Pros
* Nearly limitless growth opportunity, from engineering/technical skill, leadership ability and career progression perspectives. Managers (including managers of managers) are not successful if their reports are not demonstrating growth. * Never a dull moment, something new to learn every day. * Extremely entrepreneurial -- if you see an opportunity or want to contribute to something, nobody will get in the way to trying it, and you will learn how to get good ideas prioritized and funded. * Customer impact from your work is a given, as is scale. * About as good as it gets, if you want to work for a technology-driven company. * Embracing diversity the Amazon way: analytically, goal-driven, diving deep to understand better, measuring progress -- with results. * Opportunities to work almost anywhere on the planet.
Cons
* A work-life balance is possible, but not 100% of the time. You will work harder than you ever have in your life the first year, until acclimated to the role and the operational calendar. * Until you are used to it, the pace of change can be dizzying. Office space moves, new teams, reorgs -- if you don't like it when someone "moves your cheese", you're not going to like it. * This is both a Pro and Con -- there is no influencing with authority. You have to find a way to get people on board with your ideas. For me this mostly has net positive, but if you don't like influencing, if you prefer to escalate to get your way -- you're not going to like it. And you will need to influence. There are many engineering teams and you're going to have to partner with a lot of them. * Every team has more work to get done than a single team could complete in a decade. This is good in terms of nobody getting bored, but can be stressful depending on the nature of the work.