As size has grown, so has the politics, who you know matters more than what you know
Pros
-Best technology platform, second to none, and leading market position, so great addition to resume from working here standpoint. - Cultural values are deeply rooted in everything, so Amazon is certainly doing something right. - You really make history and get to have lot of fun....don't take the negatives below to discourage yourself. Company is growing faster than it's able to evolve itself from attending to the needs of their employee "customers" and many things put into the system to make it work fairly don't seem to work all the time.
Cons
- Many Sr. Managers and Directors have achieved promotions through politics or OLRs held away from where "problems" are anticipated. On the surface, system seems fairs and promotes merit based equality, but managers have figured out ways to get around the system. Your manager controls your destiny, including whether to write a promo doc on you, represent you fairly in the OLRs, use recency bias to accentuate a minor episode vs. looking at you holistically, or even speak highly of you when you apply for internal transfers (yes, awkward that without current manager's positive feedback, you're more or less stuck.). Many managers are ill-trained or have never held or been mentored as "people managers" so are not truly savvy enough to grow their employees. They tend to "game" the system to promote themselves by taking credit for others' work, focusing on "hiring" senior level employees vs. developing junior employees into senior roles (as that's hard due to the HR process), and invest more of their time in empire building (e.g. if you're an L6 manager, you'd progress faster to L7 if you have more L6s reporting to you...so you hire from outside by creating new positions vs. promoting from within). This is one of the biggest concerns many employees have (and many leave due to this) that it's easier to come in at a higher level with a fancy resume (e.g. VP tile at a 10-person startup can come into a level higher than someone operating already at that level without title) and successfully navigating 1-day of 5-6 45-min interviews. And managers can set up the loop to their advantage by picking the bar raiser they align with, or picking the people for the loop who they know would favor hiring that employee, etc. However, an employee with credible tenure and documented success wouldn't even be allowed to apply (managers actually select who can apply) be hired into a higher position by design. Which explains the "Hire and Develop" the best value, and not "Develop and Hire" the best. It's very common to see people getting promoted who are in close proximity to HQ or senior leaders. - You rarely see HR business partners anywhere; you'd be lucky if you even know you HR BP's name after 4 yrs! They exist mostly to further the interest of managers it seems. -
