Amazon Software Development Engineer II reviews

3.6

59% would recommend to a friend

(956 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

22% approve of CEO

55% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer II employees have rated Amazon with 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 956 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer II professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer II professionals compared to other employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

956 reviews
3.0
May 28, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Work with top talent. - Work on high-scale, fascinating work. - Good company mobility. Changing teams every year or two is encouraged, giving the opportunity for a lot of diversity of experience if desired.

Cons

Depending on your team and your project, the work-life balance for software developers and software development managers can be very poor (frequent on-call rotations, 50+ hours per week norm, unreasonably demanding management). This varies greatly from team to team. Some teams are excellent at providing a good balance, and others are meat-grinders. It depends so much on your management chain. Can your manager negotiate appropriate boundaries such that other teams do not take advantage of you? Is your manager obsessed with arbitrary delivery dates, and will he or she pressure the team at all costs to meat them? Does your manager know how to put together detailed multi-quarter delivery plans? If the answers are "yes", "no", and "yes", then you should be alright.

4.0
May 23, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've heard everything from horror stories to "best job ever" stories; bottom line is, your experience will probably vary a lot by the team and position. That said, here are some things I've enjoyed on all of the teams (4 so far) I've worked on: - Working with smart people. At every level, in every position, my teammates have been outstanding, really inspiring me to raise my own game - Working on interesting problems. There's a huge breadth of work to be done, and finding a team that's working on something interesting has not been a problem.

Cons

- Team experience varies widely across the company. I've heard stories similar to the worst of them: folks working insane hours on unreasonable deadlines, etc. I will say it's gotten better--the market is so tight right now that those teams either adapt or perish - Amazon-scale is a double-edged sword. The problems you get to solve are like no other in the world. But on the other hand, everything you want to do is enormous and complicated. Systems are broken across teams, and every new thing that you want to do is likely to require contacts across multiple teams and even multiple organizations. Luckily, Amazon has a formal mentorship program to help newer folks navigate

1.0
May 8, 2017

SDE II

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good money, lots of perks, and a sign up bonus. Get to work in a high-pressure environment, writing production-level code at a fast pace.

Cons

Ugly code base. The tech stack isn't something you can really apply externally. Horrible work-life balance (on-call), and demanding executives leaving very little breathing room. You always get the feeling that you're another dispensable number, and upper management can cut you and your team at their whim if you don't deliver.

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