Amazon reviews

No company is perfect at all things and there are certainly things Amazon can do better. First is correcting the perception that there is no work/life balance. i have been in roles in Amazon where there was very little balance and I've been in roles where there is a good balance. What I've come to learn, is it is generally on me to draw those lines and stick to them. The company does need to do more to help employees achieve a proper balance rather relying on the the good intentions of the employee or their manager. If you don't live/work in Seattle, get ready to adjust your life to the Seattle timezone. At Amazon, the world revolves around Seattle and, in my opinion, is the chief reason why work/life balance is a struggle for those in the field. There are not enough people in Seattle that think about other timezones when setting up meetings and such. A 10am "check-in" on a Saturday morning Seattle time during the holidays is a far cry from a 7pm "check-in" on Saturday evening when you work on the other side of the globe (and it's summer). While you can certainly speak up about it, you may be the minority that is impacted that way and without senior leaders thinking about this, you will generally suck it up and do it to avoid being a "complainer". A peer once chastised me (to another peer) when I was working internationally on when I would stop bringing up the international locations in our discussions to which that peer responded, "probably when we start thinking about the international locations on our own." If you have a role that requires extensive international travel, realize that all of those trips (no matter how long) will be in coach. I've flown in coach for over 24 hours (in the air, not counting time in airports) for several required work trips a year. While you may get to travel to some really great places, there is a cost to your health. This is done to be "frugal", but is one of the areas where I believe we are just cheap and senior leaders are scared to challenge it after seeing how leaders in the past were treated after challenging the policy (you can read about it in "The Everything Store"). I am in no way advocating for first class trips across the board, but if the company is requiring you to travel where you will spend more than 8-10 hours in the air, the least they can do is spend money to ensure you are comfortable and will arrive ready to get to work. Rather, most employees leave on these longer trips a day earlier than they otherwise would so there is time to recover once you arrive. When I've brought this up to VPs, the common response is referring to the example discussed in "The Everything Store" and that it is "career suicide" to challenge this policy at an executive level. Once you travel frequently, you can use the miles you've accumulated for business travel to get upgrades but you are subject to the airlines upgrade policies which are very restrictive for international flights and sometimes impossible (coach tickets are bought at the cheapest fair possible) unless you pay out of pocket to upgrade the coach ticket to a fare that is eligible for complimentary upgrades. The compensation philosophy is focused on base pay and restricted stock units. While this is a great retention tool and drives ownership in employees to help the stock price improve, it is painful for employees to have such shifts in their pay year to year that is largely driven by sways in the stock market. When it's good it's GREAT, but when the market corrects itself it makes for a painful compensation discussion with your employees in the following years. There is little done to really educate people on the philosophy outside of standard training at annual review time that is not very effective at helping people understand the value.

Unfortunately, even though I was paid more than what my position usually commands (a red flag right there I should have noticed), it just wasn't worth it. There are a *lot* of reasons I'd recommend not working here; but the two that stand out are the culture and the hours. You will work a lot of hours in whatever dept. you're in, almost without exception. But the real overriding factor in everything that makes it such a horrible place to work - the one that all the other issues grow from - is its culture. Here's the long and short of it: front-line and middle managers here are really the 'bottom of the barrel' types. No self-respecting manager would try to manage any team in this environment (unless they didn't know anything about it when they were hired - ahem!), and that's because of one corporate-mandated policy that destroys any possibility of teamwork: Top Grading. Let me explain... Top Grading sounds like a good idea when you only look at the 'top' part. What that means is the top 10% of performers on each team get the bulk (or all) of the raises for that team that year. This happens every year (depending on your dept., anywhere from Feb.-May), and is something so pervasive in the company that you really do risk your job if you try to stand up against it (pretty much Bezos's idea - so if your chain answers up to a Sr. VP that answers to him, it's gonna happen). But why stand against it? Well, let's say you have a great team, and everyone's pulling their weight. The problem with this policy is, it also includes what some have called Bottom Grading - appropriately named, as it spells out the rest of the truth of the happily named Top Grading. The full truth is, you have to get rid of the bottom 10% of your team every year - period, end of story, no arguments. Basically, Amazon's 'high bar' with 'bar raisers' in interview loops comes down to little more than an inflexible ideology. So just try and make a team in that kind of environment! Even just trying to be part of one is horrific; after all, you could be next. It's either you or someone else on your team - probably a couple or more. And this includes managers and directors. I'm betting you can guess the result: a highly politicized environment, where everyone's going for the immediate win and doing their best to suck up to their boss at every moment, as once you're clued in, you realize your manager's or director's hands are tied. You walk on glass, and try not to *ever* cross them or give them a reason to put your name in the bottom 10%. So that's it, in a nutshell - ideology 'tinkled down' from above loses to allowing managers to manage their own teams independently. Which pretty much explains why no competent managers would stay there, and why I left. And also why their attrition rate is horrible - 10% must go, combined with no healthy team dynamics whatsoever. It's just a real disaster over there.