Pros
Universal Pros - Amazon gives you relocation. It sponsors visa, pays for your move and even gives starting bonus. Which is good if you live in 2nd/3rd world and looking for high profile company in your CV. Amazon is always hiring from every part of the world so you have chance no matter where you live or what’s your background, to some extent, I guess. Also, you can choose where — in which country and city — to join upon applying for position. - You get to see how Amazon builds and runs software and this is very valuable for engineer. - There are many things going on around and you may entertain yourself observing. - You can switch teams easily. Can choose between AWS, Amazon, Amazon devices, Audible and bunch of other businesses. - The company is built on ingenious but simple principles that allows it to stay itself and expand like crazy. It is worth seeing that from inside. - You don’t have to be super smart or super techy to make good career there. Berlin Pros - Salary is good compared to majority of Berlin IT companies. - Easy to travel to Seattle HQ or other offices. You can even switch team and relocate after some time.
Cons
Universal Cons - Everything you do is duct tape. Don’t mention “quality” - you won’t be understood. Don’t plan your work beyond 20% that bring most (or none) of result, it won’t go beyond that. - Nobody cares. New joiners see that nobody cares and pick that up too. There’s a leadership principle called “Ownership” but Ownership is a joke. Goals are the only exception. Once something becomes a goal, people start noticing and caring about it. - People who want to grow optimize for their promotion (because of two above). You find yourself doing absurd stuff, people talking and articulating specifics but ignoring big picture, people not noticing obvious. That’s not always because your manager or senior engineers are stupid, that’s because they are gaining specific points for their promo. Your peers don’t know what to do for their career growth, they will optimize unnecessary things and try to impede you if they think you’re getting points ahead of them. Official promotion requirements exist but only looked at for formulation to decline. Unofficially it is simple: you need to do only what your managers want and as quickly as possible if you want to get on the next level. - Bad Software Development Managers; many more bad managers than good ones (more below). - Watch out for Non-Competition Agreement if you start in US. It is better to ask and read it before you accept the offer. Ask about Open-Source contribution policy beforehand also. - It is hard to make friends with peers. People quickly turn unwelcome by default. - Happiness of employees is never a priority at Amazon. I never read in press or heard that Amazon wants to see happy employees. You won’t become happier than you were before joining. - Amazon is the worst place I have worked in terms of trust in people in little things. Your trust and common sense are raped and betrayed on the daily basis. Some people might live ok with it though. - You won’t find a big mission of being Amazon. Leadership Principles only cover how Amazon is doing what it’s doing, not why. Being most customer-centric company isn’t also “why”. Amazon exists because it brings good money and, perhaps, it is entertaining to do experiments at large scale (this is called “big opportunities” in managers slang). - Amazon is managers organization. You better hide your opinion if you want to make career as an engineer. I have seen how smartest senior and principal engineers swallow whatever nonsense managers come up with, and execute on that. - Growing as Software Engineer you will not get more power over people. You get more technical scope of work to do and higher level of technical decisions to make but you can’t actually make other engineers follow your vision. You influence without command, because command is only manager’s job. This makes a phenomena that as Software Engineers grow they, learn how to look responsible (everybody likes credits) without actually carrying responsibility (nobody likes incident calls) for larger systems. Principal engineers become special cast on their own, already distant from SDE I and IIs but not quite welcome in managers camp. Berlin Cons - Watch out for folks who came from US and don’t plan to stay. These will ride you for their career till the last drop of your blood. - Most intelligent people in the office are most unwelcome. - Higher % of lazy people than in US. - Hard to find anybody with balls. Worst thing in Amazon is managers, in my opinion. They deserve few special words. Managers are consistently unprofessional in both management and engineering. I’ve been at several managers interviews. Manager candidates are not asked any worthwhile technical questions. Mediocre engineer with three-five years of experience would easily pass that technical bar. It is mainly checked whether they made “right” decisions in different situations. Loyalty to the system is the thing that matters most. For people not familiar with Amazon organization type, every engineering team with 4-15 people has a Software Development Manager. This person is responsible for running the team. This person does not have formally defined reference of work and practically has last word in every question. Managers are receiving special trainings and information not available to other employees. That makes them special caste; they tend to distantiate from reports and hang out with other managers. In few years I worked with managers ranging from silly to plain stupid, from whip crackers to highly organized anti-social types, liars and place seekers, two thirds very weak technically and not learning. Yet respected by higher leads and regularly getting promotions. Only once I got a manager both good technically, in personal communication, getting along with people and making a team. If you’re lucky to get a good SDM, stick to him or her and don’t let them go.
