comiXology Reviews

Pros

Definitely a fun environment to work in, flexible schedule (barring any, rare, emergencies), and very good benefits. The staff are a lot of really excited people who want to do great things for comic books and solve big problems. Integration with Amazon offers a lot of really cool benefits as far as what can be used to solve problems. Working with Amazon also allows for a lot of potential upward movement and opportunity to work with a lot of diverse and intelligent people.

Cons

comiXology is incredibly ambitious and because of that there's a lot to be done with stretched resources. Team sizes are good but 2+ years into the Amazon acquisition, only some of the growing pains are gone. The turnover of long time staff cashing in post-aqusition has left some knowledge lost which tends to lead to overhauls of small pieces of infrastructure with unforeseen effects causing other small pieces to malfunction.

Pros

The positives of working for comixology are somewhat obvious. You get some access to free digital comics if you are into that sort of thing, the employee culture is good, even if the management culture is not, and you are working for Amazon, so if you have a tremendous amount of personal drive and fortitude, you may be able to parlay a job at comixology to a job elsewhere within Amazon but it won't be easy. The CEO is really the only person in senior management who knows what they're doing. He clearly has a passion for the product and the company and can be inspiring when he speaks to the group. The compensation can be good, especially when the Amazon stock does well, so if you can put up with all of the negatives, you could be well paid for it.

Cons

The single biggest issue at this company is that virtually everyone in senior management -- except the CEO -- has no idea what they are doing. They do not understand the business they are in, decisions are made on the basis of either "CYA" or "Amazon is doing this so we have to do it too." Don't look for any leadership or direction from the management team as there isn't any to be found. Any ideas -- rare as they are -- tend to be bland and banal as if determined by the incompetence committee. The technical leadership is a mess as well. They have no idea what they are doing, so the only direction they take is "whatever Amazon is doing." In many ways, they are like the youngest child in a family that wants so desperately to please their older sibling that they will simply ape behavior without even understanding why they are doing so. comixology tech mangement wants so desperately to "please Amazon" that they have lost all sense of what made comixology a unique company. You will rarely get to innovate or do anything interesting there, as if Amazon isn't already doing it, there is no chance that it will ever be done. There is little concern for work/life balance. You are expected to be available at all times. Though not as bad as that NY Times article about Amazon, it's not great either.