Amazon.com Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Amazon.com

Pros – Amazon does a great job of hiring the best people. You will get to work with some of the smartest people you'll encounter anywhere. I met more people with 2+ advanced degrees while working in the supply chain group than anywhere else.

Cons – There is hardly any chance of a person receiving a promotion. Part of the problem with hiring the best people is that really good performance is considered average. With hundreds of engineers in an organization only a tiny number would ever be promoted in a year. It's very discouraging.

There are 2 very different worlds in Amazon, the older areas and the newer ones. Working in the original operations or retail areas you can have a work life balance. However, in the AWS division people are expected to work roughly 60 hours per week. There is no work/life balance. If you have a family your spouse really can't have a job.

Advice to Senior Management – The AWS division should learn from the rest of the company how to treat its engineers. In the rest of the company engineers are expected to think like business owners and their opinions are valued. In AWS, or at least my corner, management doesn't want engineers to make suggestions.