Amazon Software Develop Engineer I reviews

* Frugality is the one value that you will end up hating. They abuse to the point of being cheap. Pretty much all the negatives about the company stem from this single value. * The development environment you get isn't that great (although they're *slowly* getting better). Laptops and desktops just don't have enough processing power to do what they need to do, and they JUST started issuing dual-monitors as standard. * Growing too fast. Some buildings are filled to the brim. They had to take down the interior walls in some buildings to make room for more people to fit. It literally can feel like a factory sometimes. * No parking on campus * The campus itself is honestly really boring. It's boring to look at, and it doesn't have anything to make it stand out. * Managers are hit and miss. They seem to only care about how they look and not how their employees are doing. * Really tough for those coming right out of college. No one is going to tell you to stop working, so it's incredibly easy to get burned out. The amount of pressure you can receive from your manager is scary. * Way too much bureaucracy (aka too many meetings). * Internal tools have a really high learning curve.

-Most everyone I've met here is good-natured, but not always outgoing in the workplace. It can take some initiative to meet others and expand your network. -Each team is highly autonomous, which is good overall, but has its drawbacks. Experiences vary a lot at Amazon, so what I describe could be different from what you come to find. The good news is that everyone has the option to move around the company. -As mentioned above, upper management can be mysterious at times. I appreciate that they acknowledge the opacity of some topics, but it could be an issue if you need total transparency. -Amazon can be very demanding. This, of course, comes with the territory of interesting work and continuous learning. As they say, "no pain, no gain." If you are not willing or able to invest more than the 40 hour week, this might not be the place for you. That being said, I have never felt burnt out, just properly challenged. -Although it seems to do good for my waistline, there aren't as many gimmes (free food, swag, etc.) as you would get at other big tech companies. This is in line with the leadership principle of frugality. The workplace is comfortable enough, so I'm not complaining. -Free daycare is not provided. If you have kids, this is a more legitimate con than missing out on free candy bars or Amazon-branded chapstick. -Amazon is a mammoth of a company in size. I don't find the work menial as a result, but as you might imagine, it's not as personal as a smaller company would be.