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Amazon Web Services

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Great Engineering, Declining Leadership - Senior Software Development Engineer Amazon Web Services Employee Review

3.0
29 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* The company's Leadership Principles and document-driven meetings are good frameworks for a company culture. * There are a lot of smart, motivated, principled people working there. It is easier to be on a good team with good coworkers. * It is relatively easy to move around in the company. And because the company is involved in so many different things, it is easier to find a team that is a good fit for you. * Lots of opportunities for interesting technical challenges to work on. * Lots of good resources in software engineering to learn from. * Reasonable opportunities for promotion and career growth.

Cons

* The company culture in more recent years does not seem to adhere to their own Leadership Principles as much as it used to. * The company used to value bottom-up decision-making a lot more. More recent years have been trending toward more top-down mandates and micromanagement. * Senior leadership is not what it used to be. * The company is very much all-in on generative AI. This applies both to the leadership's direction for the company, as well as how employees are expected to use it. * High pressure environment with an emphasis on moving fast is not for everyone. Moving fast also means frequent churn. * Maintaining a work-life balance can be challenging if you are not intentional about it. * Oncall support can be draining. Some organizations invest in operational improvements better than others.

Explore other reviews about Amazon Web Services

5.0
26 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Awesome team - great culture. Very customer focused.

Cons

It's not a great fit for folks who are not aligned to the culture.

3.0
21 June 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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