As an ex-Amazonian, I have to second your opinion. It was by far the worst employment experience I had at a tech company. In my 10 year tenure, I fortunately didn't come across any company as bad as Amazon, when it comes to how it treats its employees. The management doesn't have any value for the lives of their developers, and use them as tissues. Use and throw seems to their policy. If you can take their abuse, and don't value your personal life, you can survive there long enough. You are expected to work like slaves, always on call. Office cubes were cramped, there is no free soda, drinks. Even coffee they stocked in the kitchen was cheap. They celebrate frugality at the cost of quality of working conditions they provide to their developers. No wonder, one of the SVP's life misson when he joined Amazon from Microsoft was to make Amazon a place where developers would love to stay. Average turn-over at Amazon is around 18-24 months. Most of the line managers were clueless and sometimes completely non-technical. I wondered why smart engineers would even consider working there, when they can work in awesome companies in the valley where they celebrate/cherish people they hire, and actually care about them. Most of the kids who are hired right out of school, wisen up, and leave in 2 years. I worked at Microsoft too. Microsoft with all it faults still takes amazing care of its employees. Great perks. Amazon just pays salary, and its medical insurance is a joke when compared to Microsoft. One other biggest gripe I have about Amazon is that it leverages so many open-source technologies but they don't give back (much) to tech community or industry as such. It is not in their DNA. Their attitude is similar when it comes to its people. My advice for anyone considering Amazon, should seriously talk to current and Ex-Amazonians, and get a real-picture of what you can get out of Amazon. Folks who don't have the faintest idea about working for Amazon seemed to have downvoted a similar opinion of mine in the past on HN. For clueless folks who think, I am some dis-gruntled employee, I can gladly quote/refer to Yegge's post now. Quitting Amazon was one of the wisest decisions I made.
Amazon doesn't just pay salary. I got salary, "signing bonuses", and stock. The overall compensation seems to be pretty good from what I can tell online. Then again, I could be lucky since my stock grant was near the bottom of the recession.
Advice taken. I have an offer from them right now, as well as an offer from elsewhere -- after seeing this whole thread, I think I'll go for the elsewhere. Thanks for the advice!
Amazon is still a great place to learn, if you are willing to take the brunt of operations and don't mind having no life. Dismal working conditions, over-working, heavy operations load (group specific), having no-life, working over holidays, poor line managers, cover-your-ass politics aside - It is one of the few places where you truly get to see how large scale web-based/distributed systems are conceived, built, and operated. It could be a great career launch pad, if you are just out of school. It will be like drinking from a fire-hose. If you are single, and in a good group with the right set of peers then it could work out well for you. If elsewhere is a super hot startup (Quora/Palantir/Dropbox and ilk or good tech companies like Google, FB, Twitter, Linkedin or even Zynga (pre-IPO makes it hot in my opinion) then I would seriously consider the down-sides of working for Amazon, and living in Seattle.
