Amazon reviews

Zero work life balance Corporate culture (nothing like Google or Facebook) Disparity and lack of communication with cross functional teams, departments and senior management Amazon's peculiar ways Still very much a US centric company Gaps in knowledge Basically if you want a rundown of why not to work at Amazon, read any recent articles about their culture at Tech Insider, BuzzFeed and NY Times, they're spot on.

-Bruising culture - One of the Amazon leadership principles is "vocally self critical". In a scorecard if a person does 9 things out of 10 well they will be expected to talk about their failure. Whilst this drives focus, it is tiring/sapping and demoralising. Success is not celebrated. If you are doing 5 things out of 10 well expect to feel pain. As such bullying tactics are common place as senior leaders are expected to demonstrate "backbone" -Work life balance is zero - Amazon is a 24 hour a day 7- days a week business business so you will find it hard not to do the same -Admin - In addition to fantastic strategic projects expect a large amount of your work to be inane admin which could easily be automated - outsourced. Amazon does buy software tools, rather it develops its own. Some are good but most are clunky at best so expect to need to pick up the slack. -Promotions - The bar for promotions is incredibly high. Expect it to take 3 years of working weekends, unless you have friends in the right places Advice to prospective employees - If you are lucky enough to be offered roles by some of the big tech companies, choose Amazon last. If you are offered a role by Amazon, take it, go in with your eyes open. Make sure you get what you want and be ready to have a plan B up your sleeve. In my department of 150 average tenure was 13 months