Amazon...Culture?
Hopefully title says it all. A buddy of mine joined Amazon and about 5 months later resigned (left end of September). Asked them why they left, and they went off on a close to hour long diatribe against Amazon. I got an email from an Amazon recruiter on Friday and haven't responded. How is it there? I know they worked in Seattle (as a SWE - not sure what level) but didn't ask which team. (not my intention to start an argument) Thanks
What did your friend say though?
Can be fun place to work, especially if you enjoy putting 60hours/week and have no expectations regarding rewards.
If you love work 24/7, don’t have friends, family and can eat a banana per day. Amazon is for you
Sensible answer: Amazon is too big. I interviewed recently and everyone was 5+ years. 6 years was lowest one, rest were 8.5, 10, 12, 7 years at Amazon. Maybe it depends a lot on team, it's just too big is what I feel. Blind answer: Amazon sucks 😛
It’s simple. Amazon is huge. There is work (interesting or not) and there are teams that treat you well if you do that work without expectations and there are teams that treat you like shit if you don’t work.
Depends on d team. 5 years and counting.
Totally team dependent. My team works 40hr weeks, low ops load and we have beers every Friday 🍻 I honestly love it. It’s unfortunate the culture on my team isn’t throughout the entire company
What's the churn rate you've seen, either PIP or managed out?
Amazon is shit
In general, not for everyone specifically if you like structure, clear direction, good benefits, employee friendly environment, slack a little from time to time, or have good WLB with family/friends/hobbies. Amazon is customer obsessed not employee obsessed. Lots of interesting things to do, endless work, great visibility, smart people to learn from etc. Think of Amazon as a nice place to grow, get visibility and go somewhere else. The culture is workaholic, rat race, fast pace, highly competitive, the bar is constantly getting higher, political in bad way, manager say you own your calendar but send lots of emails, chats after hours and expect your reply at 8pm on Saturday, most teams are overworked, small pizza teams that are optimized (aka overworked), self-service culture with awful internal tools, awful HR, lots of pressure to Deliver Results otherwise PIP, highly ambiguous environment - I need x oh go read this 90 page wiki or figure it out on your own type of culture, lots of responsibility (ownership), constant learning but outside of working hours - hey that’s the “have fun” part! Everything is to be done fast, go to market with quality for the customer and better be frugal. Overall, it can make you stronger, thick skin or break you. At the and of the day not a lot people stay at Amazon, the average tenure is 18 months, some have figured out the game or have the endurance to stay a little more, and a small number of employees absolutely adores Amazon!!! The comp philosophy, RSU are based on stock performance. Most of things are team and manager dependent, that’s why there people moving internally all the time. I’m 4 years and counting... but I think the grass is greener at Google.
It’s not for everyone but some people love it. Source: Jeff Bezos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTYFEgXaRbU
You can say this about practically any company large enough: Citadel, Facebook, Google, Uber, ...