Amazon Software Development Engineer reviews

3.5

54% would recommend to a friend

(3,345 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

38% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer employees have rated Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 3,345 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer professionals compared to other employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
Jun 24, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's a big name and there is some interesting technology around. But don't expect much.

Cons

There is a reason why people only last 2 years at Amazon. You'll overwork for the first year with little to no significant reward. Once you realize you don't want to waste another year, you start thinking of quiting. Thats around/before the 2 years mark. Search for "the face of Amazon" on Google.

3.0
Jun 23, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Lots of responsibility * You'll build big and exciting products * You'll work with some really smart people

Cons

* Lots of politics and bureaucracy. Managers take entire teams of employees with them when they leave. Poaching happens all the time. Attrition is a huge problem, even though the higher ups deny it publicly. Promising young engineers often end up getting frustrated and leaving. There are some good engineers who stick around, mostly for the stock. But it's much less stock than what you get at Google and Facebook. * There will be a lot of pressure to get stuff done but you'll not get the resources to get it done. There either won't be enough devs in your team or the systems you'll need to depend on will be complete crap and devs in the platform teams will be too overworked to help you out. Directors and VPs (and Bezos himself) care more about getting stuff out quickly as opposed to building things that will last. Yet they say the opposite in public. What a bunch of hypocrites. * Communication is very very hard. Other teams won't want to talk to you and won't want to help you, and you'll have a very hard time convincing them otherwise. Amazon will probably never care about its engineers. It has made too much money treating engineers badly. Do yourself a favor and don't work here. You might get lucky and join one if the very few good teams, but the chances are low.

4.0
Jun 23, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ challenging job, never gets boring, plenty of opportunities to learn and grow + amazing people you work with + friendly atmosphere + systematic approach to problems + possible to switch teams + nice office, bunch of events outside of working hours

Cons

- work largely depends on which team you are on (probably more than in other big companies) -> teams go from awful to wonderful and that largely affects the impression of Amazon - compensation system based on fear, not rewards -> people performing poorly are punished, while people performing well are not rewarded (it is expected of them); bonuses are basically non-existent - poor stock options compared to other companies - unnecessary self-imposed stress introduced by the management by setting meaningless and unrealistic deadliness - it's easier to get hired to a more senior level than get promoted; new hires have higher salaries than long-term employees

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