Amazon Principal Software Development Engineer reviews

You need to show independence from the start in getting things done, you won't get much help from others. Doing only what you are asked to do will not enable you to get promotions, good stock grants etc... There is a max cash compensation at 160k. At higher levels most of the compensation is in the form of stocks if you do well. Benefits could be better.

* very top-down culture (a few teams manage to resist this, for awhile) * internal tech is dated and underinvested (e.g., website built on Perl) * benefits and employee equipment are substandard for the tech industry (e.g., almost no perks, 3-5yo laptop for you) * power is highly concentrated in managers, especially due to the peer review feedback process (anonymized and filtered by the manager; so the manager has total control over your performance) * employees aren't valued. You're there to do a job, for which you're compensated. That's it. "Every day is day 1." = "how you performed last year is irrelevant" * compensation is skewed and miscommunicated to the employee. To wit: * There are no signing bonuses; that's just compensation shifted from stock to cash in year 1 (and sometimes year 2). * If the stock goes up and your actual compensation exceeds your target compensation, you will get no subsequent stock grants (until you're back under target). * Vesting schedule is every 6 months after a year, at 5%, 5%, 10%, 10%, 15%, 15%, 20%, 20%. This design is intentional, because many employees attrit after the first year or two. A large fraction of employees quit after year 4, when the first stock grant has completely vested. Overall undesired attrition is > 14%. * NYT article is 85-90% true. Quite a few managers (at all levels) are really horrible to work for.