Amazon Employee Reviews for Software Development Engineer

"Amazon is a great place to work."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"I worked with some of the brightest engineers in the industry. I got exposure to best practices and learnt a great deal."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"Amazon has a lot of variety, and the experience can vastly vary, depending on the manager and kind of team you are working in. I'm not happy with some of the practices that my current manager introduced like: 1) Discouraging Xtreme/Pair programming and 2) Focusing too much on individual performance to the extent that it hampered team work."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"They should be more considerate about what the team needs, and they should have a well-structured career development program."

"Good place if you can stand the pager."

What do you like about working at Amazon?

"There are lots of smart people, and low politics."

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

"Be prepared for lots of coding."

What don't you like about working at Amazon?

"I dislike pager duty."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Invest in ops teams."

"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."

"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."