Amazon Developer Senior reviews

too much demand from employees

Amazon started out with a huge focus on software and technology, but over time, that has given way toward operations and retail. We are not a software company, if we ever were. Software quality is not a priority in any meaningful sense of the term. Software projects are driven by operational and project deadlines. We're slowly starting to realize that short-siding quality hurts in the long term, but software development is still incredibly focused on the short-term. Any project that requires coordination across multiple teams (most do) becomes a nightmare, as we have lost most of our previously-effective project management talent. The culture here as become infected by turf wars, something I saw change as the company grew quickly and hired senior management from other companies. Many teams now focus on "their" projects and are reluctant or unwilling to help others. It's a shame to see this become part of the company DNA, as most software teams I've worked with seem biased toward cooperation. The fierce competition for resources and constant bottomless list of scaling and growth projects leaves very little room for discretionary projects. Part of this is the result of successful growth at the company, so it could be worse. Round-the-clock support is also expected of software engineers. Although there is good coverage from support teams, someone is on-call 24-7 on most teams. You are expected to be no more than 15 minutes away from a dial-in/VPN location at all times when on-call. That doesn't even give me time to go to Costco, and makes commuting a pain.