4 ms·

Is Amazon really such a bad employer? I've just started process with them now. I dont want to work for Facebook, there is no local Netflix and I'm probably not

by zz865 5y ago

Is Amazon really such a bad employer? I've just started process with them now. I dont want to work for Facebook, there is no local Netflix and I'm probably not good enough for Google - Amazon is the only FANG company I'm realistically going to get.

jkingsbery 5y ago
I am currently a software engineer at Amazon. I obviously can't speak to other people's experiences at Amazon. And having never worked at any other big tech company, I'm not in a place to compare to them. But my own experiences at Amazon have been pretty good. I've been quite happy with my compensation and work life balance, which all have improved since my previous roles mostly at start-ups. There have been some stressful crunch times (Q4 tends to be stressful, between Thanksgiving-Christmas peak on the Retail side and Re:invent on the AWS side), but not more stressful from other big milestones at previous companies. I have been lucky, in that I had worked with my first team's director at a previous company and so I knew he was a good boss, and I had known the manager for my second team prior to joining. It's important as part of the interview process (at Amazon, or anywhere else) to treat the interview as a two-way process, as you're vetting the company, the team, and your boss as much as they're vetting you, and if you don't get all your questions answered as part of the interview (interviewers are supposed to save time for you to ask questions!), feel free to relay them to your recruiter.
ferdowsi 5y ago
Maybe you should back up and ask why you are limiting your search to those four/five companies?
- zz865 5y ago
  No other companies pay >250k in NYC.
  - jnwatson 5y ago
    That’s not true. What about fintech?
    - zz865 5y ago
      Any good examples? Yes there are some top end jobs that pay well, but the tail is thinner than the bay area. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/New-York-City/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/New-York-C...
  - vesuvianvenus 5y ago
    Plenty pay >$250k remotely and in large cities such as SF and NYC-- For Engineers, Managers/Executives (Eng, Mktg, other), Salespeople, etc. You just have to ask for it. If you're unfamiliar, join TeamBlind.com A company sent me roles at $125k recently. I wrote them back with a polite variation of "heck no, my rate is $250k". I'm currently quite broke-- $5k to my name (too many sabbaticals, plus only recently paid off student debt and pivoted into engineering). But I bluff every time and sometimes it works out. Nothing to lose: there seem to be infinite employers in need of software engineers. They wrote back to schedule an interview.
    - zz865 5y ago
      250k I'm on already, its going up from there is the hard part.
      - renewiltord 5y ago
        Put your email in your profile. I can do much better.
  - sakopov 5y ago
    Does Amazon actually pay $250k. I heard from someone who works there that the salary ceiling for all engineers is $150k and the rest is compensation. Is this true?
    - rohitnair 5y ago
      Yes, there is a base cap of $160K ($185K for HCOL areas like NY and Bay Area), and the rest of the compensation is RSUs. For engineers who are senior and above, RSU based compensation will usually be more than 50% of their overall compensation.
  - comp_throw7 5y ago
    Um? https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&region=Greater%20NYC%20Area https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&r... Excluding finance, there's Spotify, Doordash, Salesforce, Square, Twitter (incl. remote), Coinbase (remote), Palantir, Roku, Affirm, Robinhood... and that's just the publicly-traded companies that explicitly have offices in New York. You have even more options looking at companies that are either remote-friendly, or are late-stage startups with competitive equity grants (i.e. Stripe, Instacart, etc), or both (there's a lot of overlap between those two categories).
vineyardmike 5y ago
They're not that bad, uniformly. But they have a vocal cohort of people that had a bad experience. From what i see in my cicle, its not rare to have a bad experience, but its not uniformly bad. But often bad. It seems heavily dependent on manager and the team's combo of priority and funding and history of good/bad development (aka tech debt). They have some good cultural points (easy to change teams) but also bad ones (bad on-call). So depending on your tolerance of WLB vs salary, and how good you are at shipping, you could have a good experience.
jnwatson 5y ago
This is only a single data point, but I recently went through the whole interview cycle with Google, Facebook, and, Amazon, and I thought Amazon was the toughest interviews. I have friends that work at Amazon. It seems that work/life balance varies quite a bit among different parts of it.
anonporridge 5y ago
If you're good enough for Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix, you're plenty good enough for Google. Google of today isn't the same as that of a decade ago. It's just another megacorp.
- tinyhouse 5y ago
  Exactly. Two people from my company left to Google recently. Both are very average. We didn't even bother with a counter offer.
MatteoFrigo 5y ago
Please be aware that Amazon will insist on a non-competition agreement. Depending on your seniority level and whether such agreements are enforceable in your jurisdiction, there is a high chance that this will limit your opportunities after you leave Amazon. Don't overlook this aspect when evaluating offers. This is an example of how this interferes with the career of a very senior executive: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/microsoft-standoff-amazon-big-hire-names-charlie-bell-lead-bold-new-security-group/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/microsoft-standoff-amazon-big-... However, this problem also affects junior engineers, more junior than you may think.
AdrianB1 5y ago
It is all relative. In comparison with the other FANG companies, the people that I know told me Amazon has worse work-life balance and a more stressing environment, but it can be fine versus other companies outside the FAANG group, especially with the top compensation you get for that.
- tylerc230 5y ago
  It varies like anywhere. My team at amazon is fairly low stress and there's no overtime (I've been here for a year now).

by zz865 5y ago

jkingsbery 5y ago

I am currently a software engineer at Amazon. I obviously can't speak to other people's experiences at Amazon. And having never worked at any other big tech company, I'm not in a place to compare to them. But my own experiences at Amazon have been pretty good. I've been quite happy with my compensation and work life balance, which all have improved since my previous roles mostly at start-ups. There have been some stressful crunch times (Q4 tends to be stressful, between Thanksgiving-Christmas peak on the Retail side and Re:invent on the AWS side), but not more stressful from other big milestones at previous companies. I have been lucky, in that I had worked with my first team's director at a previous company and so I knew he was a good boss, and I had known the manager for my second team prior to joining. It's important as part of the interview process (at Amazon, or anywhere else) to treat the interview as a two-way process, as you're vetting the company, the team, and your boss as much as they're vetting you, and if you don't get all your questions answered as part of the interview (interviewers are supposed to save time for you to ask questions!), feel free to relay them to your recruiter.

ferdowsi 5y ago

Maybe you should back up and ask why you are limiting your search to those four/five companies?

zz865 5y ago
No other companies pay >250k in NYC.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  That’s not true. What about fintech?
  - zz865 5y ago
    Any good examples? Yes there are some top end jobs that pay well, but the tail is thinner than the bay area. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/New-York-City/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/New-York-C...
- vesuvianvenus 5y ago
  Plenty pay >$250k remotely and in large cities such as SF and NYC-- For Engineers, Managers/Executives (Eng, Mktg, other), Salespeople, etc. You just have to ask for it. If you're unfamiliar, join TeamBlind.com A company sent me roles at $125k recently. I wrote them back with a polite variation of "heck no, my rate is $250k". I'm currently quite broke-- $5k to my name (too many sabbaticals, plus only recently paid off student debt and pivoted into engineering). But I bluff every time and sometimes it works out. Nothing to lose: there seem to be infinite employers in need of software engineers. They wrote back to schedule an interview.
  - zz865 5y ago
    250k I'm on already, its going up from there is the hard part.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      Put your email in your profile. I can do much better.
- sakopov 5y ago
  Does Amazon actually pay $250k. I heard from someone who works there that the salary ceiling for all engineers is $150k and the rest is compensation. Is this true?
  - rohitnair 5y ago
    Yes, there is a base cap of $160K ($185K for HCOL areas like NY and Bay Area), and the rest of the compensation is RSUs. For engineers who are senior and above, RSU based compensation will usually be more than 50% of their overall compensation.
- comp_throw7 5y ago
  Um? https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&region=Greater%20NYC%20Area https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&r... Excluding finance, there's Spotify, Doordash, Salesforce, Square, Twitter (incl. remote), Coinbase (remote), Palantir, Roku, Affirm, Robinhood... and that's just the publicly-traded companies that explicitly have offices in New York. You have even more options looking at companies that are either remote-friendly, or are late-stage startups with competitive equity grants (i.e. Stripe, Instacart, etc), or both (there's a lot of overlap between those two categories).

vineyardmike 5y ago

They're not that bad, uniformly. But they have a vocal cohort of people that had a bad experience. From what i see in my cicle, its not rare to have a bad experience, but its not uniformly bad. But often bad. It seems heavily dependent on manager and the team's combo of priority and funding and history of good/bad development (aka tech debt). They have some good cultural points (easy to change teams) but also bad ones (bad on-call). So depending on your tolerance of WLB vs salary, and how good you are at shipping, you could have a good experience.

jnwatson 5y ago

This is only a single data point, but I recently went through the whole interview cycle with Google, Facebook, and, Amazon, and I thought Amazon was the toughest interviews. I have friends that work at Amazon. It seems that work/life balance varies quite a bit among different parts of it.

anonporridge 5y ago

If you're good enough for Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix, you're plenty good enough for Google. Google of today isn't the same as that of a decade ago. It's just another megacorp.

tinyhouse 5y ago
Exactly. Two people from my company left to Google recently. Both are very average. We didn't even bother with a counter offer.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

Please be aware that Amazon will insist on a non-competition agreement. Depending on your seniority level and whether such agreements are enforceable in your jurisdiction, there is a high chance that this will limit your opportunities after you leave Amazon. Don't overlook this aspect when evaluating offers. This is an example of how this interferes with the career of a very senior executive: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/microsoft-standoff-amazon-big-hire-names-charlie-bell-lead-bold-new-security-group/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/microsoft-standoff-amazon-big-... However, this problem also affects junior engineers, more junior than you may think.

AdrianB1 5y ago

It is all relative. In comparison with the other FANG companies, the people that I know told me Amazon has worse work-life balance and a more stressing environment, but it can be fine versus other companies outside the FAANG group, especially with the top compensation you get for that.

tylerc230 5y ago
It varies like anywhere. My team at amazon is fairly low stress and there's no overtime (I've been here for a year now).