rating for Amazon.com

Like working for Initech in Office Space posted on July 29, 2008

Amazon will pay you well. The only perks I can think of: bus pass, miscellaneous unimpressive discounts<end of list>

Amazon has a culture of build it quick, launch the prototype and let the developers nurse it along with a pager whenever something breaks at 4am.

There are good teams at Amazon, apparently, but I didn't get to work on any of them.

From what I can tell upper management's primary responsibility is for blaming the people below them for things breaking and missing deadlines. Developers are not empowered to do things right --only to do things quickly... and with Perl.

Office furnishings are spartan. Developers are looked at as interchangeable cogs in a machine. Turnover is high.

If you get hired at Amazon, do not spend your signing bonus immediately --if you want to quit in your first year you're going to have to pay it back (pro-rated). This is why the typical developer lasts just over a year.

Because Amazon's hiring bar is very high --I get to enjoy the weird experience of being surrounded by brilliant, miserable people.

One of Amazon's core tenets is "frugality" which is another word for cheapness. Don't expect things like free soft drinks, a proper desk, or more than a few dozen square feet of office space.

Performance reviews are once a year wastes of time where even the best of the best employees only get around a 4% bump. Amazon claims that everyone gets reviewed by their peers, underlings and managers before their compensation gets adjusted but, like everywhere else, it really comes down to whether your manager likes you or not.

The only reason I see for working at Amazon is if you want to use it as a stepping stone to a better job (every time you change employers you can expect a raise).

In other words, use them, because they sure as hell will abuse you.

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