Can someone actually describe the Amazon work culture? What is so bad about it? Are there any good teams? TC 0 noob
Avoid GuardDuty
Watch all seasons of Prison Break. Pretty much same culture.
Amazons culture of stack ranking, mandatory URA targets and LP’s breed less collaboration and more competition amongst teams and individuals. Sometimes this might be good, but more often than not it leads to a toxic environment for most. Also, people bust their ass all year long, deliver projects and measurable goals only for leaders to force down people’s ratings down just because they want to grade you on a curve. This coupled with a serious lack of vision (or strong leaders) in most orgs makes it hard to stay motivated.
Things become highly political. You need to form alliances, and get the right projects. helps to join a race gang to attack and defend in groups You should try to binge watch survivor tv series then study some psychology behind it
Adds a whole new level of clarity to affinity groups
100% Toxic
Amazon’s LPs entitle people to be jerks. They are supposed to foster a culture of healthy competition where talented people grow and are rewarded correspondingly, but this is not the case at all. People are rewarded for being a***holes to their peers, as this is supposed to be evidence that they have a backbone, don’t hesitate to disagree and have high standards. However most of these people don’t hold themselves to the same high standards they use to evaluate people. Most L7s in many orgs are people like this, unfortunately
I was in your shoes OP just a few months ago. It depends on the org you join. Some better than others, but they still have the same underlying problems. There is the URA and stack ranking they push every one through. You are literally in a race against your peers and while they may help you in some ways it’s always done so they can show that they’re putting in more than 100%.
Backstabbing trash
Feels a bit soulless and impersonal. Been here for 8 years and after spending time at another company I realized why everyone says Amazon has a bad culture. Nobody really cares about each other, it's 100% the rat race. And it kinda makes sense. If you read the everything store, that's kinda the culture that Bezos pushed down the company.
Been here 7 years. I think the main bad thing is that you always feel like you’re in competition with your peers. Competition is natural, but I think it’s more intense at Amazon. Some people thrive in it, others, not as much.