What’s UX (and specifically User Research) like at Amazon?
I’m curious to hear from user researchers and ux designers, but anyone currently at Amazon please let me know your thoughts - is the function valued? Are these people generally viewed well, happy/fulfilled, compensated reasonably, workload ok, etc.? Are they at a par to Product Management and Engineering or treated as less than. Thanks!
I agree it depends on the team. I have a friend there whose a UX Designer, but she's the only one on her team, and her team has no UX Researchers. She is doing everything as a one man show, and it's really hard for her to get buy-in from her team. If things don't change, I imagine she'll be looking in a year or so. Just ask a ton of questions and talk to as many folks as you can on the team during interviews. I don't know what she makes, but they pay monthly.
As mentioned, it depends on the team; there are some big design teams at Amazon and then there are outposts of smaller teams or lone wolfs that get little of the support the big ones get; it really takes a motivated and driven designer to survive in the latter (there are very few researchers outside of the core teams as well). UX is valued (though also misunderstood as pixel pushers) but is just another part of the equation that is often overlooked on project timelines or in early product definition phases. However at the same time, if successful in earning trust of stakeholders and leadership, design can lead an entire organizations vision and have a huge impact; which is why some designers actually prefer the smaller UX teams or lone wolf roles for the potential of greater ownership and opportunities.
Overall it’s great. We have far fewer researchers than designers, but researchers are highly respected in my experience. Especially if you have exceptional quantitative abilities. If you go to a small design team, or work as a solo designer, it can be challenging. But as was previously mentioned, if you can command the respect of a range of different roles (basically, exhibiting a lot of product manager skills) then it can be preferable to the larger design teams. The bigger design teams are mostly strong, though some of them are obnoxiously arrogant. I personally make a point of working closely and communicating constantly with SDMs and the technical product managers (PM at Amazon is...a wide band. Some are great, many are worthless; the more technical the better. I had lousy experiences with inexperienced MBAs who don’t know shit about tech and get called product managers) and this has been fantastic. There’s a lot of mutual respect, making it probably the best place I’ve ever worked at. Although, I was at no-name companies for years.
You spend lots of time writing about designing projects.
That sucks. What a waste of valuable resources.
If you find one, do what you can to keep that person, in my experience keeping them around is really hard and once you lose them you will likely have to go without
It sucks.
In my experience so far, there is too much focus on research deliverables rather than impact. I’m trying to change that on the team I support. Also, there is general mistrust/misunderstanding of qualitative methods. I’m working on changing that as well. I spend a lot of time writing when I could be running another iterative study or round of interviews to improve our products. All that said, the people I support are all smart and capable. A few are very impressive.
Also, compensation is competitive with other FANG companies afik. I work more hours than I ever have, but I love what I do.
Depends on the team like any big company, but in my experience it's been the best job I've had so far and I've been around.