Amazon Employee Reviews

Salary - A | Culture - A | Management - B | Coworkers - A

Pros: good job overall very chill
Cons: really bad pay and work culture

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Salary - A | Culture - A | Management - | Coworkers - A

Pros: Really smart people, a lot of opportunity for growth, always encouraged to be innovative, think big, and create something new. Competitive salary and benefits with other major tech companies. 100% self motivating work environment. No dress code and 4 legged friends are welcome.
Cons: You have to be self motivated. NO ONE will hold your hand and tell you that you're doing a great job. If you need constant affirmations from management, this company isn't for you.

More on-boarding training before new employees are thrown in the fire. The first couple of weeks can be very confusing on where to find the information you need that pertains to your job.

Salary - B | Culture - C | Management - | Coworkers - C

Pros: Jeff Bezos and his "S-Team" are brilliant and continue to make great decisions for long-term growth. You work with smart people, you work on exciting projects, you are pushed to your limits...which can be rewarding when you accomplish great things. The diversity of the potential work and innovation can be very alluring. I've often called Amazon my "Sexy Mistress...she's emotionally abusive, but she's so sexy that I go back for more punishment."
Cons: The management process is abusive, and I'm currently a manager. I've seen too much "behind the wall" and hate how our individual performers can be treated. You are forced to ride people and stack rank employees...I've been forced to give good employees bad overall ratings because of politics and stack ranking.

Don't pretend that the recent NY Times article was all about "isolated incidents". The culture IS abusive and it WILL backfire once stock value starts to drop. I'm an 8 year veteran and I no longer recommend former peers to interview with Amazon.

Salary - A | Culture - C | Management - | Coworkers - B

Pros: Amazon is doing lot's of cool stuff...but lots of boring stuff too. There are really well run teams...and very badly run teams. The experience for software managers and engineers is all over the board, from really run low operational load teams to teams where people burn out after a year. - Amazon is built, quite deliberately, to be Darwinian. You can generally expect that anyone who's been here for more than 2 years is competent and motivated or they wouldn't have survived. You can count on them as long as your priorities are aligned. There aren't many slackers here, and they don't survive long. - We work on so much stuff that there's always an opportunity to find amazing cool stuff to work on (note that it's an 'opportunity', one that you have to pursue) - A chance to make a huge difference - A place where you can learn a lot about all kinds of things, both technical and about yourself - Amazon encourages high mobility - even your manager can't prevent you from moving to another team within 6 weeks (normally, more than a few months under unusual conditions). - Your friends and family have actually heard of the place you work and have at least a vague notion of what Amazon does without you having to explain
Cons: - You're responsible for your own career progression and finding the places and teams that are doing the stuff you want to do. No one is going to take you by the hand and help you with that. - Amazon is built, quite deliberately, to be Darwinian. The strong survive and the weak perish (metaphorically speaking) and the 'bar' is constantly increasing. The level of performance that would have been acceptable five years ago will get you canned today. It's a kind of crucible that'll help you develop a harder edge, if you can survive, that can serve you well in your career and in life, but it's often not a pleasant experience. I wouldn't recommend it as a place to work for just anyone.

Stack ranking is a horrible practice since it's rife with favoritism. It's also not Amazonian in that it's not data based (arbitrarily designating a certain percentage of employees that must be put on performance management isn't a data driven criterion) and it's not frugal (effectively forcing an individual out of the company in one division who would make the grade in another is either retaining someone who doesn't meet the bar or a waste of talent). The goal is to force managers to actually make the hard decisions about how their team members compare with each other (not everyone can be exceptional), but it has more defects than virtues. Replace it with a common comparison of each person against the bar for their position, based on data. The percentages that are assigned to each performance category will turn out how they turn out, but there will be an evaluation mechanism that's fair and frugal.

Salary - A | Culture - A | Management - | Coworkers - A

Pros: I've been at Amazon for a month now, and I've seen none of the horror stories being communicated to the public, although Amazon is a large enough company that I'm sure there are good pockets and bad pockets. Everyone here is really smart, and wants to succeed both personally, and as a company. People collaborate and help each other, focus on data, and truly focus on the customer. Every company I've ever worked for talks about how important the customer is, but on day 2, they're forgotten. Amazon seems to genuinely focus on what's best for the customer, and it's awesome to be in meetings where people actually bring that up, and make decisions focused on long-term customer satisfaction. The opportunities to learn here are literally unlimited, and the opportunity to take on new responsibility is as well. I honestly believe you can be as awesome as you want here.
Cons: No cons, so far - seriously. Like I said, I'm sure Amazon has some bad pockets in it here and there, but this is an amazing job, an amazing opportunity, and the biggest thing I have to complain about is that it's a little chilly in our building. I can live with that. Does Amazon demand high quality, measurable results? Yes! Is it hard work? Yes! Is it rewarding? Yes! So I'm not calling that a 'con'. Work/life balance seems comparable to other places I've worked - not worse.

Salary - B | Culture - B | Management - C | Coworkers - C

Pros: The work life balance is great and I feel that I can work hard but still enjoy my personal time. Great benefits and good for networking Pay was good and fair The culture here is great. Team was great and friendly
Cons: No work life balance along with mandatory work from office rule for 3 days a week. Less benefits if you are on a remote contract! pay was low but sensible for country The culture of the building is toxic and they really don't care about you. They also hired my team for 5 months then fired them

competitive salary and benefits package Ramp Back program good benefits wish it comes with better employee discounts tho Vacation sucks for corporate job

Salary - A | Culture - B | Management - | Coworkers - A

Pros: - You can learn a lot very quickly in a very short time - Surrounded with nothing but incredibly smart and driven individuals. - Compensation is well beyond my expectations, and more than suitable. - Exciting projects all across the company that keep you interested and focused. - Amazon is changing the world
Cons: - Can be overwhelming, very steep learning curve - Can be difficult to keep up if you are not self motivated

Salary - B | Culture - B | Management - C | Coworkers - C

Pros: The work life balance is great and I feel that I can work hard but still enjoy my personal time. just that there was good pay and goodies Great benefits and good for networking The culture here is great. Team was great and friendly
Cons: there is no work life balance and everyone seems to drink too much coffee Slow and low pay raises. Less benefits if you are on a remote contract! The culture of the building is toxic and they really don't care about you. They also hired my team for 5 months then fired them

competitive salary and benefits package Ramp Back program good benefits wish it comes with better employee discounts tho Vacation sucks for corporate job

Salary - B | Culture - B | Management - C | Coworkers - C

Pros: The work life balance is great and I feel that I can work hard but still enjoy my personal time. just that there was good pay and goodies Great benefits and good for networking The culture here is great. Team was great and friendly
Cons: No work life balance along with mandatory work from office rule for 3 days a week. Slow and low pay raises. Less benefits if you are on a remote contract! The culture of the building is toxic and they really don't care about you. They also hired my team for 5 months then fired them

Very good insurance benefits and maternity/paternity leave options. Love the insurance and benefits wished they offered free lunch in the office. Standard benefits package for large corporation.

Salary - A | Culture - D | Management - | Coworkers - B

Pros: This company gets A list performance from C list employees. The culture is quick and hard charging. You are always working in relevant and meaningful projects.
Cons: Maybe because the company recruits C listers who have neither merit (intelligence, strategic vision) nor pedigree (academic or professional accomplishments), most of those who become successful do so in treacherous, low cunning ways. Imagine the Lannisters in Game of Thrones attacking the Starks in Game of Thrones; or Rawls and Burrell attacking McNulty and Daniels in The Wire; or Barrow and O'Brien attacking Mr Bates in Downton Abbey. This is every day leadership behavior at Amazon. The culture at Amazon is so infested with these middling talent weasels who have juked the stats and schemed their way to positions of power that new employees coming in actually start thinking that this behavior is normal and expected if you want to "manage people." The work itself was stimulating and fulfilling, but the sneering condescension of the d bags that cheated and skated their way through high school and party colleges, then just converted their winky nod nod good 'ol boy shenanigans into a "ask no questions, have no introspection" company culture have made manifest some of the worst criticisms of capitalism. Any left leaning political aspirant would look at this business organism and immediately have content to lash out against the corruption that can come in free enterprise where hard work is not rewarded, and the connected, incestuous, privileged class lounge their way to wealth while treating their employees and customers like some kind of filth their shoe picked up on the street.

Bezos you bought the Washington Post and hired Jay Carney to be your PR head. There is nothing I can write here that you would deign listen to, because you are a hack. You must be mad that Expedia beat you to the punch and hired Chelsea Clinton to serve on their board of directors. For those grasping Weasels that have squirmed and back stabbed your way to success, you know who you are. You won't care what is written here because "You got yours, Eff them." For those truly diligent and hard working employees that don't want to believe the story from NY times that called Amazon a "Snake Pit" because you don't want to think you actually are involved in such a dystopian landscape of anti-business ethics: "Always yell with the crowd. It is the only means to be safe."