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Harassment: Fear-driven culture

Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Amazon for less than 1 year
September 11, 2021
Vancouver, British Columbia
1.0
Doesn't RecommendPositive OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros
  • There are teams which provide a great learning opportunity (usually given you can get the ops and other tasks done and then spend a lot of extra hours learning).
  • Compensation is nowhere close to top-tier but much higher than average.
  • It can be a decent situation if you're very lucky to land on a good team (i.e., < 60 hour workweeks, not getting paged every single night during on-call, and management treats you humanely).
Cons

In general (i.e., I and most of my colleagues generally estimate for > 50% of the company):

  • Managers use unjustified fear to motivate subordinates and way too often harass subordinates.
  • Generally need to work > 50% of the time.
  • As you get closer to vesting of most of the stocks, the likelihood of getting PIPed (fired) skyrockets.
  • Cut-throat culture and lack of collaboration within teams (due to stack-ranking and forced firing). Teammates are reluctant to share tribal knowledge with others to protect their jobs.
Advice to Management

Take care of your employees, otherwise, you might find yourself in a situation that can prove difficult to climb out of once too many engineers learn of the company's reputation.

Other than the treatment of employees and bad reputation being a major issue, many parts of the business are great and likely to do well in the long-term.

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
1.0
Culture and Values
1.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
3.0
Career Opportunities
4.0
Compensation and Benefits
4.0
Senior Management
1.0

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