Maybe because the company recruits C listers who have neither merit (intelligence, strategic vision) nor pedigree (academic or professional accomplishments), most of those who become successful do so in treacherous, low cunning ways. Your friends and family have actually heard of the place you work and have at least a vague notion of what Amazon does without you having to explain Amazon encourages high mobility - even your manager can't prevent you from moving to another team within 6 weeks (normally, more than a few months under unusual conditions). A place where you can learn a lot about all kinds of things, both technical and about yourself We work on so much stuff that there's always an opportunity to find amazing cool stuff to work on (note that it's an 'opportunity', one that you have to pursue) There aren't many slackers here, and they don't survive long. You can count on them as long as your priorities are aligned. You can generally expect that anyone who's been here for more than 2 years is competent and motivated or they wouldn't have survived. Amazon is built, quite deliberately, to be Darwinian. The experience for software managers and engineers is all over the board, from really run low operational load teams to teams where people burn out after a year. There are really well run teams.and very badly run teams. Amazon is doing lot's of cool stuff.but lots of boring stuff too.

Amazon job reviews