
What is it like to work as a software engineer at Amazon? - infinite_loop
I have been approached by Amazon&#x27;s technical recruiting department. The recruiter&#x27;s pitch mentioned AWS, Computer Vision and Machine Learning projects.<p>I am an experienced software engineer and I love my job. My current employer takes care of us when our family needs us, and our managers are ex-engineers.<p>If you are a current, or recent employee of Amazon, do you think I would I enjoy working for them?
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Isofarro
As far as I can tell, working in the AWS teams is perhaps the best software
engineering place to be at Amazon (e.g. note Tim Bray's joining the Vancouver
office.). The positivity from there I've seen echoed by other diverse sources,
so unlikely to be just kool aid.

Everywhere else, stay away, unless it is something you have a very very strong
passion for. (Perhaps the Games teams might be another AWS like atmosphere in
the making, hard to say yet). Don't get bait-and-switched with AWS buzzwords,
make sure it is AWS doing the hiring.

From my experience working for Amazon, they seem to grind engineers down, so
they are regularly churning through a constant supply of graduates to keep
employee numbers up. So a large chunk of engineering is new to 2 years.

Stack Ranking (the cross-over of staff between Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle
means the same people drawing up employee performance processes. They may
insist it isn't stack ranking, but looking at how the review process works is
inescapable that the nastiness of stack ranking is present)

Edit: there are a handful of genuinely good engineering teams at Amazon, but
their ability to make a positive impact is tainted by the volume of garbage
that surrounds them.

~~~
nefarioustim
Seconded.

Having been a Senior Engineering Manager in an Amazon business, I can confirm
that the stack ranking process is the single worse treatment of employees I
have ever experienced. Furthermore, it is not based on an honest and truthful
assessment of individuals, but rather who is best at standing up in a room
full of managers across one division and arguing that their developers are
better than someone else's, even if they've never met or seen the output of
the developers they are arguing against. In fact, I've even seen people judged
on the _amount_ of commits they've made (not the quality) and the _amount_ of
wiki edits they have published.

It was the single worst employment period of my life, resulting in depression
and stress that was off any scale you'd care to mention. I cannot recommend
enough that you avoid at all costs.

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ksherlock
I only know what Ted[0] told me: "This is a cheap place. Wait, did I say
cheap? I mean frugal. No Herman-Miller Aeron chairs here. It's nice to work
for a company that saves pennies so they add up on the bottom line. The office
furniture is utilitarian. I'm sure there is a fancy executive table somewhere,
but the conference rooms, training rooms, etc. just have plain tables."

I don't know if workplace conditions have improved in the past 10 years but I
hope their recruiting has.

0: [http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/The-Insider-
Amazon...](http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/The-Insider-Amazon-com-
weblogger-without-a-face-1119218.php)

------
throwaway_o
Amazon has a lousy reputation locally. It's well-deserved.

Think about this - you will be expected to switch teams every 12-18 months.
You won't love that like you love your job now.

Don't take the money. It's not much anyway, really.

~~~
throwaway_o
To be more particular though, you most certainly will not like the strict
hierarchy (see this comic[1]). And you will not like the non-technical
managers who (see comic) have a lot of control and complete political power.

[1]

[http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-
charts/](http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/)

~~~
dreaminvm
The Oracle comic made my day. I've despised their software since forever.

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istvan__
Ex-Amazonian here, few things to consider. The following things are highly
dependent on the team you are ending up working for though.

a, Amazon is frugal

Meaning that your workplace is looking like a grayscale picture of the surface
of Mars. Chairs are pretty cheap, desks are wooden doors (just a gently
reminder that our beloved CEO was poor once and he could not afford to have a
nice office).

Amazon encourages employees to use their own equipment by not giving out nice
work devices. When I started to work, I got a used laptop that was falling
apart it had 2G of ram and slow hard drive. After few years it was upgraded to
a non-SSD laptop with 4G of RAM. There was an internal thread about this,
people were raging (rightfully though).

Amazon does not give you a credit card, regardless if you need to travel
abroad. You also have a very tight budget that you can spend every year.

The salaries are laughable compare to other companies, their approach is that
people are going to stay because they like the company not because their work
is appreciated.

b, Amazon is a high risk low reward company

As a software engineer you are responsible for your code at the extent that if
you are causing an outage (even a very small one) you might be excluded from
promotions for a year and you have to explain it to a set of people how things
went sideways and how you are going to prevent this situation in the future.

If you are doing good and all of your changes are great, you might even keep
your job. Well, no promotions though, for that you need to befriend a set of
people who are going to choose who gets promoted. Promotions don't really have
anything to do with your performance, those mostly based on how good your
manager is selling you to other managers.

I usually recommend Amazon as a CV value booster company, for senior engineers
it does not have too much value, you can just work for Google or Microsoft
(please do not troll me with anti-MS agenda) with similar recognition but way
better salaries and work environment.

~~~
istvan__
I forgot to mention that post from Steve Yegge that is one of the best and
most entertaining (but still very insightful at the same time) reviews of
Amazon.

[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

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duncan_bayne
This may be of interest:
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

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mattmurdog
Unless we're talking life changing money, stay far far away.

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mter
What are you looking to gain from the switch?

If you love your job, unless it comes with a substantial bump in pay, I
wouldn't switch.

------
rifung
As much as I'd like to give you good advice, it's difficult because you don't
give much background about where you are working right now and what you like
about it. That being the case, I'll just give you advice I wish I had for
myself, and if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

First of all, the company is huge, but the teams are relatively small. What
this means is that your experience may vary greatly between teams. I'll start
off with things that are consistent across Amazon (Seattle).

As far as benefits and things like that go, Amazon is the cheapest company
I've ever seen. Their pay is pretty much the same as what you'd get in Silicon
Valley, but the rent is cheaper. However, as far as I can tell their health
plan is just mediocre and you don't really get any benefits beyond that. There
aren't even really snacks, unless you count cheap coffee. If you want them
though you can buy them from vending machines. This cheapness extends beyond
benefits; I have had to use my own phone and cables for device testing.

The company does very very little to boost its image to its employees. The
buildings are really boring, and you don't even get any Amazon "gear". They'll
give you a backpack, but it's just a normal one. You'll probably hear about
Amazon releases the same time as everyone else outside of Amazon unless you
are working on the team doing the release.

The company relies heavily on internal tools. The tools aren't necessarily
bad, but it's a huge pain to have to learn them when they aren't going to be
helpful anywhere else.

The company is really slow to adopt technology. Pretty much every team will
use Java and use the said internal tools. The company is really practical and
safe in this way. They prefer to just use what people know. Also the company
really values experience and credentials. Seeing as the company just uses Java
and internal tools, it's difficult to learn new technologies on the job which
will be applicable elsewhere.

All in all it feels like the company cares extremely little about its
employees. For example, you get Christmas day off. Period. Not Christmas Eve.
Same for Thanksgiving: you just get Thursday off.

Now there's the stuff that might change between teams, so this is all based
off my personal experience.

Coming from start ups, people aren't that excited about their work. On the
other hand, it's relaxed so it's nice for people with kids I think.

There isn't much sense of teamwork or energy. I don't think I've ever seen
people proud to be part of their team.

I've asked many people about why they decided to work here, and aside from the
very occasional "the work is interesting", pretty much everyone just works
here because it's Amazon.

The work is actually really boring. As I said, the company is really safe so
unless you are super senior and have some incredible credentials or have been
with the company for a very long time, it's unlikely you'll get to do anything
ground breaking.

The quality of the engineers varies pretty greatly. There are a few really
awesome engineers and a bunch of mediocre ones.

I'm not even really sure the people here like programming. I don't even think
I like programming that much but I'm the only person I know who does any form
of side projects.

tl;dr I really see no reason to come here when you have a job you like. Amazon
is like something out of a nightmare; a place where people go to forget their
dreams or aspirations and have their livelihood sucked out of them.

