Amazon

I've been at Amazon for several years in different technical roles and teams, as an engineer, project manager, engineering manager, etc. Overall, my experience has been very positive, and I would recommend Amazon as a good place to work to my friends.

• Generally low bureaucracy due to decentralization of decision-making – decisions get made quickly, and you can focus on doing your job.
• Work with really smart and capable people. The hiring process is tough, and most people who get hired are exceptional.
• Long-term thinking around most business initiatives gives us room to make mistakes, learn from them, and get better. Other places I have worked at prior to Amazon are myopic about the bottom line, which leads to many poor decisions.
• Strong culture around trying hard things and successfully executing on them. This experience will make you better at whatever you do afterward.
• The company is still growing incredibly fast (the employee count doubles every twenty months, even though it's been 20 years since the company was founded). This translates to lots of new and exciting projects and ideas being worked on across the company.

While many managers at the company are exceptional, there are many ineffective managers as well. The main reason is that ongoing training/coaching for new managers is insufficient. Your experience at Amazon (as with most companies of this size) depends a lot on your manager, so take care to ask them good questions while interviewing to get a good idea of how it is to work with the manager.

While base compensation/stock grants are very good, other benefits such as 401(k) and medical etc. are weak compared to competitors in the software development industry (though they are much better than other employers in general).

Benefits are getting more and more non-competitive with key competitors (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.) as they are constantly improving benefits (maternity leave, 401(k) matching, etc.). This makes hiring and retaining talent hard over time.