How is Amazon A9 team and how valuable do you think will this experience be? Do they operate like a startup - agile and move fast?
A9 is full of morons. If you want to learn how to do search wrong, it's the place for you. It doesn't have the full Amazon culture, so it has that going for it.
what's the place to learn search?
I know someone working at A9, so this is second hand information: A9 works on a lot of research kind of POC projects, they are also responsible for all kind of Amazon Search and Advertising. Their Algorithms are well reputed academically (A9 is a clever abbreviation of Algorithms) but as we know Amazon Search isn't great. Culture-wise, A9 is much better than the rest of Amazon. They get more holidays, better snacks and work-life balance.
Worm-like balance :D Brilliant Freudian in the context of Amazon.
I heard they have frozen burritos.
I don't mind eating that as long as the work and team are good.