Amazon Software Development Engineer reviews

3.5

54% would recommend to a friend

(3,329 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

37% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer employees have rated Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 3,329 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 IT (Information Technology) industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
3.0
Sep 18, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Excellent pay and benefits - Very cool technology - Generally good managers (senior management is another story though) - Flexible hours on some/most teams - Most coworkers are friendly and helpful, with very few exceptions

Cons

- Incompetence on some teams (forgotten deadlines, lack of ownership etc) - Teams are encouraged to release prototypes as production software - Testing is extremely rare/sparse - Unreasonably high expectations come from upper management - Teams are too small to effectively handle their workloads, resulting in high tension and stunted productivity - Weak development hardware - Terrible internal software development tools (fighting with them every day!)

4.0
Aug 29, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

One of the best places to learn and watch as things get done. Very talented people. Flexible hours and good ownership model.

Cons

Sometimes the place gets very bureaucratic. Frugal bordering on Misery leads to a bitter taste at the end of day. Admin and HR can do their jobs better.

1.0
Aug 26, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Salary. They pay you piles and piles of money and stock, although a good portion of the money is in the form of a bonus that you owe back (prorated) if you leave _for any reason_ during the first year, and a similar scheme for year two.

Cons

This is a place that has no respect for it's employees or any life they may have outside of work. Within 2 weeks of starting, I was informed by my manager that I the other members of the team all worked nights and weekends, and that the same was expected of me. Things went downhill from there, until I was working 80-90 hours each week and burnt out on anything else. Amazon fires a good percentage of its workforce each year, and only gives raises to the top 20%, which produces a culture of extreme fear and competition, with team members sabotaging each other, and plenty of inter- and intra-team politics.

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