Amazon Software Development Engineer reviews

3.5

52% would recommend to a friend

(3,320 total reviews)
avatar

Andrew Jassy

34% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer employees have rated Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 3,320 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 Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
3.0
Jan 26, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will get the opportunity to work with lots of other bright people on massive scaling problems. Amazon is an excellent place to work right out of college. Your mileage will vary depending on the particular group you work in but there are lots of opportunities to move between teams once on board. I have been able to secure interviews with ease since leaving Amazon and managed to sharpen my C++ and SQL skills pretty dramatically while at the company. I was given a raise every review cycle during my stay at Amazon and was happy with the salary and benefits I received.

Cons

The work-life balance is relatively poor--most engineers will have to carry a pager on a regular basis. Sixty hour weeks were not uncommon in my organization. I've heard Amazon referred to as a "burn and churn" unit and I tend to agree with that. If considering various opportunities within Amazon and work-life balance is a big issue I'd steer clear from the retail and payments groups. If you enjoy building software from the bottom-up you probably won't get to do a lot of this immediately. There is a lot of legacy cruft to deal with and a lot of operational overhead is incurred as a result. I would not suggest Amazon to an engineer who is passionate about working with bleeding-edge technologies as I spent most of my time building code around application frameworks that were 5-10 years old.

4.0
Jan 13, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I highly recommend Amazon. As an engineer, you have a vast amount of resources and tools to get the job done and the infrastructure is such that you don't have to bug IT to install this and that on your servers (unlike other companies). Your team takes ownership of almost every aspect of your product, so there is a lot of opportunity to improve how it runs with limited red tape. There is a huge emphasis on working on large-scale systems which is both fun and an educational experience.

Cons

As owner of your product, your team will also respond to downtime, most likely with a pager rotation. Depending on your team, you might experience some micromanagement from the Senior Management, but in my experience it happened on an occasion rather than constant basis. Also, sometimes the autonomy that teams have can be detrimental to cooperation. Some times work is duplicated instead of shared properly.

5.0
Jan 12, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There is little bureaucracy and a relatively flat hierarchy. Many members of senior management have a technical background and are very intelligent. They are also open to ideas and respectful of other employees. One of Amazon's corporate values is frugality which usually leads the company to avoid and cut unnecessary spending such as fancy furniture for senior management, or expensive benefits packages for niche groups. Amazon is a relatively efficient, fun, profitable company to work for.

Cons

The on call schedule can be a serious burden. It limits the ability to make and keep commitments outside of work at times and can be a drain on an employee's family. They are also starting to lose their young, lean company feel. Process sometimes trumps results.

Viewing 3286 - 3288 of 3,320 Reviews

Glassdoor has 250,424 Amazon reviews submitted anonymously by Amazon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Amazon is right for you.