amazon.com: work experience #9
i invite all former amazonians to share their experiences while an employee at amazon.com. here are some general guidelines:
do:
- details, details, details
- share about your interview experience
- what did you do there
- when and where did you work for amazon.com
- your least favorite core value & why
- why did you join
- why did you leave
don’t:
- openly slander people by name (don’t mention names)
- don’t share your own name
- sign your post with (your gender, years worked at amazon)
here’s the process: to submit your amazon story, please CONTACT ME. to make sure that the comment is not spam, please provide a valid email address — I WILL NEVER SHARE YOUR EMAIL. then, i’ll post your story as you submitted it.
*****
i really enjoyed working at amazon. while i was there, i worked in several areas; the cool thing is that if you get bored, you can move over to a whole different area seamlessly. so, i was in the operations group under wilke as a member of one of the 2-pizza teams. i became bored with that, so i moved over to the sales and operations planning team (s&op). that wasn’t for me. then i moved over to jason kilar’s group and managed 4 software engineers, where i stayed until i left to work for microsoft.
amazon is really cool. there’s a lot of innovation there, but they work you hard and don’t pay as much as other tech companies. they give a lot of stock, but the cash is lower than their peers. i really enjoyed my work.
the amazon core values — those are cool and mostly everybody at amazon believes and lives them. they can be annoying though. and some core values compete with each other. so, sometimes frugality can get in the way of customer obsession; or, innovation can get in the way of customer obsession. you’ve got a lot of great software engineers who sometimes forget who they are writing software for and get too invested in their own pet projects.
why i left for evil microsoft? i left for more cash, responsibility, and quality of life. i was working way too much. i’ll say this, though: my experience at amazon has made me really marketable.
oh, yeah, i joined amazon immediately after getting my mba from the mit; bachelor’s from cornell in engineering.
male, 2000 – 2004
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It was a love and hate relationship. I loved the challenges and the fast pace of our business. I loved working with great talent that taught me and I taught them, great reciprocation. Everyday was a learning experience and an opportunity for growth. Unfortunately working 60 + hours a week for little money didn’t feel right. The personal enrichment of the job began to wear off and the compensation stayed low so I finally had to go. I’m now working for Anixter International and applying many of the skills that I picked up while at Amazon. I equate my time at Amazon as a “boot camp” experience. I was lucky to experience this so early in my professional career. I believe that I’m better off now since I had the opportunity to work for amazon.com.
Jim Milligan, Ex-Amazon Area Manger in Fernley Nevada