Pros
The company offers challenging work with smart people and great access to data. Being surrounded by a higher caliber of coworkers definitely inspires higher performance.
Kontras
Here are a few top reasons I left: 1. It's so bureaucratic. Every team is playing against other teams often with high conflicting business goals - which is encouraged by management. 2. Pay: It starts off fair, but your quickly realize that to get a 2% COLA at the end of the year is difficult. This leads to employees who've been there for years to be underpaid compared to the market rates. 3. Little focus on maintenance: The entire mantra for Amazon is to build new stuff fast - and show scalability. Little interest is made toward supporting - or improving needed infrastructure that entire divisions rely upon. 4. Work Life Balance: Employees often work 12 hours plus a day. Positive reinforcement is seen as a weakness for a job well done. They just don't value employees. 5. Planning: As they continually grow their employee base, nobody has thought of infrastructure - parking, cafeteria, work spaces, etc. Which brings down morale. 6. Little Space for growth: While horizontal movement in the company is doable, moving up the foodchain means either finding ways to make other teams irrelevant or politicking for the spot. Either way it's more about putting on a good face then promoting on merit.