Making history, great culture, but not "easy" or "relaxed"
Pros
- Work on stuff that your friends and family use and love - Company culture is a meritocracy - Company culture makes sense/is logical (which for engineers is important) - One of least political places to work - Engineering teams have lots of ownership...no software architects or 200 page requirement documents. Thin product management layer. - Managers are good individual contributors, not just people managers - Peer review culture (of your code/designs/deliverables) - The feedback produces lots of personal growth, and better engineers - No-one asks you to do overtime/work weekends/etc. - Pretty flexible working for people with kids (as long as prepared to commit to coming into office most of the time) - The Amazon reading and writing practice is awesome. - Crappy team mates get encouraged to leave the company quickly. - Company promotes women and minorities, educates staff on implicit bias, etc. - The NYT article was completely inaccurate/trash/rubbish/basura - I could see myself spending the rest of my career here.
Cons
- There is always too much to do...have to manage your time and avoid over-committing. Have to have discipline over your own time to innovate and stay up to date on things going on outside company. - It's easy to confuse the wisdom of teams (which is huge) with individual wisdom...yes, the people in the room are as stupid as you are...just collectively they appear smarter. - Not a good fit for talented people/geniuses who struggle to pay attention/too laid back/not detail oriented/can't be anything other than a big fish in a small sea/don't realize the company and customer comes first. - Lots of meetings (that pro about peer review culture has a counter balance) if you aren't prudent about declining. - Definitely better benefits in other companies. Amazon's opinion is they'd rather pay you well and you buy your own lunch rather than supply lunch every day, for example.
