Positive points about Amazon please...
Hi All, I will be joining Amazon this month, however whenever I go through Blind/quora, all I saw about Amazon are negative points like no WLB, lot of pressure etc. Does any developers have any positive things to say about Amazon? I want to join with a positive mindset but am really worried after browsing Blind. Position: L5 TC: 175K
Free bananas everyday. You'll never go hungry.
I thought it was a royal rumble to get the bananas or you do go hungry
Its not really *that* bad. All bad environments/WLB can be had at any company. Its just the culture is a bit more cut-throat and less forgiving than other big tech companies, and the biggest voice are the new grads unknowingly getting the short end of the stick with Amazon's mass hire/mass fire (shortlist/shorcut interviews and hiring for entry level L4 etc), thrown out to the wolves, may the best man win culture. Most new grads do not and have not developed the skills to do well in that environment, so we hear about how *bad* it is from the biggest churn group of employees, naturally. Amazon doesnt want to hold your hand, but unfortunately new grads/junior levels need that more often than not. I dont blame them, its not easy when you have zero work experience and the first job is so cut-throat. It's also ignorant people joining without fully understanding the role. For example in AWS as a Cloud Support Engineer. People complain it was tech support for AWS customers and there was on call rotation and blamed Amazon for lack of transparency due to WLB or job description. What the hell did you expect? It says SUPPORT in the title, not to mention a full job description. Its a 24x7x365 job. These types of things get heard the loudest. And these types of roles are easily farmed out to overseas support engineers due to coverage, hence the recruiting from odd countries. They dont get the management oversight and the social aspect or nurturing they deserve unfortunately. However it seems to be less common with external hires with experience at L5/6+ and the ones who have stuck around because they tend to thrive in that culture and have developed some soft skills to adapt and/or work within that type of culture. Unless you just suck and terrible to work with, which is hoping to be mitigated by the lengthy behavioral/cultural aspect of the interview loop.
Agree with most of what you’re saying overall, but Amazon purposely avoids listing oncall duties in job descriptions though for roles where it’s not obvious. Like SDE for example (where a lot of companies don’t practice DevOps like amazon)
You dont have to list them. Its obvious by the title and the org (ie: EC2). Its 24x7x365 services/products so its common sense to expect on call. Most of the time you know if you're gonna be part of an ops org before you join (unless at the team matching, then you'll know when you get matched). Again, L4/new grad hires/junior may not understand this yet so that falls under my first point. Its an experience issue not company issue per se. Many companies dont explicitly spell it out. Its up to the candidate to ask or confirm if they want to know.
Hi, My advice to you, is to delete this app and go in with a clear mind to be able to form your own opinion. You are right. Reading a lot of these post can scare people away. I’ve been with Amazon for 4 months now and love it. TC: 120k L5
New TC? YoE? Oh, what level? These are relevant to answer
Once it’s on your resume it will look great.
Amazon has a very distinct culture and your manager and their skip control your growth. To do well here, forget about the WLB posts and look for opportunities. Leadership Principles can be abused but overall, they can help you focus on the problems the business cares about. Our perks are ... limited (I'm not in Seattle) so dont count on special treatment. Enter hungry and look for opportunities to show impact. Document your wins because it makes the promo packet easier down the line
Why would you believe strangers on the internet?
What if you don't know anyone in person?
It's useful and it helps people save time and build things.
I have been with Amazon for a long time now, and I don’t regret it. In my experience, I have had a good WLB (I have worked for multiple orgs now), decent TC, lots of learning opportunities, worked with friendly people, etc. I say, try it out. If it doesn’t work out, move on to something else.
Because promo is hard and you make more money by jumping ship
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