* Total compensation package is essentially broken down as follows: base pay is 65-75% of base pay at other places, then they add a 2 year "Bonus" which will be either paid monthly or yearly in a lump (negotiable, don't let the recruiters tell you its not). After 2 years the bonus that filled the gap in pay disappears and they start paying you roughly the same amount in stock for the next 2 years - which, lets be clear, is an asset not a base. Talk to your CPA. I Speculate the reason for this is that most people tend to leave just before or slightly after the two year mark or just before - 18 months is average and often folks are encouraged to leave since they are now "crufty"
* Darwinian culture - yeah you've heard others say that and its true, but I wanted to break this down a bit as many assumptions can be made from that statement:
-- Strong survive - OK you get it right? no, you may not see the whole picture. I'm not talking about a mentality that pertains only to who can be the most aggressive - but rather who is younger, faster and often has the least experience. Experience is frowned upon at Amazon and will hold you back because you will likely take some time to consider the whole picture, and a large well-formed thought doesn't align well with a company with fast/nimble/small groups that are expected to - ABOVE ALL - DELIVER. For instance I found it easier to deliver year 1 than year 2 and beyond.
-- Comradeship/Team feeling: this is a mixed bag of course, but if you are the kind of person who likes to align to a team and start delivering once you understand the way they do things, this company is not for you. Teams mentalities are moving targets that are different from one day to the next - Code reviews will often be a conflict as they constantly move/flip-flop as an example. Nobody is anyone's friend, no matter how much they emphasize everyone being a "customer" and "customer first". Interpersonal communication is commonly disregarded and only used to bad-mouth people during review time. After all, how can you be an awesome/smart/nice person in a dog-eat-dog company where you are encouraged to disregard others while in search of "data" or "the truth".
-- New hires, specifically from colleges, are commonly put on a pedestal by management. This is partly because of the experience piece I mentioned above, but also Bezo's and Co deeply believe that being young is a guarantee of innovation, see the leadership principles "Learn and be curious" "Invent and simplify" "Biased for action". Don't get me wrong, new hires are awesome and people are great - in general, not just at Amazon. I've personally mentored many Interns and the experience has been rewarding for all parties - but I go out of my way to do right by them as people not just future Amazon employee's.
After breaking down the Darwinian culture a little, this has some side effects that may not be completely obvious, but likely would be to an experienced manager:
1. With no focus on building a human culture (discounting that people are in fact human), what they mean by "culture" at Amazon has nothing to do with finding a groove or alignment to an idea - it has more to do with maintaining a cold demeanor.
2. A cold demeanor lends itself to override human nature and to become fairly robotic. Those who are fast at identifying robotic work and pushing it off to other teams are praised, and everyone/team is a target.
3. Since everyone is a target for things to be pushed on, its easy to make the assumption that others have great intention of malice at first. However they may not sincerely have this (some do), but because there are soo many teams with this mentality, your day to day experience will bring you lower and lower while they push you to deliver and focus on new things to deliver.
4. The focus on "new things" is easily perceived by existing employees as a challenge to work harder or be left behind, this is also encouraged as Amazonians believe "we work better under pressure". This adds alot of pressure to be sure and does NOT lend itself to a worker with a family/children/relationship that takes more than 20-25% of his/her time outside work - Outside work time is still Amazon time, unless you are a principal.
5. Principles at Amazon have been here a long time, either because they hold patents from the early days or because they are aggressive. They often are in positions where they work on special projects that sound grand because they change many systems at once - but if you break it down they are maintenance projects and other work nobody else can do because they lack perspective and deep knowledge of Amazon specific systems as they have not seen the systems evolve. This perspective can not be hired for as it is specific to Amazon and Amazon systems. Principals tend to stick around Amazon for that reason and when they do leave they work on similar things outside Amazon or re-create very similar systems.
6. Out of the org I work with, only VP's and principals have existing relationships and/or children and this would appear to be commonplace (see the former numbers for reasons). I've seen a large number of people in their 40's just now starting to get married or have kids - these people again either being at Amazon a long time or being Principals who would seem to be untouchable by Management.
6. You will likely never hear anything like the following from a manager, or possibly a co-worker:
"Hey how are you doing?"- we all blindly shuffle by each other on the sidewalk, if not ignoring each other we are often trying to speak about technical things, convincing others of some fact or trying to gain information for due diligence.
"You seem tired, are you ok?" - No, don't count on hearing this from a manager. They aren't concerned for you. You chose to work that 18 hour day, good for you - must be because you didn't scope something properly or didn't estimate your operations load properly.
"How can I help?" - I've done my best to break people of not asking this, encouraging the culture to be helpful - more like the CS people do for Amazon customers (amazing job they do).
"I don't understand this, can you help me understand?" - Assumptions will be made about your presentations by most, and often assumptions that lead people in a bad direction. You will learn how to pre-empt this and it will consume ALOT more time than you think, all those edge cases that are unlikely.
"Can we figure this out together?" - No, we cant, if you don't drive it, deliver it and promote it yourself you will have a bad review
Final Thoughts:
I'm confident that several trained/motivated Amazonians have read or are reading this, correcting my every mistake and discounting everything here on technicalities; I can't help you - I will go on with my life doing the best I can while meeting new great people on the way.
It's true that my best its not good enough, I agree - something we both have in common as we were hired at Amazon (vocally self critical). I refuse to fail however and not hacking it at Amazon is no failure. We all age, do your best to picture where you will be when you are 55, will you be thinking of Amazon as a positive experience that changed you for the better - or will it be a footnote?
Great people don't just accumulate knowledge, knowledge is only a component of greatness but not the root itself. Greatness is to acknowledge that people are flawed and that we are all in this together. Great people all have a great need to make a contribution to better humanity, they are driven by this - not by personal appetite and narrow focus -- at least thats the world I fight for.
