Twitch

A good amount of transparency and the ability to push back on things. Weekly all-hands meetings have anonymous Q&As, which helps hold upper management accountable and keep them grounded. It's simultaneously funny and incredibly awkward when an exec gets hit with a real hardball question on stream.

Twitch also runs many different anonymous surveys throughout the year looking for ways to improve. These surveys don't pull their punches and suggest common ways Twitch fails at things and what people think about them.

Lastly, Twitch itself recommends using Glassdoor, ironically, which is a nice change of pace from the industry standard.

Compensation is good (at least for an SDE position), higher than I personally expected, and Amazon stock is a great stock to get RSUs for.

The company's culture is pretty good. Most people are gamers, so there's a lot of talk about games. Generally, people keep things positive, and there are lots of memes.

As of the last year or two, the technical pipeline for new systems is now very specific and has a lot of guidelines. Personally, I find this to be great, as it means there's less pressure in a lot of decision-making aspects involved in a new project. Additionally, the whole company being on the same standards means that there's a lot of experience and resources available if you run into problems.

There's a big emphasis on inclusivity and diversity. The management doesn't always navigate these complex issues perfectly, but they do try, and they are willing to admit shortcomings sometimes.

There are several 'guilds' here that employees can join that promote diversity and discuss concerns relevant to their group. (There are also more 'fun' guilds, like an MTG guild and a D&D guild.)

Like many jobs, your experience can vary heavily based on your manager and your teammates. My manager is fantastic, and all of my teammates are great, so my experience here has been good. If those things weren't true, I can see how the same situation could be really bad.

If you aren't a gamer, you may feel somewhat isolated by the company's culture because there's a lot of things you won't be able to relate to. I have a friend here who's in this situation.

Social media pressure from Twitch users can sometimes be intense. There's often some kind of active controversy, usually over the decision made by a single moderator (in a company with a thousand employees) on whether to ban or not ban a certain community figure. This can spill over into personal anxiety, especially if you have friends who get involved in the issue. Most of the people working here will never have any insight into the moderation process, but that doesn't stop employees from getting bugged on Twitter in particularly bad social media flare-ups.

If you need to interface with Amazon on an issue, it can take a staggeringly long time to get anything done.

Stay grounded.