Company ideology is broken.
- Every year all employees will have to pass "Amazon leadership principles" training where they will be told slogans like "Leaders Are Right—A Lot" or "Be Vocally Self-Critical" and so on, this all is BS. The truth is that the only principle which works at Amazon is "I'm the boss, that's why I'm right", so be prepared that at the end of the year you'll go on PIP if you would dare to challenge any management decision, either if it is technical or not. Actually that is what happened to me, I've discovered that design of one of the company corner stone projects has flaws, so I've made small research and proposed better and more elegant solution, but since original project design was "reviewed" and "approved" by the management months ago my proposal was completely ignored despite the facts that current design won't support all of the use cases. Apparently management didn't want to follow it's own company principles, nobody wanted to go and say "yes, there is a better way", instead my direct manager placed me on PIP and his decision was supported by his manager too. If you are smart, you don't punish somebody who is pointing your technical mistakes or provides better solution, but it is not the case with management at Amazon and there is no solution to this autocracy, I've contacted org principals on this issue but they all were reluctant to say anything against approved design. And than I've realized, management doesn't care about the company and nobody would ever admit any mistakes, so I left.
- poor/seniority promotion.
You could be the smartest person in the room, or a topmost performer in a team, but if there is somebody with the same level who joined the company before you he will be promoted first. Same applies to SD2->SD3 promotion across the teams in the same org. In general SD2->SD3 promotion is almost impossible at Amazon, after almost four years there I've never seeing anybody promoted to SD3, on the other hand company tend to hire SD3's from some no-name companies but with a right years of experience (for SD3 it is close or over 15).
BTW, don't even ask about SD2->SDM1 move, although those are the same level (5) positions, company would rather hire somebody from outside.
- poor benefits. Only 6 weeks paternity leave, poor 401K match.
- no performance bonuses. Amazon annual base salary increase is within 2%, which doesn't even match inflation and if you think that if you were a top performer for a given year than you will be promoted to the next level, you won't, see promotion cons above.
- poor bonuses program. No reasons to stay there for fifth year, you'll get less stocks compare to your first four years, stock price goes up and company thinks that after four years in service you should still get your level average salary.
- annual review. You have to ask for a feedback from at least a five people you contacted during the year, be careful, if you wrote many core reviews for somebody and that person doesn't accept critics very well he could ruin your promotion. Same applies even more to your manager, there is under-qualified managers at Amazon. Company tend to hire from outside rather than promoting their own employees, which often leads to a situation where manager knows less about current state and yet insists on his own design view.
