Amazon Lab126 Software Development Engineer I/II reviews

Exceptionally demanding workplace and zero work life balance. Even on weekend I used to be stuck to my phone sending emails. Having a child while employed here meant going from a superstar rating that I had for 2 years to "you better start putting in more hours" and do better than the rest in the 3rd year. Management is clueless on how to handle pressure and makes sure you team is pushed to the extent to deliver. There might be a few team that are good but overall I would not recommend this place. In my 4 yrs I dont think I met anyone who was happy working here. There is no culture at lab126 just work and deliver is the motto.

Believe the reviews on Glassdoor! If you want to write good code and become a great engineer, this is _not_ the place you want to be. Dysfunctional teams - Teams have an "us" and "them" mentality, even within larger functional groups that should have a common goal. They love to point fingers at other teams as the cause when they come up short, and laugh when other teams come up short themselves. Managers learn to look for a scapegoat early. Dysfunctional management - Target dates seem to be set arbitrarily and without consideration for the engineering effort. The only goal is to ship product. They pay lip service to the term "long-term thinking", but I have not seen any evidence of it from an engineering standpoint (from a business standpoint, yes, but not from an engineering standpoint). "Amazon is not an engineering company", that's a quote. Quality/maintainability is not even an afterthought. It's not a thought at all. It's an enemy to be destroyed! If something can be done well in a week and provide a good foundation to build on, they ask what can you hack together in 2 days. Then they ship with the 2 day solution. Strong engineers push back (until they leave). Weak or inexperienced engineers buckle under the pressure and produce poorly designed solutions requiring repeated revisits to fix bugs or workaround the poor design. Can you say Politics? If you want to move up the ranks and/or work on "good" projects, you better brush up on your latin. You don't want to be the one saying "et tu Brute". If you work on something interesting and do a good job on it so it gains visibility, be prepared to have the rug pulled out from underneath you and have it stolen by a more senior/influential engineer. Everyone's a short timer. There's a reason that stock grants are back-weighted and 401k contributions don't vest for 3 years. Amazon in general and Lab specifically has a retention problem. Turnover is very high and it's not because the org is continually getting rid of dead weight and it's not because they're growing. Most people have been here for fewer than 2 years. Good developers don't want to write hacks. The good developers come and then they go. You're left with the inexperienced engineers who don't know any better (poor souls) and the engineers who are unphased by writing hacks. There are plenty more cons (Seattle control, el Jefe, toxic people, etc) but I'm tired of writing. Worst decision of my career. Run away! Oh, and "frugal" just means cheap.