Great place to learn, but you will quickly burn-out. - Technical Program Manager Amazon Employee Review

2.0
17 Jun 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You have a lot of ownership over your work. There is a lot of freedom to set your own goal and exercise best judgments. There usually is not a lot of micromanaging going on at the company. You are usually given a general goal or a vague set of problems, and you are expected to exercise best judgment to resolve and/or achieve them. Additionally, there are a lot of smart people at Amazon, and there are some great technologists here to learn from as well. Amazon is basically like a 10+ years-old and multi-billion dollar start-up, with all the good and bad that implies.

Cons

It's a very competitive and chaotic environment to work. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow, and the ownership of your work often implies very long working hours. There is also a severe lack of process or usage of industry best practices. The company culture also encourages hackers to slap things together to meet short-term objectives without taking into consideration of long-term impacts. Some groups also falls into a dark spiral, where the service the team owns are buggy, thus requiring high operational burden, i.e. being paged at 3am when something is down, which burns engineers out, which leads to even higher operational burden. It's a vicious cycle.

Explore other reviews about Amazon

5.0
3 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great perks and great coworkers

Cons

Can't think of any at the moment.

5.0
10 Jan 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Really smart people, a lot of opportunity for growth, always encouraged to be innovative, think big, and create something new. Competitive salary and benefits with other major tech companies. 100% self motivating work environment. No dress code and 4 legged friends are welcome.

Cons

You have to be self motivated. NO ONE will hold your hand and tell you that you're doing a great job. If you need constant affirmations from management, this company isn't for you.

3159
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