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Ask HN: Would You Work for Amazon?
33 points by rootsudo on Nov 17, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 70 comments
I have recruiters reaching out weekly now for the past month - they're ramping up, I guess. I'm also in their hometown.

I always heard it was a rough/tough environment to work, long hours and it all comes down on your annual review. Equity is great though.

Roles are for devops, that's what interests me outside a general SDE role.



I recommend going through their recruiting process once to experience the ridiculousness, get the free lunch, talk to some folks. I wouldn't want to work for them though. For me, once I started working for an organization that actually tries to make the world a better place, actually living by real values, respecting employees, offering true work life balance, it's hard to ever consider a place like Amazon, it feels so foreign to me now.


I have gone through their recruiting process. It was very well organized and I enjoyed speaking with everyone involved. The developers and the managers I have spoke to were all nice people and I had good chemistry with everyone. I guess it depends on whom you are speaking to, as well as the location and department you are interviewing for. I ended up rejecting the offer but for different reasons.


It is well organized but basically a box ticking exercise (corporate values) with what I think are not very realistic or even creative whiteboard exercises. Everyone I've interacted with was very respectful but it's obvious that they go through tons of developers and therefore conducting an insane amount of interviews aimed at minimizing false positive hires. Not very inspiring, that's all I meant.


okay where’d you find that??


No. I did work for Facebook, and maybe one could argue about which one's worse morally, but at least the day to day working conditions weren't as bad as my many ex-Amazon colleagues have related. During my one-week-a-month visits to Seattle I also spent a lot of time having dinner at various restaurants in the heart of Amazon territory, and overheard a lot of conversations that completely supported my colleagues' accounts. I heard them planning their political moves and their plans to screw partners. I heard them slagging coworkers ... until that coworker showed up, and without missing a beat everyone started slagging the other coworker who just left. I heard what the male Amazonians said about their female colleagues. Overall it seemed very exploitative, hyper-competitive, and exhaustingly bro-ish. Just like Jeff Bezos - imagine that.

Yes, the equity is great ... if you survive to collect it. AIUI a larger than normal share of it is deferred, and a lot of people find their work situation getting sharply worse right before the big vesting event. Heard too many of those stories to believe it's coincidence. If collecting lots of equity is your thing, and I don't fault you for that, my impression is that any of the other FAANGs would be better.


> I heard them planning their political moves and their plans to screw partners. I heard them slagging coworkers ... until that coworker showed up, and without missing a beat everyone started slagging the other coworker who just left. I heard what the male Amazonians said about their female colleagues. Overall it seemed very exploitative, hyper-competitive, and exhaustingly bro-ish. Just like Jeff Bezos - imagine that.

You heard all of this at restaurants?


It's not my only source of information (see also: ex-Amazon coworkers) but yes. It's pretty common to hear a lot of such chatter at bars and restaurants near large companies' offices. Back when DEC was a thing, there were quite a few journalists who basically made their living by eavesdropping on DEC employees at the local watering holes. Competitors were known to do the same. The company tried and tried to impress on employees the importance of not having sensitive conversations in public places, but it never took.

Also: how did I know they were Amazon employees? Well, mostly it was the badges, which they tended to wear even outside the office. Terrible idea actually (at FB we were explicitly told not to do that) but still common. Even without that, it doesn't take too many product/facility names or bits of internal jargon to figure out what company someone works for. I could probably pass as an Amazon or Google employee in many contexts based only on those markers, even though I never worked at either.


Thanks for the response, but this comment

> I heard them planning their political moves and their plans to screw partners.

Which you said are restaurant conversations, sounds like pure fiction.


Since you're being more than a bit insulting to me, I'll say that it would only sound like pure fiction to someone who doesn't know how the world works. Companies like Amazon are notorious for blurring the lines between work and personal life, encouraging employees to think and talk about work at all hours. Then you have a place that's next door to - sometimes even inside - a company building, always filled with your coworkers. Oh, and alcohol. It's easy to forget what kind of space it is and what kind of conversations maybe shouldn't occur there. Or would you prefer to believe that people at Amazon never have those kind of conversations anywhere? Because if they have them anywhere, they have them in local bars too.

This is subject to empirical proof BTW. Try it. Go to Brave Horse (for example) and sit there through happy hour a few times. Unless you're the sort of person who's totally oblivious to their surroundings, you can hardly help but overhear all sorts of inappropriate work conversations. Don't accuse people of fictionalizing just because you personally haven't experienced what they have (or because it conflicts with what you would prefer to believe / have others believe). It's a noxious habit.


Nope, I really think I’d feel lost morally if I worked for Amazon. I’d gladly make 100k less per year and work for a company that doesn’t union-bust


Agreed. A lot of my friends work for Amazon, Google and Facebook. I can probably get glowing references from them since all of them have high regards of my work. I never bothered applying even when looking for work. I don't care how much they pay. All of these companies are awful and I'll never work for any of them.

I hear MS also has a very toxic environment but I have no close friends who work there.


They've called me numerous times over the years, and so far I've declined to ever pursue anything with them. By and large I'd say the answer is "no".

But I'll hedge just a little and say "never say never." If I were unemployed and destitute and desperate for any job in order to pay the rent and buy food, I'd probably do it. But that's a pretty extreme case...


It just depends what your options are. If you are a hot shot who can get a job anywhere, hey it's probably not the best, it would probably be nicer to work somewhere with a bit better of a reputation like Stripe.

If your alternatives are working for companies that nobody has ever heard of making less money than Amazon would pay, then yeah I'd jump at the opportunity to work for Amazon. You'll learn a lot and improve your resume, even if it doesn't end up being a long-term fit for you.


A number of years back I would have considered it, but my current company does lots of business with Amazon on the software side (Alexa Integrations, etc).

The amount I see their people having to work, and even how their leadership treats them (with me present) makes me never want to work there.

I have friends who are total workaholics, and they love it there.

If you love to work to live, skip it. If you love to live to work, you'll probably succeed.


It depends. It's a big company, so things vary org-to-org and team-to-team, so there are absolutely reasonable positions there. They have a quirky culture (to be fair, a lot of companies do), and some people do really well in it (and are rewarded accordingly). Also don't be surprised when friends leave after a year. When the NYT article came out, my thoughts were that these feel like the most egregious cases you could find, I see how the culture could get that out-of-hand, but I didn't personally see anything bad like that. I found their interview process to be normal enough, and I like the idea of a bar raiser.

Just do your homework and know what you're going into with eyes open.


It seems everyone who did not work at Amazon "knows" every detail about what it's like to work in Amazon.


No. They keep asking, I keep saying no. Too old to sell the constitution I have left.

Is the equity still backloaded for the last two vesting years? Ask why.


Last I heard, the backloaded equity is balanced by a hiring bonus so that the total compensation stays the same; it's just the type of compensation which changes.


True, but there's nuance why.

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explaine...


Setting aside moral judgements, and do decide based on that if you like (I would), there's another way to decide.

Look at the culture. Yes there is bad press about work-life balance issues and bad management, but you'll find that at some extent in any large company. Go deeper and look at the values.

Amazon is quite public about their values system, and there's lots more from current and former employees. Read about their values and how they put them into practice. For all the criticism I have for Amazon, they do have a strong culture, and that's both impressive at their and likely very beneficial.

If you fit their values (and don't mind the morals) then you'll fit in well, even if it's hard work. If you don't fit with their values, you'll hate it. Thankfully they are strong and clear enough about their values that figuring this out in advance is pretty easy.


I had multiple friends join Amazon/AWS right out of school. Every single one left within two years and not a single one of them would recommend working there.


I'll mention it because no one else has yet:

A big reason not to work for Amazon is that they make their employees sign non-competes. Thankfully those are unenforceable in California, but I still find it a reprehensible practice, even if it wouldn't apply to me. It's shitty when it's enforced (and they have done that), but it's still shitty even when it's not as it creates a chilling effect. Even the threat of enforcing a non-compete (even if that threat is 100% implied) is enough to hurt post-Amazon employment opportunities. I don't want to support that.

There's also being associated with their warehouse conditions and low pay (relative to similar companies), but others have covered that elsewhere.


No way in hell. The way they treat their warehouse workers should tell you everything you need to know about the character of the organization in general. You can tell a lot about a society, organization, etc. by how they treat the lowest among them.

That's not all, though. It's only a matter of time (how long? that's up for debate) until antitrust - be it real action, or merely the rumored specter thereof - results in some degree of upheaval internally. While I admit this is purely theoretical at the moment, it's certainly not outside the realm of reason to have concerns that said equity may wind up severely reduced in value if you get screwed by the timing of getting that equity vs. antitrust related events.

If I were in your shoes, unless I had no job at all and was desperate for the very first thing that came along, I'd give Amazon a hard pass for every possible role, bar none.


Have you ever worked in the Amazon warehouse? I've been both L1 (Sortation associate in the warehouse) on the floor, and now L4 (entry level SDE). I'm not going to refute your claims - it just seems most people screaming "Think of the warehouse workers!" have never actually worked in any warehouse, let alone an amazon one.


This is a strange comment: you take no issue with what they're saying, but seem to imply they can't have an opinion on anything they haven't personally experienced.


Not in an Amazon warehouse, but yes I have worked in a shipping warehouse in my early adulthood (19). It was hard work, sure, and my boss was an asshole who later got committed to the funny farm (seriously!). But I never had to take a shit while driving, I was never worked like a slave, and nobody ever implied something bad might happen to my family's jobs if I talked to a union rep either.

There's degrees here, and Amazon treats vulnerable people with a very high degree of hostility and abuse. That fact alone tells me everything I need to know about the people running that organization. They're not about mutual benefit - the real reason for capitalism - they're about exploitation, and they'll do it to anyone and everyone they can as long as they can get away with it.


Then, unfortunately, the CS job market is very restricted for you. At the very end, the parts of the computer you are using were produced in a third world country with employees working under very bad/sad conditions.


That's a pretty narrow minded view, considering I didn't pay that factory, I paid Apple. Or Dell. Or whomever. I have zero control with my vote as an American relating to working conditions in India, China, Malaysia, Pakistan or the like, and I refuse to be held morally accountable for something entirely beyond my control, especially when it's not even theoretically possible whatsoever. But I can at least vote in the US for whatever candidate(s) seem most likely to affect positive labor market changes, and hopefully those candidates will be able to leverage their office for geopolitical influence in a positive direction, ultimately contributing to positive changes in that country at some point in the future. That is at least theoretically possible, unlike your flawed notion that I have to reject all technology entirely because it was sold by people who abused vulnerable populations to create it, even though I have absolutely no control whatsoever even in theory over that.

Besides, you ever bought computer part, chip, etc. that was made entirely ethically in a first-world country paying good wages to skilled labor with rights, benefits, pensions, healthcare and so on, where the company and all its officers were entirely free of moral flaws? No you haven't, you know why? Because there aren't any and there never have been.

So compounding your error in logic here is the inescapable fact that no alternatives exist, which just further demonstrates the impotence of your combative argument and intent.


Yes, definitely good for me. Bagging a few years as an amazon engineer probably improves greatly the chance to get more interesting work in the future. Of course any company equivalent should also be good.


No, and I've gladly turned them down over and over. The main reason for me is their ethics; the stories of it being a toxic work environment just make me feel even better about the decision.


same for me. Just wanted to write some ethical points, but list got longer and longer ...


Amazon Retail? Absolutely not. Leaving aside questions about how they treat fulfillment staff (and I say "questions" advisedly -- from what I hear it's no worse than most warehouse jobs) their tolerance for the floods of crap -- fake products, paid 5* reviews, etc -- tells me that they've lost their long-term customer focus and are now chasing short term targets.

AWS? If I wasn't running Tarsnap, I would probably be working for them now.


I look at all of the big tech companies the same, so I'd imagine the overall work and culture at Amazon is very similar to what I experienced at Intel earlier in my career. It was absolutely miserable and I would never do it again.

BUT... what I gained from that experience has been valuable in many different ways. Having a recognizable name on your resume is big advantage for one. You'll also get a taste of what a high-stress environment is like and how to avoid it later in your career. You'll start seeing red flags at other companies and anticipate critical problems before your other colleagues can. It was always amusing to see my colleagues label me as "paranoid" when I said "layoffs are coming"; I'd find another opportunity and these poor saps would get blind-sided by the eventual layoffs. You'll know what it's like to be virtually on-call 24/7/365 and the stupidities that come with that.

The advice I would give others around this question is: If you're starting your career, I say go for it. If you're a senior engineer, I would say avoid at all costs.


Yes - I have friends that work there at AWS and are happy there.

Like any large company it will vary by team, but I wouldn't dismiss them up front.


If it was the only faang I could get into, of course, but even then I would be vigilant of their burnout culture and try to bounce within a year or so (if I see even a hint of it, I’m going to try to flip it within a year for another gig).

So yes, I’d use them. Why is Amazon not even trying to manage their reputation on this front?


No, the way they treat the lowest rungs on the ladder is atrocious.

Then there’s what they’re doing to commerce, they’re Walmart 2.0. Slowly and methodically choking the life out of every other retailer.

Finally there is Bezos, who whilst not running the show anymore is an incredibly unsettling and dislikable ‘human’.


Yes. Purely for the salary and long term benefit of my career. I do have some major complaints though.

I recently went through the interview process for a AWS security engineer position and made it through the final round although I was ultimately rejected.

The final 4-5 consecutive interview gauntlet was strange. It was 50% behavioral and seemed SUPER corporate. I was expecting tough technical questions and prepared as such.

I received precisely ZERO feedback, and was told it was corporate policy. Then they turned around and asked for feedback on their interview process. Ridiculous.

The work environment seems extremely unpleasant. Long hours and high stress is how its been described to me by colleagues who work there.


Under the right conditions, yes.

Having said that, I've talked to them twice - once as a general applicant and once as a high level referral for a high level role - and both times the experience was unpleasant (to put it kindly) and ended rather abruptly. I would not apply on my own to any job and would only consider something if I can actually skip their standard process.

Their problem from an outsider's perspective is that the recruiters have to achieve a high volume of inbounds in order to throw them into the interviewing machine such that they can hit their quotas after the machine chews up and discards the people who can't survive their very specific process.


https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-unregretted-at...

If you don't think you're part of the 6%... I've also had LinkedIn messages from someone who directly works for them, so it feels their approach is quite shotgun, i.e. just hire anyone and if it doesn't work out, that person can be part of the quota.

(It's different to other companies that know training someone to let them go soon after is costly.)


HELL FUCKING NO

Exhibit A: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...

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


I wouldn't look down on anyone that worked for Amazon. I hope I'm never in a situation where I would have to but I would if that happened, but I would prefer not to, simply because I think that Bezos is not someone I want to support with my time, energy or money and I think their corporation isn't doing anything to make the world better.

I do not shop from Amazon either for similar reasons, nor Whole Foods, and I also don't buy from Walmart, same reason.


I interviewed with them recently and one guy showed up late, didn't even have my info pulled up and was kind of a prick. Another lady kept interrupting me while I was writing my code to have me explain, even though I was talking her through it as I was writing every line. I had to explain a for loop to her. No offense to foreigners but Amazon should at least have people with a grasp on the english language conduct the interviews.


No, but only because I have an intense dislike for working in large organizations.

I don't see them as substantially different from any other FAANG level company though.


Shit, yeah, if they were offering 300-400% of my current salary, as seems to be par for the course when they hire mid-level engineers.


No. When I was in grad school, I was selected as an alternate for their on-campus interviews the night before, and I went through the full interview process first thing the next morning. I ended up getting an offer from them then, and after learning more about the company, I turned them down. I asked the interviewers about their work-life balance, and they talked about being on pager rotation in case something screwed up in the middle of the night. That's just an invitation for bad practices, knowing someone will always be there to bail you out, and I had no interest in being that person. The more I looked at the company and their retention practices, and the way they treat their warehouse workers, the less I wanted to work for them.

Their recruiters contact me every year or two, and I turn them down when they do. From what I can tell, nothing has changed there, and nothing will until they run out of people to burn through. (See: their policy on marijuana.) Earlier this year, one of their drivers left a bottle of waste on the street in front of my neighbor's house. Why would I want to work for a company that does not give their workers the basic dignity of being able to use the restroom when they need to?


If the culture fit with my philosophy I would.

They have a large number of employees now, so they must have found alignment with them.


I also have tons of Amazon recruiters reaching out. I wouldn't work there. The glassdoor reviews don't look great. Certainly not better than my current company (which I also hate).

Also, the messages I get just seem like they're spamming everyone so they can cast the biggest net. I dont take them seriously.


"There's always money in the banana stand!"

I prefer to think of them as a fallback plan. They hire loosely and fire fast, which is a fine compromise if you _need_ work. But at this point in my career, early retirement is also a fallback plan. A few more years with $curr_emp and even fatFIRE is possible.


As the great Randy Jackson once said

  That's going to be a no for me dog
Why would you subject yourself to a rough/tough environment that hinges on a single review when you can get just as much equity and work life balance elsewhere without the drama?


Before doing that, consider why their reviews from verified employees are so much worse than practically all others:

https://www.teamblind.com/company/Amazon/

(ex-Amazon)


Yes, but I got a contact through linkedin for a position asking if I'd be interested. I responded saying I'd like to learn more and the recruiter disappeared. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


I interviewed with them for a few different positions and worked for them once. Do not recommend. A toxic 'shark tank' like workplace culture and very middling salary.


Yes.

I feel that, once there, I could make a meaningful change to improve the culture, while maintaining the share price trajectory.

If only recruiters / hiring managers liked hearing that :)


For AWS, as fully remote, for ridiculously high compensation, yes. Otherwise, no.

As a user, I have observed product searching and sorting to remain in a nigh-unusable state for decades now. I cannot fathom how such a state could be permitted to persist in any well-managed development team.

As a laborer, I have followed journalism covering treatment of workers, both in warehouses and on delivery routes. This led me to classify Amazon as a sociopathic corporation.

As a software professional, I have been repeatedly pinged by recruiters who seem to have no awareness of my value, or how much of my time Amazon's hiring process proposes to waste. And reports of working conditions seem strongly dependent on a random (to me) assignment to a specific team. Turnover and retention varies wildly.


In my experience, big companies provide a good way to help determine what you never want to do again.


I did, and it was the best job I had.


there are way better companies to find intellectual challenges where you don’t have to ask this kind of question about the organization.

If money is the most important thing you care about then maybe MANGA is great. But money is pretty easy to make these days.


Absolutely not. And I’ve asked them repeatedly to stop contacting me. So every time they contact me my price goes up $100,000. They don’t seem too interested in hiring me when I tell them the current price as a result of the recruiter harassment.


People here who say Amazon keeps approaching them, what do you do?


I think one time I took enough time to send the recruiter a polite reply saying "sorry, not interested" (with no further elaboration), but otherwise I just ignore their messages.


I have a LinkedIn. That’s it. I’m sure it helps that I worked at other FAANGs.


I've never worked for a FAANG, but I've worked for a couple of moderately high-profile companies - Red Hat, IBM, and Lenovo being the best known of the outfits I've worked for. Otherwise, not sure exactly what leads them to contact me. I also don't have a Bachelor's degree, although I do have 3 different Associate degrees. shrug


I never worked at FAANG and Amazon recruiters have contacted me at least five times in the past year. I don't even have a degree or anything.


Don't they still stack rank? hard pass.


No. I prefer to be treated like a human rather than a number. Some people thrive on gaming metrics, but not me!


No.


No


In all realistic circumstances I refuse to work for any company that doesn't meet my high moral standards. That's most companies, Amazon definitely included.

However, there is one (unrealistic) circumstance in which I would accept a job at even the worst company. That is the scenario in which I am hired into a position that comes with enough decision making power to undo the evil.

TL;DR: I will work for Amazon if they're making me the CEO.


Yes. Even if just to put it on the CV and the bragging rights of telling your friends you work for Amazon.


Amazon isn't exactly well known for their high hiring standards.




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