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Everyone's mileage may vary. I've been at Amazon for 3 years in 2 different offices on two different orgs (Vancouver-AWS, Europe-Retail). I love it, and I don'

Everyone's mileage may vary. I've been at Amazon for 3 years in 2 different offices on two different orgs (Vancouver-AWS, Europe-Retail). I love it, and I don't know anyone that left disgruntled or unhappy due to being burnt out. (A couple of people I know left because they didn't want to do any oncall at all anymore, but noone was misled, and as far as I know they are not bitter about it) But, the key is that there is no one "Amazon". A lot of freedom is given to each individual team and org, and as a result wild variations in work culture and expectations. I know teams that are great, and I know teams that are tougher. But, my reasoning for why those teams might be difficult to work with is because they are working on new bleeding-edge services (AWS, Echo/Alexa), and as a result there is a lot of pressure to stay ahead of our competitors. Which is completely understandable when Google and Microsoft are either just behind or just ahead on everything. Maybe I've just been lucky? But I work with a lot of teams in a lot of countries, and generally by and large people are challenged and content. I'm not saying there are no problems. And I'm sure all the people in the NYT article are not lying. But at a huge company of 200,000 employees, there's always going to be some unhappy and disgruntled people. I don't think I'll be able to convince you otherwise - I am a city-dweller through and through, so I sense we have probably quite different personalities. edit: I should acknowledge that I don't have direct experience with American work culture. Y'all work way too many hours, but that's not just at Amazon. And Silicon Valley is even worse.

ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
> Everyone's mileage may vary. In Amazon it can vary quite a lot across countries, cities, teams. > I love it, and I don't know anyone that left disgruntled or unhappy due to being burnt out. I met plenty. Heavy on-call rotations being the primary reason. Many people were quite bitter about the real VS claimed on-call load. But again, I agree that this varies a lot.
abbasaamer 10y ago
This. I'm a hiring manager at Amazon (in natural language on Alexa). One thing I can say about Amazon culture is that teams can vary quite a bit. This is because Amazon gives a huge amount of ownership to each team, which naturally means each team's leadership has a lot of control on their culture. Amazon does try to instill certain cultural elements across the company, but despite that, things can vary based on the leadership and the part of the company you're in. Prior to Alexa, I was in supply chain systems and I would say the culture there was quite different there. Personally speaking, I really enjoy this team. It's definitely not a meat grinder; on the contrary, I think our team has great work-life balance while providing sufficient challenges to keep us motivated. By the way, I'm sorry to hear some of the negative stories from others about their interviews. That's certainly not deliberate; our goal is to create a positive experience for every candidate irrespective of whether or not they successfully clear the interview. I personally work with some very professional and courteous recruiters on Alexa, but if anyone has had a negative experience interviewing for Alexa, I'd be happy to follow up and see if I can take some action on your feedback.

ex_amazon_sde 10y ago

> Everyone's mileage may vary. In Amazon it can vary quite a lot across countries, cities, teams. > I love it, and I don't know anyone that left disgruntled or unhappy due to being burnt out. I met plenty. Heavy on-call rotations being the primary reason. Many people were quite bitter about the real VS claimed on-call load. But again, I agree that this varies a lot.

abbasaamer 10y ago

This. I'm a hiring manager at Amazon (in natural language on Alexa). One thing I can say about Amazon culture is that teams can vary quite a bit. This is because Amazon gives a huge amount of ownership to each team, which naturally means each team's leadership has a lot of control on their culture. Amazon does try to instill certain cultural elements across the company, but despite that, things can vary based on the leadership and the part of the company you're in. Prior to Alexa, I was in supply chain systems and I would say the culture there was quite different there. Personally speaking, I really enjoy this team. It's definitely not a meat grinder; on the contrary, I think our team has great work-life balance while providing sufficient challenges to keep us motivated. By the way, I'm sorry to hear some of the negative stories from others about their interviews. That's certainly not deliberate; our goal is to create a positive experience for every candidate irrespective of whether or not they successfully clear the interview. I personally work with some very professional and courteous recruiters on Alexa, but if anyone has had a negative experience interviewing for Alexa, I'd be happy to follow up and see if I can take some action on your feedback.