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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

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.

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.