Pros
- You get to work with some really smart people, and the bar is incredibly high. You can trust that everyone in your team (and other teams you work with) is capable of doing high-quality work, and they will be able to unblock themselves when necessary. - You may get the chance to work on some really interesting projects: working at a company of this size means having challenges that are only found at this size. - Having Amazon in your resume opens a lot of doors in your career, and guarantees you at least an interview in almost any company in the world.
Cons
- In general, Amazon values really little their employees. It looks like if most of the people of your team quit the company every 1-2 years that's expected. People get burned out , and try to stay only as much time to get some of the stocks (you only get a little percentage the first year). If you search for people you'll see most quit either after 2 years -when you don't need to return your relocation bonus anymore- or after 4 -when stocks stop vesting. This means that you will get to work with demotivated people who are just waiting their best moment to leave. Amazon doesn't seem to care about any of this and they just keep on replacing people who leave, without taking any action to address the concerns that got people out in the first place. - This is a highly political company. There's no way that we are "working backwards from the customer" if teams are fighting over getting each other's stake. When your team gets into one of these fights and decisions are made without anyone being able to state a good reason for them, it becomes difficult not to get emotionally affected. - Salary increases do not account even for inflation, leaving you with less money the more time you spend there. Not me neither any of my colleagues got an explanation on what we were doing wrong to get such ridiculous increases, or any other suggestion rather than "get promoted". My rent and costs where increasing more than 3% each year and from Amazon I got a 1.3% increase after more than a year and a half. - This is secondary, but most benefits are just there for the sake of saying "we have those too". The dental and other insurances make you pay a monthly quantity and in general add little value over what you would get if you pay them by yourself if you were not in Amazon. - While I was there, there was a time where I was strongly thinking to go to US due to some personal reasons that made this almost a requirement for me. Amazon wouldn't support me because a few months before they added a rule stating that to relocate somewhere where you need a visa, you need to be an SDE-II and be in that position more than a year. Amazon has become the only company in my career so far that wouldn't help me relocate to a country where they have an office and positions available. This is something that can affect employees' lives a lot and they have introduced this as a vague internal rule without any explanation. But I guess visa sponsorship is expensive, and not worth it if the risk is just losing a replaceable SDE-I resource. - Don't even get me started on diversity.