Amazon reviews

Amazon is a very decentralized company and silo'd company, so many areas are essentially rat holes that developers can easily get lost in. Most of the negative reviews are probably from those areas, and they are every bit as bad as you might imagine. Rather than repeat the bad, I would encourage anyone looking seriously at Amazon to ask a few things of the developers (not the hiring manager) that they talk to: how often are you on call? How often do you get paged? What kind of schedule does this position require (45 hour weeks? 60+ hour weeks?)? When was the last time you worked a weekend when you weren't on call? How much legacy/technical debt is the team responsible for? And probably the most important question of all you have to ask yourself: is this team solving problems that are interesting to me? The teams that aren't are teams you will never be happy at, no matter what the rest of the environment is like. The final tidbit that does somewhat makeup for some of the less "optimal" teams: Amazon has a policy where anyone can change positions after they've been in their current position for a year (provided you don't get a negative review). So even if you don't like where you're at, you can always move, which is great if you don't want to lose your vesting stock grants.

Most manager micromanage the small stuff and do not provide any strategic vision. Way to much turnover as people leave or move to avoid the bad managers. Poor compensation levels and you have to compete with your co-workers for any raises you get as raises are capped. If you are not one of the favored folks you can forget about being promotoed.