Amazon reviews

During there down seasons they cut your hours. There peak seasons are around Christmas and mid summer. During other times you may see a big drop in hours. They just dont have the orders to put out sometimes. It verys week to week. Late Jan. my hours droped to about 25 a week. There was one week that I only had 12 hours. That is the only reason why I had to quit. It was one of the biggest mistakes in my life.

Excessive, incompetent and unnecessary middle management: Too many less competent people from early days. are now in middle management Middle management rarely seen to come up with a constructive idea but will block and side-track ideas from developers. Tracking metrics is a cultish obsession. "Churn and burn" culture: I picked up the phrase "churn and burn" from a posting on another website by an Amazon manager, but it fits so I'll use it. The philosophy seems to be to mindless pressure the employees to improve "productivity". Amazon seems to do this way beyond the optimal point. This may be a trait of Jeff's that filters through the organization and manifests in a distorted form. The death march feeling is always there and morale is poor. 24X7 pagers are common but you may not be told in the interview process. Intellectual pretensions in technology: Possibly due to a lot of bright but immature young hires there is a bit of a poseur culture regarding what is appreciated. IME outside the main website there is more of a desire to impress Slashdot than win and keep new customers(e.g. Mechanical Turk with no attempt to engage real users and customers for it) Awful cramped working conditions: There is NO attention paid to making the workplace brighter and fun. People are packed as tight as possible. There are no recreational facilities or a couch to sit on and read an industry magazine. I guess they want to keep employees "productive". Move to the burbs if necessary but give people some breathing room, please!