I know several people that work (or have worked) at Amazon, and am currently going through their interview process (among other companies, but I would likely accept a good offer from Amazon).

My conclusions:

1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad

2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team

3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview

4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged)

5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to; however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole

Overall, I would describe Amazon as a relatively good place to work on average, but the people that have it bad have it really really bad, and hopefully they can switch to a good team.

Bingo, I've had a hard time reconciling the HN's perception of AWS SDE work and my job. I have people telling me that it's horrible, attrition rate, constant grind and endless oncalls. Yet I've never experienced any of those things. Of all the places I've worked at in Canada, AWS was the nicest and I highly recommend it.

There are certainly some toxic teams out there, just like there are in any large org. I think an even bigger factor is the fact that Amazon is an enormous vertically-integrated monopoly that:

- abuses its market position to run competitors out of business

- mistreats its most vulnerable, low-level employees

For many of us, that's a moral dealbreaker. But there are certainly some great teams and interesting projects in the SDE space if that's what you want!

I wonder how much of this is the perception of Amazon warehouse workers being transferred over to Amazon technology workers. I've heard a ton of bad things about the former, but the folks I personally know who work at Amazon / AWS as tech workers all seem to be happy with it. Of course, how Amazon treats its warehouse workers is an indictment on the overall company, so I think I'd have a difficult time choosing to work there.

I don't think it started with warehouse workers, there was a famous NYT article talking about office workers at Amazon where entire teams would leave a meeting in tears:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

Among folks I know in Seattle, Amazon had a bad reputation as a burnout factory before those stories about the warehouses ever really came out.

I know two acquaintances that are SDEs that worked at Amazon and hated it. One of them was "forced" to work until 3-4 AM. His manager said to him, "How can you even think of sleeping right now?". Fortunately he found a new position at Microsoft. The other SDE feels like a cog in a machine and hates it so much he's going back to his home country.

You’re always a cog in the machine. If you think otherwise you’re being naive. No matter where you work, if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, your company would send “thoughts and prayers” to your family and have an open req for you before your body got cold.

I definitely can’t imagine “being forced” to do anything at a job too often before I’m looking for another job.

But there was the suicide of an office worker in Seattle.

There are more than 3 suicides every day in Seattle, I don't see how 1 suicide of a person that happened to work for Amazon is really telling of anything.

I am not aware of anyone working in any other FAANG tech space attempting suicide after sending an email to the CEO about transferring teams.

https://thenextweb.com/news/amazon-employee-email-note

Disclosure, long time principal at AWS but all statements are my own opinion. 1. Yes, but I believe its more culture than bureaucracy. 2. open transfers 30 days post hire, IIRC. 3. More org than team, and exceptions abound. 4. Yes. 5. Not quite; unregretted is employees with low perf rating leaving there is also regretted attrition which is mid-high perf rating employees leaving. The total is inline with industry norms (10-13%/yr) in my experience.

I’m not sure #4 is true. I don’t think anyone in the sales org is on call. No one on my team is that I am aware of.

FYI: all of these are off the mark, some more than others. Here's some more info to help flesh it out (which is lacking too because there is so much nuance to this stuff).

> 1. Amazon's internal beurocracy enables good teams to be very good, and bad teams to be very bad

These get sniffed out eventually. It's usually a cluster of teams and it comes down to a specific leader creating a toxic environment. Some are very good at managing up and hiding the problems. But that only lasts so long (although sometimes years).

> 2. However, there is significant internal mobility, so you can move if you get stuck on a bad team

Not true.

If you are SDE I (entry level) moving teams is incredibly hard. All of the job posting are for SDE II (except for rare circumstances) and above so you can't apply for other teams. Usually the only way to switch teams is if you know someone there and they can help you out.

If you are not in an engineering role, switching teams is even harder. The business side tends to be more political and also have more candidates for positions.

> 3. WFH policy is effectively left up to each individual team, so that is something to probe about during the interview

Not true.

If your skip-level or even higher says no remote then there will be no remote. While some groups may leave it to each "individual team" it can always be overruled.

> 4. Everybody at Amazon is in the on-call rotation, but on-call load varies significantly by team (I know someone working on an internal tool that has literally never gotten paged)

Not true.

There are teams that don't have on-call rotations. Groups that are building software that hasn't launched yet are likely not carrying a pager. Higher level managers and engineers (Principals) are likely not on a paper rotation. And a bunch of business teams don't have on-call rotations.

> 5. Churn is roughly 6%, as that is what the infamous URA target is set to;

Oversimplified.

That 6% changes every year. I've seen it much lower in some years. It all depends on what's going on in the company. That 6% is just a number they want forced out. It doesn't include people leaving on their own terms that the company would love to have back, so churn is higher.

> however, you'd be surprised how many incompetent people make it past even FAANG interviews, so I wouldn't particularly worry if you're good at your job and your boss isn't an asshole

That's a dangerous assumption to make. It's not as simple as if your boss isn't an asshole. A big factor is if your boss knows how to set you up for success and if you know the rules of how things work there.

During review time, groups that are run well will have each team bring a list of their lowest performers to discuss. They vet how well these employees are functioning against the expectations for their level. If things naturally fall into the right ratio of people that need to be slotted below the bar, then they are done. But if there are not enough people they start digging more into where people land in relation to each other. If your boss hasn't set you up with work that allows you to demonstrate your real abilities then you are likely in trouble. It's not that your boss is an asshole, but that they are inept and screwing things up.

AWS and Amazon is not for everyone, and that's not quite about us being 'elite' or the 'we only hire the top X%' (though statements like that are probably true too). It's more that the first part of "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History" is true at Amazon and long-time Amazon employees tend to be unusually driven and missionary and very much about shipping things.

For those this suits, it's great, we tend to weed out bullshitters and we're vastly less political than other operations I've seen. But it's not for everyone and others move on, and that does contribute to some churn. If you're considering Amazon, it's important to think hard about whether this is for you or not.

Our 'median tenure' numbers are constantly skewed by how much we've been growing. At times our doubling rate has been as little as 18-months, and so you get a lot of employees who haven't been here very long just from that too. Our actual attrition numbers are pretty middle of the range for tech. This year we has a spike in attrition at the beginning of the year - as did other tech companies - but we think we've been out-performing industry over the year as a whole. We were also ranked the #1 company where Americans want to work by LinkedIn, which is not nothing.

Amazon is full of very long-tenured folks and tends to have very stable leadership teams too.

I worked back at microsoft when gates was still there. we had saturday meetings all the time. Like a couple of times a month. I was routinely doing work at 11pm trying to get things checked in before midnight. This was before gates had kids, we all joked. The stock made the job lucrative but it was killer, I can't believe I did that. Mostly I saw people retire, not quit or get fired.

The difference with amazon is that everyone experienced knows a fair number of people who quit because of the stress and negatives, with lots of money on the table if it goes 2 or 3 months. I have two friends who quit, each with a quarter million coming if they stayed one more quarter. It would have to be pretty bad for that. I didn't see this happen at microsoft. We made progress in our jobs, and rest and vest wasn't even an ironic statement.

If you work at any of the major tech companies and have been there for awhile, you are always “leaving money on the table” because of invested RSUs.

That fact is true, a fair point - when I left microsoft I left money behind but I got to go to a new faang job and left that ass ballmer behind ;-) But these friends were coming up on their 3 year anniversary I think. Amazon backloaded stock for a while. And it was more than 250k. I asked them why they couldn't get sit for a week, then take vacation, just do no shit for a month at amazon. And these two people separately said it was just so stressful they couldn't take it any more.

It’s the same concept. The first two years you are getting your base + prorated signing bonus + 5% of your RSUs the first year and 15% the second year. If the stock price stays level. Your 4 year compensation is going to stay about level - you get a slightly smaller signing bonus the second year. If it goes up significantly by year 2.5 (20% every six months after year 2). You will see a massive jump.

If Amazon did just pay you base + stock at an even 25/25/25/25. You would still be “leaving money on the table”.

One factor I haven't seen mentioned is that Amazon has a split-personality problem.

AWS is a tech company. Reasonably comparable with other FAANGs, with wide variation within teams.

Amazon is a logistics company with a web site. Logistics companies treat their employees very differently than tech companies. Amazon proper seems to me to have split personality.

Warehouse employees are treated badly, but pretty well in many ways, compared to other warehouse employees.

Tech employees at Amazon are treated well, but I can see an exec that came through the logistics part having a different mentality.

> I am wondering if i made the right decision

Passing on a career building line on your resume and a significant increase of your salary on the possibility (far from guaranteed) that you may end up in a team so unbearable you would have to leave the company before reaping the aforementioned benefits is of course not the right decision.

Some teams do truly suck at Amazon, either because of the manager or the work (or both), but in those situations you can always easily change team after a year if not less. And you will find such teams in any other company.