Amazon.com Employee Review

I worked at Amazon.com full-time for less than a year

Pros – Smart people, company is growing, lot of opportunity if you can connect with right folks.
City of Seattle is beautiful (more on it below)

Cons – At Amazon, there's no balance between work and family life, working hours are very long, you will have no time for yourself or friends and family.
For newcomers, it is a complete sink/swim scenario, managers do not care for their employees, you have to watch for your back. People are unfriendly, you will be doing tons of things right, but one wrong thing and you will be criticized openly in front of your seniors and peers. Lot of politics at the higher level, top cares about themselves and to save their interests they do not hesitate to sacrifice the employees, games are played at employees expense. The annual review process favors old timers and well connected.
Company is full of ‘A’ type robotic employees, they are very high on the company Kool-aid. You will work hard but it will not be fun. There are lot of product and project managers but not enough engineers to do the work. If you can master the game of passing bucks, you will do well.
City of Seattle is beautiful only for 1-2 months, rest of the year, it is cloudy (low hanging grey clouds), rainy and cold. It can get depressing without sun shine for a long time.

Advice to Senior Management – Attracting smart people as employees is good thing, make sure that they can stick around, welcome them and help them assimilate in the company culture, employees are assets, treat them well.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company