Amazon reviews

- Work/life balance can be a challenge. Work demands are high and teams are often too lean. You have to set your own boundaries. Even with kind managers, overachievers will feel under water. - Frugality as a core value goes overboard. If Amazon doesn't HAVE to give it you, it won't. No perks, no free food or drinks, bad coffee, unsubsidized cafeterias, mediocre hardware for non-technical people. There doesn't seem to be a morale budget and you will have few official team outings. - Compensation policies are not employee friendly: 401k matching is subpar. Once your signing cash bonus is fully vested, your entire compensation will be base salary and stock. Base salary is capped at ~$160k across the company. Stock vests twice a year if you're below a Director, so your compensation is very lumpy. Stock price appreciation is taken into consideration in your total compensation targets (ie if the value of previously offered shares increases, the company will count that as a raise and might not grant you additional stock bonuses, despite strong performance).

Where do I start? The infrastructure is all but non-existent. Management is a mess and the turnover is constant. Tenured employees are hop from role-to-role to avoid burnout and so Amazon can keep them within arms reach. Employees are encouraged to undermine others and essentially snitch and stab each other in the back to further their own careers. The sense of camaraderie is boiled down to team-building events that turn into competitions. They pay is not worth sacrifice. For me, it cost me my sanity and my soul. I had panic attacks everyday that I was there and I was told to suck it up because it was "Amazon and it's the promised land."