Pros

challenging projects, good pay (considering RSU), talented coworkers, good place to learn, get to work in various areas (project management, planning, architect, development, maintenance, monitoring, metrics, etc etc)

Cons

lots and lots of work - i completely agree with other that there is NO work/life balance in amazon
very aggressive coworkers - you need to be tough

Advice to Senior Management

more communication.

Pros

Location, location, location - easy commute if you live in Seattle.

Some smart folks working down in the "trenches".

An "OK" job for someone right out of school, and never experienced anything better. But a <b>horrible experience</b> for a seasoned professional.

Cons

Multiple projects mislead by mid to upper level management who had no idea what they wanted. Really guys, can you waste anymore of my time on such a simple project?

Upper management caving to whims of executive management during project reviews - upper management would say one thing during a team review and do a complete 360 during executive reviews.

A dry, sterile work environment…not a lot of happy folks to deal with on a daily basis. A fair number of personality challenged individuals.

Archaic publishing systems and mediocre hardware provided to employees.

Advice to Senior Management

If you are going to hire experienced employees, please stop with all the micromanagement. This is so very wasteful.

Pros

Amazon is a fast paced business that prefers to act rather than wait indefinitely for the perfect solution. The organization is very flat, so responsibility is yours for the taking. They take leadership very seriously, and expect great things from their managers every year.

Cons

Can be long hours, but that comes with any operations job.

Advice to Senior Management

Like many companies, they sometimes approve savings and projects on loosely formed data. I believe Amazon could use learning a more standardized method of data analysis to better understand and validate the projects they take on and approve.

Pros

You learn a lot. Get to work on some very complex problems. Get to use a lot of new technologies. Lots of smart people.

Cons

A lot of legacy software that should be deprecated. On call support. Cross team communication can be frustrating at times.

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

can be exciting with authors and bands stopping by
lots of room for lateral movement within company
10% employee discount

Cons

very high turnover
ZERO work/life balance
24/7 blackberry attachment
extremely poor managers (very ignorant of basic management skills)
you are a number, which can be easily replaced (and are made aware of that)

Advice to Senior Management

get a grip on the extreme turnover! A company your size should not have a 30% YOY turnover rate! Train your middle management better - All they are concerned about is getting Jeff Bezos's attention for promotion purposes.

Pros

1. challenging and helpful to write all these different topics
2. As regarded, you will get lots of help from team mates when needed

Cons

1. too much time spent on stuff
2. regards to all files in place, some are being to close minded.

Advice to Senior Management

1. challenging and helpful to write all these different topics
2. As regarded, you will get lots of help from team mates when needed

Pros

Real corporate culture -- it comes from the top, it is consistent, it is communicated, it makes sense, it makes customers happy. People really refer back to it when making decisions. Kind of tough on the employees but you can't have everything.
If you perform, stock options are excellent.
If you want to be a leader and you can do it, you can get extremely educational access to incredible top people.

Cons

Stressful. Work-life balance is poor in many groups. High operational burden in many groups.
Benefits are bare minimum -- their philosophy is they would rather give more grants to reward the productive, then to have benefits that go to all employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Recruiting is overly decentralized. Too often a candidate gets "grabbed" by an inappropriate group, and then the candidate will either be turned down or unhappy they didn't get a good match.

Pros

Extremely smart people. Very open communication. I probably learnt more there in 1 year than all of my education and past work experiences combined. Casual dress code.
Total ownership of product.

Cons

Total ownership of product. You are responsible for design, development, test, deployment and maintenance. On-call rotations play a bit of havoc with work-life balance, but definitely manageable.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow a bit more freedom to move within the org. Its currently difficult to switch teams due to the rigorous interview process even for current employees. If someone is doing pretty well in their current position, they will do well in their next one at Amazon.

Pros

I'll never complain about the advancement opportunities at Amazon. I was able to move around quite a bit in the company which kept the boredom off

Cons

phone shifts were long and dealing with the elderly callers who didn't understand how to use their computer, let alone order online kept those calls going and annoying.

Advice to Senior Management

I have none. I was given many opportunities that i was very happy with. I really can't complain about it.

Pros

I am very proud to have been a part of Amazon. It could be a frustrating place to work, but it was never boring. I have never felt so mentally stimulated.

Cons

Be prepared to work hard. Jeff Bezos is amazing but he has no concerns for you individually. That didn't bother me at all, but you have to know that going in.

Advice to Senior Management

When I worked there many frustrated me, and I would have passed them on to senior management. Now, however, looking back on what they have achieved, I wouldn't suggest they change anything.