Pros
About me: I've worked full-time at IMDb for four years. I'm in the company's Los Angeles-area office.
While you don't *have to* love movies and TV to work here, it helps. Who works here? The kinds of people who sit through the credits of a movie, who binge-watch STRANGER THINGS, and who care about the box office gross of WONDER WOMAN. Our CEO likes to say that there's no such thing as a bad movie -- only a movie that's not right for you. Meaning, we embrace the fat head and the long tail of movies and TV and love that people love what they love (SHARKNADO fan? IMDb loves you. Christopher Nolan snob? IMDb loves you. Honest Trailers fan? IMDb loves you.)
The business of our site and app goes beyond the "Db", so there's a lot of diversity in the work. But the core of our company is that "Db", and much of our resources and attention are to that.
Amazon acquired IMDb in 1998. We are a full-stack company and act fairly independently but we collaborate and take guidance from our parent owner. This is mostly an advantage but can be a constraint as well. The biggest advantage is that we're "Amazonian": Leadership Principles, Working Backwards, Customer Obsession, long-term vs. short-term, mechanisms vs. good intentions. If those buzzwords don't mean anything to you, look 'em up on Amazon or google them. These are the best parts of Amazon and they infuse IMDb.
I think it's always easier to work for something that you believe in and/or love. If you love movies and TV and the people who create movies and TV -- and the people who love movies and TV! -- then as tech companies go, IMDb is a great place to work. If you believe in the "Amazonian" way of operating a business, then IMDb is a great place to work.
Cons
I said that being owned by Amazon has its advantages, but it also has its disadvantages. One of the main ones is that decisions can't always be made independently. Occasionally we are pulled or pushed in a questionable direction because of our corporate parent.
The other big negative is that we have a lot of legacy code. This is being refactored (on a massive, years-long scale) but it means that resources are expended on fixing the past vs. resources being devoted to building the future. Most very old and very large Internet companies face this challenge but that doesn't make it any less painful. I think for our software engineers, it's actually demoralizing (fixing vs. building).
