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Amazon Web Services

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Propaganda, Gaslighting, and Union Busting - Senior Software Development Engineer Amazon Web Services Employee Review

1.0
2 Mar 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good *initial* pay for Canada, supplemental benefits are slightly above average.

Cons

Leadership is only concerned with the stock price; the "customer" in Customer Obsession is major shareholders. Employees are an expense to be eliminated, and the people buying things (retail, Prime, AWS) are just another resource to be ruthlessly exploited. The Leadership Principals are a bludgeon used against employees, and ignored by senior leaders, but a constant stream of propaganda reminds you that as an employee, you need to follow them at all times. Constant gaslighting about the need for Frugality leads to stupid, short-term decision making, including no raises and severely reduced RSU grants, all while making 10+% YoY profit gains regardless of the overall economy. That doubles profit about every four years, but it's not shared with the people doing the work. "It's always Day 1!" is the biggest lie. This is just another huge, slow, stupid company in decline. It'll take a long time to get there, but Amazon will eventually be as irrelevant as HP or IBM, another victim of the cult of infinite growth. Don't believe the recruiters when they tell you it's "easy" to switch teams here; you go through a full interview loop just to transfer. Promotions are also a joke once you get to L6, everyone above that is a gatekeeper glorying in their past accomplishments.

Explore other reviews about Amazon Web Services

5.0
22 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strong engineering culture, competitive pay, great learning opportunities, and excellent internal mobility across teams.

Cons

Work-life balance can be tough, on-call rotations are demanding, and the pace is fast with high expectations.

3.0
21 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Ambitious projects if you're in the right team. Typically great team-mates. Don't believe the memes, the ppl are not back stabbing jerks but are overall genuinely nice. Not constrained by budgets when building cool things. Tools while sometimes clunky are powerful.

Cons

Schizophrenic lack of focus, entire teams get split, merged and upended multiple times a quarter. Some product managers are disconnected from reality. It didn't use to be the case, the PM-Ts were previously top notch. You're pushed to vibe code everything. Established products with loyal customers are getting neglected. Newer VP level leaders don't seem to know what they are doing. Veteran OG VP level leaders are either leaving in droves or seem stressed or checked out.

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