I keep hearing such negativity about Amazon so I want to share my experience with others. The negativity on blind does not fully represent the company and certainly does not represent my personal experience.
No I'm not a recruiter or manager. This is not a fake advertisement. I've been in amazon for near 10 years, promoted from SDE1 > SDE3. I'm being put up for principal, no idea how that will go. Been in 4 separate organizations.
My WLB has been great. I've had many weeks where I work a solid 10 hours and slack off the rest of the time. Other times I feel motivated and will work the evening, all based on personal choice.
At all points of my career I had big scope. I'm now at a point where I choose my own technology, languages and architecture for the team. I love functional object oriented languages so that's the route we've chosen. Lately we've moved to more AWS serverless solutions which have been fun to learn. About 80%+ of the time I am building new stuff. Rarely am I maintaining or integrating with legacy systems. I do tons of designs, design reviews and lots of mentorship.
My comp rose from 105k when I started to 460k today. Partial stock growth and consistent high ratings.
The people around me have been solid. Fun personalities, lots of drinking and outings. People making jokes left and right. Lots of talent. Many lunch buddies. Made many friends who I've worked with for many years.
I once talked to Google and they couldn't match my comp. I considered Facebook but their tech stack didn't sound appealing. Netflix could be in my future, but as the saying goes if it ain't broke don't fix it.
I have friends at Google getting stagnant from working on technology that has no clients. And a lazy team who expects people to do the minimum to get by. They are bored, stuck at their level because promos are hard and getting paid a lot less than me.
Culture fit is everything.
So for those who keep stereotyping amazon, remember you are getting your info from the people in toxic organizations, who don't understand how easy it is to leave these organizations.
For those having a shitty time at amazon. Move fucking teams. Its not hard to do and there are many openings. Check tech survey and talk to devs on the team before joining. There are many good ones and few toxic ones. If attrition is high, management does get fired. Vote with your feet and stop complaining.
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PS: I have the same experience but every time I mention it I get accused of astroturfing. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Other companies seem to give everyone a chance (time) to improve things however they think will work with no real repercussions if itโs wrong. At amazon you have to fight that your idea is the correct way to go before being allocated time for it. The result of the former is you have a bunch of low rate technology youโre working on with low operational burden until things go south. The latter means you have some well thought solutions with high ongoing operational burden. Neither is ideal but Iโd prefer the latter because the operational burden is easier to fix than some software / service that just canโt scale any further. It also means that you know when things are going to fail and can plan for them well in advance.
First, the straw man. "My life has been great, so you other folks experiences are invalid." Way to sympathize with folks who didn't have that experience!
Next, the band wagon. "Everybody around me is great, so you just had experience with the few toxics." Well, not everyone agrees there are few toxics... there is a reason Amazon has as many bad reviews as good. Its a crap shoot.
Then, hasty generalization. "All you don't know how easy it is to move teams." Actually, if your manager hates you, it is impossible to move before or after your DP/PIP. Managers need to agree to your move, and they can (and often do) say NO.
Now Texas Sharpshooter. "Managers with high attrition get fired too..." Prove it. The trouble is, back stabbing _ get promoted. The conspire to get non back stabbing _ managed out. Course I wouldn't know, because I was a manager.
The whole thing is "middle ground". Its either really bad, or really good (i.e. you say you have great WLB, where most people say they don't).
Just 'cause you say it, doesn't make it true. Deliver results and dive deep brah. The statistics are NOT in your favor.