Amazon reviews

3.5

60% would recommend to a friend

(209,259 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

50% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

Amazon has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 209,259 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Amazon employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

209K reviews
1.0
Jul 8, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- RSUs (part of the salary is in stock, backdated 2 years) - smart people

Cons

- smart people who are jerks - literally no perks ($100 off Amazon, that's all) - unbelievable pressure; no support from management or HR -- they are just here to get the most out of you. Managers will interfere with you at all times, even though they are supposed to be non-technical. - no work life balance, nobody cares about you - insane on-call schedule: 8-12 hour shifts, night or day, once a week. No extra pay. You have 10 minutes to answer the pager and 30 mins to solve the problem or heads roll. Great for customers but insane for you! Expect to be busy the entire 8-12 hours. - culture is shockingly disempowering; innovation is a myth. It's all about getting things out as fast as possible. No project ever lasts a long time so there is only so much you can accomplish. Don't bother asking people questions -- that is extremely frowned upon - completely siloed teams. Every team reinvents the wheel. No infrastructure or tools team. - Extremely hierarchical system. Being a PE gives you power over everyone below you and is a huge advantage. In 2 years, 200+ people team, nobody got promoted to PE. 2 people got promoted to SDE3 working 100 hour weeks. Is it really worth it?? - everything runs by the 'leadership principles'. Everything. Read them closely. There is nothing there about caring for your employees, caring for your coworkers. The only recurring message in there is bending over backwards for customers. That's all that's important to this company.

2.0
Mar 18, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Great start for new grads * Cheap treatment of employees is good for stock * Managers seem to like manager-first culture

Cons

* Compensation mirage: 80% of stock vests after 2 years (more then many people stay at the company). Amazon recalculate the value of your vesting shares (even if they were granted 2-3 years ago) each year and factor that into your "total compensation * Micromanagement * Software Engineers spent 80% of time on Dev-Ops * Health issues due to stress and intense deadlines

4.0
Apr 18, 2017

Supplemental Income

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible Schedules - I worked on a set schedule for 3 months then switched to a pick-your-own schedule. This works great to pick up shifts around school or another job, but is terrible to rely on. The Work - It's very repetitive, with just enough variety to keep it from being soul crushing. The repetitiveness let's you become very good at these tasks quickly. I've never been so skilled at organizing shelves, fridges, and paper bags of stuff. Active Job - This depends on your FC of course, but there isn't a moment of downtime and there's always something to do. This keeps things from slowing down. Job Variety - You're gonna start with one of the worst jobs at the warehouse (stowing items into bins). If you put forward a little effort, you'll move to other jobs. These jobs might be more physical or planning oriented, and present a more engaging experience. Coworkers - Everyone is pretty friendly. Managers - This is a mixed bag. Some are super friendly, understanding, and savvy. Others are disaffected, uninterested, and rude.

Cons

VTO - Voluntary Time Off can strike a warehouse when they need to get their labor hours down. While they can't force you to take vto when you're a scheduled employee, there's tremendous pressure placed for you to take it. Advancement - None. There's good job variety within the associate level, but everyone is paid the same. That means the guy working half the speed as you makes the same pay, and that really is disheartening. You're also rarely considered for any job advancement, as the only way up is into management positions that require management experience. Things Change, A Lot - You're going to have to be comfortable with processes and procedures changing business wide (like a new scanner software) or day-by-day with management. I've seen managers chastise us in all-group meetings for putting empty carts in a location and recommend another location, and for a different manager to berate us for putting them in the recommended spot. Pay - You're not going to get rich here. You should expect this, but that doesn't change it from being a con. Coworkers - I mentioned that they're friendly, but some of them you will constantly question why they're there. Very slow or don't put any effort. Sure, you're paid badly, and you don't have much room to advance, but you're still working as a team. Don't make others pick up your slack. HR - What a cluster. I was given an official hire letter 2 months before I actually started working. We weren't given online access to vital job systems, any instructions on sick leave, who's role was what, none of it. All had to be figured out on your own. This could be attributed to not having an FC-specific HR person, but the unpreparedness of such a large company baffled me. Once we eventually did get an HR person at the FC, she was a recent graduate and spends much of her time chatting about non-work things with managers while eating donuts. The fact I know she's making enough money to live comfortably, while I have sweat running down my back while worrying about being evicted, is morale-breaking while at work. Drivers - The drivers Amazon uses aren't the brightest, but hey, they get the job done (sometimes. If they feel like it. Etc.).

Viewing 205 - 207 of 209,259 Reviews

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