as their own, trying to make themselves appear better. It's absolutely cutthroat.

There is no work-life balance. My boss would give me 16 hours of work on a Friday afternoon and then useless advice like, "Just close your laptop at 5 p.m.". So disingenuous.

It's the evil empire you work for. Is the money worth your soul?

I decided no and quit.

Andy Jassy is a joke as CEO. He is not a leader, and probably many other S-team members are the same. There is no integrity at that level, which is clearly been shown by the lack of accountability and transparency through the layoffs of 2022 and 2023. They expect data-driven decisions at all levels, but are forcing workers back to the office with massive commute times on a whim as soon as the hiring market cooled off and became more employer-friendly.