Holidays and vacation at Amazon
I was recently offered a spot as an SDE at Amazon. I just found out that the time off policy is awful. Not only that, but the holiday count is also 1/2 what I currently have! Not even the day after thanksgiving? Ouch. Is this a rigid policy?? What do folks do between Xmas a New Years? My last two companies have shut down for this week...I get that is a busy retail time...but still... Is this Amazon time off as bad as it seems on the surface??
That was definitely a big reason I didn’t join four years back. Not so much the time off itself, but what it indicates about the company.
Varies by manager. I take time off whenever I want and never log it in the system. My manager is chill. I have lots of PTO saved up even though I've taken plenty of time off. It'll get cashed out when I leave and get somewhere else. Free vacations!
In Bay Area, it’s 15 vacation days + 3 floating holidays + 9 fixed holidays for 1st year employee. 5 more days for 2nd year. I worked at Google before and it’s almost the same policy.
It really is that bad. They do not officially negotiate for more PTO as part of the offer, but you may be able to negotiate unofficially with your manager. That will only last as long as your manager does. Between Christmas and New Years, most things slow down, except for the few unfortunate teams with a high operational burden. But, you might get a chance to work on your pet peeves during this time, rather than main product work. Maybe. Also, SDEs tend to last about two years before leaving.