One friend put it best after he transitioned from a small department in the ecommerce side of the business to one of AWS's early-ish hires, that most young departments have the thrill of working at a startup but with some very supportive corporate backing (as long as things are growing).
I tend to feel like this would be most corporations that aren't shooting themselves in the foot. Not that there aren't plenty of those out there.
Amazon's culture is highly polarising. The emergent properties of which are all the truths and lies you ever read about the place.
Anything in the NYTimes piece that wasn't a personal story was grounded in truth, but spun as bullshit. It was a hit piece. There are bad teams, but at a company of this size, there will always be bad teams, and I am sorry for the poor experiences that people seem to have had, but I would hardly call them widespread. The entire article has really become a bit of an internal joke. That is how ridiculous many people find their claims.
Owed them for moving expenses, etc. but I really didn't care.
I spent 6 months doing nothing before I even considered getting another job.
Easily the worst experience in my life and completely colored my entire impression of the tech industry negatively. I went from loving what I did to just doing this as a job for a paycheck (even at another company now that is leaps and bounds "better") with an ever-present need to get out of the industry entirely (but no real plan to do so).
Think about this next time you have a conversation where everyone quotes the leadership principles.
FWIW, there is definitely koolaid mentality at Google and Facebook (source: worked at, and have lots of friends at both), but it's not the same way as you think. People are proud of what the company has accomplished as a whole in changing the world, but they aren't as blind to think that the feature that they added to a product is world changing in itself.
I think it really just depends on your team though. Most of the people I worked with didn't particularly like Amazon (or working in general) but it was a job and paid (relatively) well. They don't pay as well as Google/FB but they still pay much better than most companies in Seattle and as far as I can tell it's easier to get into Amazon.
Maybe the new hire offer is market rate, but at 1+ years you are definitely going to be paid more anywhere else.
Amazon's job levels are also structured to have higher requirements and lower pay than equivalent positions elsewhere.
You might be surprised if you were to actually have that conversation with a competitor.
I just assumed they paid relatively well because there was a salary spreadsheet on here a few weeks ago and doing a ctrl F for Seattle, the salaries seemed lower.
Our owners have been going to town with it since the XVIII century, when they figured out the "manufacture of consent" thingamajig.
Churchill [...] inspired millions of individuals to act
directly against their self-interest
But if most Brits would prefer to live under British rather than Nazi rule, you have something game theorists call a "Cooperative game" and it may well be more profitable on average for /everyone/ to fight rather than for /no-one/ to fight. It can even be in the self-interest of a /coalition/ to fight, tolerating non-fighting free riders, as long as the coalition remains large enough to win.
In other words, Churchill convinced millions of people to act in their /collective/ best interests, rather than their /individual/ best interests.
The last part about "pioneering new programs" though, that's very likely related to the public's new awareness of how frustrating it is to work there.
""" If it’s a distinctive culture, it will fit certain people like a custom-made glove. The reason cultures are so stable in time is because people self-select. Someone energized by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invent may choose another. """