Corporate Counsel - 2+ years in, and it's hard but fascinating
Pros
Being an attorney for Amazon always offers opportunities to work on interesting problems. From day 1, I owned my own matters, made independent decisions, and worked frontline with new clients and customers. It's a lot more responsibility than my law firm associate role, and has more opportunities to speak up and lead. The issues we work through might be operationally difficult, involve high dollar value transactions, or have customer-facing implications (or all three) but each attorney works independently and within the team to solve them. I get excellent mentorship and training benefits. There are more levels between you and leadership than at a firm, but there are also good opportunities to work with senior leaders on specific deals, project work (for process improvement, scaling etc), and as an escalation point. My career got a big jump start by being at Amazon, and my manager is actively coaching me to achieve my goals. I feel that Amazon has invested in me, and that makes me more willing to invest in Amazon. Everyone I work with is super smart and has high expectations. They all went to excellent law schools, and worked at top tier law firms and in house roles before joining Amazon. You get to work with, and be trained by, the best here. The leadership principles are very real - your hiring, performance, and promotion, are all tracked against them. Team members and leaders give feedback framed in the leadership principles, and it creates a common language in a huge company, which I've found helpful.
Cons
I generally work law firm hours still. Some weeks are better than others, but this isn't a normal in house role. It takes time to adjust to this work style and approach. I love it but definitely needed to stick out the first 6-9 months to get into the swing of things. Amazon attorneys are serious about their jobs and the leadership principles, and there's a lot of "project work" for business improvement, so you're always balancing your main work (transactional or advisory etc) with projects that fix broader problems.
