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> 2) If you're judging a company based on the experiences of those who are dissatisfied, isn't that always going to be heavily biased? I've worked there myself

> 2) If you're judging a company based on the experiences of those who are dissatisfied, isn't that always going to be heavily biased? I've worked there myself and have a ton of friends who have spent time there. Some folks have even enjoyed working there. Overwhelmingly the evidence is that Amazon is a very bad place to work at, on average. You might get lucky and find a good team (amazon is incredibly federated as an organization) but you might also get unlucky and get an extra bad team. Also, unlike a lot of other tech companies of similar size (such as Microsoft or Amazon) there's basically no "love" at the corporate level for individual employees. At other companies reaching that "full-time employee" status level means something, and the company is willing to invest in you. You have the ability to move around to different teams, you have the ability to change your role. You have a wide range of options in terms of training to take. Working as an FTE at Amazon feels like working as a contractor anywhere else. It's very dysfunctional, though there are enough devs who mostly know what they're doing who stick around for a long time to keep things running. Additionally, the service oriented architecture of the system makes it a lot easier to cycle through lots and lots of devs. Of all of the folks I've known who have worked there most left after a short period of time because they hated it.

beastcoast 10y ago
This is my perspective as well. Beyond our slightly cultish tenets/leadership principles (seriously, they quote Jeff like he's our holy leader), Amazon's really just a federation of loosely coupled teams. You and your team are literally at the mercy of your VP/director/Sr. Manager. That said, I have generally positive things to say, but I've also witnessed an entire team of 6 SDEs quit under an especially bull-headed SDM. I've also seen managers making ridiculous promises to upper management without vetting them first. Thankfully the bad SDM found another job, but he's still working in another department in the company.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  Amazon was one of two companies that had the cultish "magical phrases" thing in my career. (Eg "Its day one!" And crap like that.) They are also the two companies that were the most abusive of employees. I have come to associate the cult like culture with employee hostility at the management level (and I believe that company culture comes from the Founder/CEO)
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    This is actually a big problem at Amazon. There are certain company sayings which have been baked into the corporate culture and were created by Bezos. It's basically fundamentally impossible to challenge the wisdom or utility of those sayings, they might as well be a religion. That situation of having ironclad, unassailable orthodoxy is always very dangerous, but there's basically no way for Amazon to get out of it unless Bezos changes his mind.
    - 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
      My honeymoon with the company was over the day I learned, fairly early on, that the "Door desks" cost a lot more than just going out and buying proper desks. But that they were kept around for the cult purposes, for the ritual.
      - InclinedPlane 10y ago
        Yup. My door desk leaked sap from the legs and was splintery. Such a silly tradition.
Someone1234 10y ago
How was the work-life balance when you worked there?
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  Somewhere in the OK to mediocre range. On the plus side a 40 hour work week was typical. On the minus side being on call may be a major hassle and increase your work hours significantly and affect your ability to make plans on weekends or evenings depending on your team make up and the stability of your code base, etc. Also on the minus side: you don't get a lot of vacation time, there are periods of "crunch" when you'll be expected to work a bit more, and those periods can often be during traditional holiday times (thanksgiving, christmas, etc.)
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    > being on call may be a major hassle and increase your work hours significantly and affect your ability to make plans on weekends or evenings Could you clarify? that's kind of what I expect when being on-call anywhere
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      Keep in mind that you're on salary, so no matter how much you work while on-call you still get paid the same. How often you're on-call depends on how big your team is, if you get unlucky and have a tiny team for a while (say, because everyone else quit) you might end up on-call quite a lot. Also, depending on the code base and what your team is doing at present there might be long periods of time (months) where when you're on call it's very intensive, with frequent periods of getting up at 2am to fix problems, working a lot more hours, etc. Most importantly, unlike a typical Ops/DevOps job where being on-call is "your job" you are still expected to deliver on your "real" development job in addition to being on-call.

beastcoast 10y ago

This is my perspective as well. Beyond our slightly cultish tenets/leadership principles (seriously, they quote Jeff like he's our holy leader), Amazon's really just a federation of loosely coupled teams. You and your team are literally at the mercy of your VP/director/Sr. Manager. That said, I have generally positive things to say, but I've also witnessed an entire team of 6 SDEs quit under an especially bull-headed SDM. I've also seen managers making ridiculous promises to upper management without vetting them first. Thankfully the bad SDM found another job, but he's still working in another department in the company.

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
Amazon was one of two companies that had the cultish "magical phrases" thing in my career. (Eg "Its day one!" And crap like that.) They are also the two companies that were the most abusive of employees. I have come to associate the cult like culture with employee hostility at the management level (and I believe that company culture comes from the Founder/CEO)
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  This is actually a big problem at Amazon. There are certain company sayings which have been baked into the corporate culture and were created by Bezos. It's basically fundamentally impossible to challenge the wisdom or utility of those sayings, they might as well be a religion. That situation of having ironclad, unassailable orthodoxy is always very dangerous, but there's basically no way for Amazon to get out of it unless Bezos changes his mind.
  - 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
    My honeymoon with the company was over the day I learned, fairly early on, that the "Door desks" cost a lot more than just going out and buying proper desks. But that they were kept around for the cult purposes, for the ritual.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      Yup. My door desk leaked sap from the legs and was splintery. Such a silly tradition.

Someone1234 10y ago

How was the work-life balance when you worked there?

InclinedPlane 10y ago
Somewhere in the OK to mediocre range. On the plus side a 40 hour work week was typical. On the minus side being on call may be a major hassle and increase your work hours significantly and affect your ability to make plans on weekends or evenings depending on your team make up and the stability of your code base, etc. Also on the minus side: you don't get a lot of vacation time, there are periods of "crunch" when you'll be expected to work a bit more, and those periods can often be during traditional holiday times (thanksgiving, christmas, etc.)
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > being on call may be a major hassle and increase your work hours significantly and affect your ability to make plans on weekends or evenings Could you clarify? that's kind of what I expect when being on-call anywhere
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    Keep in mind that you're on salary, so no matter how much you work while on-call you still get paid the same. How often you're on-call depends on how big your team is, if you get unlucky and have a tiny team for a while (say, because everyone else quit) you might end up on-call quite a lot. Also, depending on the code base and what your team is doing at present there might be long periods of time (months) where when you're on call it's very intensive, with frequent periods of getting up at 2am to fix problems, working a lot more hours, etc. Most importantly, unlike a typical Ops/DevOps job where being on-call is "your job" you are still expected to deliver on your "real" development job in addition to being on-call.