Amazon Software Development Engineer II reviews

3.6

58% would recommend to a friend

(955 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

19% approve of CEO

53% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineer II employees have rated Amazon with 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 955 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineer II professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineer II professionals compared to other employers within the Informatique industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

955 reviews
2.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great place to learn the fundamentals of highly distributed/scalable transaction oriented development. Must be young, hungry and kid-free to fully appreciate the experience, it's fast and furious.

Cons

You work very hard, not so bad unless you like to see your kids. The fact that the developers often become first level support for mission critical services, yes this means you will often carry a pager that will wake you at 3 in the morning because a server in Japan is performing aberrantly. There is this aura of thrift that after while creeps darkly into your morale, notably the "horse stall" like offices. It literally seems to be modeled after a warehouse-based sweatshop, right down to the "desk doors". It goes without saying these people are not great followers of Feng Shui.

4.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You get to work on challenging problems and learn from some of the best engineers out there. There also tends to be a clear correlation between what you're working on and tangible business objectives. Also, individual development groups have a lot of autonomy in how they work. (This has it's downsides; see below.)

Cons

Amazon's philosophy of minimal top-down policies on how work gets done leads to a lot of duplicated work, a lot of ways to do the same thing depending on which group you're working on, and a lot of confusion.

1.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people here are good, and the company has accomplished some great things. The interview process is grueling but effective; there aren't very many people here lacking in intelligence. The management has realized the value of a balanced life; we aren't asked to work extended hours. At least in my group, they're doing their best to keep the unpleasantness of being on call to a minimum. The mentoring program seems to be pretty good; the principal engineers put on some pretty interesting presentations describing the technologies that they're working with, and technical issues that affect developers. There are some interesting technical problems to solve at Amazon, so if you're lucky enough to be on a team that's solving them, you will probably be quite happy here.

Cons

For the most part, the work is maintenance. Most engineers end up spending more time wading through low-quality code and fighting with configuration problems in the development environment than they do coding. Unless you're on a team that's developing new software, most of the code required is little more than patches and glue. Most of Amazon's technology is out of date, including the low-end computers that the developers receive as workstations. The main platform is several years and two versions behind the times, and there's a surprising amount of business-critical code written in low-quality Perl. All of this is exacerbated by a fairly mediocre benefits package.

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