People who love working at Amazon

I highly doubt the first year attrition rate. It sounds unsustainable for any length of time. I would guess their attrition rate is higher than other top tier tech companies though, but only marginally.

Only minions tbh 🍌🍌

Just like any company, it mostly comes down to the team you work on. I love my team. Everyone is very knowledgeable, easy going, rarely hit 40+ hours of work per week, oncall load is non-existent, etc., etc. But if you get stuck on a dead end, internal team, hell yeah you're going to have high attrition. Nobody wants to maintain existing software, get paged non-stop, and have a toxic boss. With that said, you are correct in that amazon is very "frupid" (so frugal it's stupid). This affects the entire company. And is something that is quite annoying. Some key examples: no free food or drinks, terrible 401(k) matching, you have to pay to park in the building. My advice, if you're considering amazon, is to tough it out on the first team you get placed on. Do your research on good teams to join, and switch soon after. Good luck!

Are you tech or non tech? It could make a huge difference.

First, Amazons attrition has been incredibly low the last three years. I’ve seen the data and we’re below the tech industry averages. I love it here because the scope and ownership we offer is unmatched at comparable levels at most other top companies. In general, we love faster than most other big companies and most of our projects scale to millions of users. Our culture can be tough to keep up, but we don’t have a bloated layer of ‘rest and vest’ peers who block projects due to inaction, at least compared to other big companies. Our products are diverse enough that you can literally work on just about anything and have many different transformative experiences all within one company (ie AWS to Alexa to Go). Finally, our comp philosophy is frustrating to many, but if you are a top performer and last a few years you will be rewarded. I have golden handcuffs keeping me here. G/FB cannot match my TC.

Do you love bananas and making people cry?

EPA is a small office. Are you interviewing for AWS or Alexa Shopping? In both cases, transfer to Seattle is very easy since your org would have some teams in Seattle area. However, if you plan to stick around in Bay Area, it could open new opportunities in many more companies.

It’s not as bad as people make it out to be. Are there outliers? Yes. It’s a high paying online service company. People expect amazon and AWS to work, which means oncall for engineers. I’m been at amazon for almost 3 years after leaving a company with no oncall, and the same worry you have. My experience has been pretty good. Some teams and managers suck, and that exists at all companies. Would I want to move to another company, yes. I’m also in no rush. It’s fine. Large scope, lots of products and services. Plenty to learn. Be strict with your time, it’s east to get caught up in the shuffle and get overworked. Say no.

I just left AWS after a 2 year stint. I loved AWS professionally. I had a ton of autonomy. I could build where I saw fit. And I loved my management. I left because culturally, I could not keep up with my personal life, given how much momentum we had behind the program we were building. Family suffered a lot, but that was on me, and not Amazon. I bought in to the leadership principles, and genuinely believe in them as the basis for running the business. In my experience, I liken working in AWS, to working in some type of political position. You have access to everyone in the tech world, as most want to figure out how to partner or build on the platform. Beyond networks and relationships, you are expected to learn the tech, which is daunting for a sales or BD oriented role, which I was in. This was not mandated, but needed to get better. I complained while doing it, but am so happy I did. I feel like the experience of working at Amazon for 3 months, is like a year at any of the legacy tech companies. With that being said, in rapid higher mode that they are in, you have a good amount of external influence that is butting up against the core LPs. I was lucky to work there, and learn there. It was NOT easy. But I learned a ton, and was able to move to a new role with possibilities to go back. I’d recommend amazon to anyone, who I felt met the LPs, but that isn’t everybody....