Working at Amazon in Seattle, WA: 227 Employee Job Reviews by Real Employee working in Seattle, WA Area

"Amazon was a cool place to work, with good people and atmosphere."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I worked in Seattle, WA."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Have an open forum with employees."

"Amazon is an excellent place to work, grow, and be part of an internet leader."

"Amazon is the perfect company for young professionals with no family or personal life."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I like it because it is a continuously challenging environment, with elite professionals with unique experience. It is a great place to grow professionally and be part of cutting-edge technology."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"There is no time for personal life or family. Work start at 6 a.m. dealing with India branches, and ends after 7 p.m. because of the uncontrolled number of meetings."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"I would suggest communication in capital, speed, open environment and equal opportunity to speak and express opinions, flexibility for new ideas, and implementing CMMI and other initiatives, etc."

"Overall, it was a good place to work."

"Pressure cooker atmosphere, with mean people."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I liked the free coffee."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Negotiate for a big signing bonus, and forget about ever vesting much of that stock they give you."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"The place is not family friendly. Employees are expected to be looking at their laptops 24/7. Managers are driven by metrics, which change daily. There is a lot of churn. Average length of stay is now less than two years per employee."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Take a breath."

"Sooner or later you won't be there."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I liked the new skills."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Don't be suprised if they sit on your resume even if they like you."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"I disliked the layoffs and firings."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"I don't know; they fired all the managers I knew. What can we say"

"Nice place to visit, but don't live here."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I like the big infrastructure challenges."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Only come here if you have to."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"My dislikes are: really bad managers, no career growth, and glass ceiling for women."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Judge people on their accomplishments, not whose a they kiss."

"The learning opportunities are great, but they send too many good people after bad tasks"

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"My likes are: the development environment, once you adjust to it, makes work much easier; presentations from other groups, other computing professionals, and even artists and authors; and the mix of platforms and tools means one learns to do many different things."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Find out exactly what you will be doing there."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"My dislikes are: tribal knowledge - no one really knows how anything works, or whom to ask; high-level SDEs doing mundane support work; new money and people are going to new AWS groups, and not to crucial groups that are short-staffed; and it is not as easy to move around as it should be."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Consider who is best suited for what tasks, and organize your groups accordingly."

"I was a contract employee."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"They were flexible about working hours."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"They are EXTREMELY pretentious. When they interview you, you will be asked programming questions that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the job you are interviewing for, and which only a PhD in CS or SE could possibly answer. They will tell you they are hiring for the whole Amazon company, not just their group, as a reason, but basically it is just pretension."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"It is a hack shop. Good software engineering principles were not even considered."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Quality demands that things be done RIGHT, not just FAST. Emphasis on FAST at the expense of doing things RIGHT generates a train wreck in progress."

"It may be a great place to shop, but it sucks to work there."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"It was in Seattle, a beautiful city!"

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Try the competition in Seattle (Microsoft, Google, etc.). They are much better places to work than this company."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"They are too political, and people there are treated like machines. For those with families, the work-life balance sucks and so does the compensation and health benefits. If you have kids, avoid this company like the plague."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Hire better people managers. Figure out how to keep good people, and how to get rid of political inbreeding and politically-minded managers out to get to the next promotion at any expense."

"Amazon is okay."

"They pay well, because it's the only thing that Amazon does to attempt to curb their high turnover."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I like the good pay and talented co-workers. The relocation package was quite generous."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"The interview process is quite rigorous. Make sure that you're comfortable coding in your language of choice, and that you're up to snuff on algorithms and problem analysis. However, given what it's like to work there, I don't recommend going through the effort unless you're looking for a resume pad."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"My dislikes are: too much legacy maintenance, very little new development, high support burden, and developers carry pagers. The benefits are on the low end, and the company doesn't value work/life balance."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Treat the developers like people."

"Work hard, play hard."

"Exceptional architecture, but satisfaction is missing."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I liked the exceptional architecture."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Be good at web technology concepts."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"I disliked the job insecurity."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"I would suggest control outsourcing."