Amazon Web Services reviews

#1- it looks like 2025 is the year AWS is really putting the squeeze on everyone trying to get us to quit. They are deleting teams, increasing deliverables, and generally trying to make everything worse to reduce headcount by a stated goal of 15%. You will be busy and worked hard. Expect about 4 years before you will be considered for promotion. Then you will get a raise to the minimum pay band for your new role. This is policy across the company. Extremely rigid corporate culture- approved processes dictate every aspect of how you approach a problem, to the point of giving video training telling you obvious things like “if you can’t figure something out, slack a friend and ask first.” Amazon loves “VISA HOSTAGES.” Over half of your team(sometimes all of it) will be poor souls from China or India who will never dare to complain or offer honest feedback even if directly solicited. They are too afraid to lose their job and get deported. Amazon seems to intentionally hire candidates in this situation, then works them to death. Worst aspect- if the stock price goes up, this counts as a “raise”. Everyone who got hired 2022-2023 has their compensation all messed up across the board. DONT join at entry level and try to climb the ladder, the money is not there. My best advice is to keep applying for L6 and above positions as an external hire, you will get $$$ as an external hire. There is definitely $$$ at this company, but I admittedly couldn’t get it :)

Anyone who has stayed at Amazon longer than their first four years, eg your next manager, is likely on the sociopathic spectrum. You have to be soulless to survive and thrive here, because the company is soulless. Amazon is full of performative corporate drones that have learned to game the system and will use an array of tools to make themselves look good while diminishing your and other subordinate employees contributions. The leadership, particularly Jassy and Garman, are visionless and uninspiring. They don’t have any good growth ideas to combat competitors so they are using their monopsony power to squeeze margin out of the employee base to goose up the stock price. This adversarial approach to management has turned the South Lake Union campus into something of a gilded prison. The gleaming buildings hide an upside down world in which the least competent but most ruthless people run the show. Your work and contributions are consumed by these ruthless people to further their careers. You get to keep your paycheck, but not your dignity, as long as you’re willing to play the game.