No Work Life Balance, No Recognition, No Leadership
Pros
Definite leaders in customer satisfaction. Amazon has even surpassed Disney. If you are an Amazon customer, you can bear witness of this. Several opportunities and groups. People can make lateral moves with support from their superiors. Interesting approach of conducting meetings with no Power Point presentations, but rather having everyone spend 15 minutes reading a 6 page document, then everyone having a very productive 45 minute discussion. Purchases made at Amazon can be delivered at lockers under your building, which is very convenient. No employee discounts, though. Orca card can be useful, as parking is limited and super expensive in South Lake Union and downtown Seattle. Best interview experience in the sense that it was quick, very well organized and recruiter kept me very well informed from beginning to end (very hard interviews, though).
Cons
No work life balance: Long hours, several midnight launches scheduled even on major holidays and weekends, and no extra days off to compensate. On call 7 days a week every few weeks. Working from home even occasionally, is not well seen. Frugality is a company value, but they take it to the extreme. If you need a headset because your job requires several phone calls, you have to purchase it. I needed Visio because my job requires several diagrams, and I was told to draw them by hand instead. T&E below the industry, you end up putting money out of your pocket on business trips. Being self critical is another company value, but leadership understands it as only providing negative feedback, not acknowledging achievements, and disregarding wins. With time this becomes discouraging and frustrating. Following the example of many managers and directors, people tend to be confrontational and destructive. People confuse being professionally aggressive with being aggressive at each other. Never in 25 years I have heard so many people cursing in meetings and even worse, trying to publicly embarrass their peers when they disagree. Very high turnaround. In my group, 12 people have left in just five months. This increases the workload even more for the ones still left. Very hard for people who care about their families to succeed. Especially moms with young kids have a very hard time meeting their goals. If their kids get sick, they get whines for having to work from home. If you care about your family and dream of working in Amazon, think it twice. Seriously. Look in YouTube for the documentary the BBC produced with a hidden camera in the UK fulfilment center. You will get an idea of how little employees are valued in this company.
