As an engineer at Amazon, what will your life be like?

Saurabh Khanduja, former Amazon developer

I work for a year at Amazon. The reason I moved was because API programming, software design / e-commerce were not my forte. However, joining Amazon has always been one of the smartest decisions in life.

Perfection

In my experience, Amazon is a place that emphasizes perfection. Do you know the 14 Amazon leadership principles? Remember those principles. If you think you are being asked to build something that is imperfect and should not be done, consider the benefits and shortcomings of the project with these principles. If you still think it is a mistake, present your thoughts to your supervisor or project manager. I did and succeeded.

Balance life – work

My manager is very thoughtful, because she knows that I have no expertise in java / ubuntu, and does not pressure me on it. But after the period of the first 2-4 months, if I only needed to work more than 8 hours a day, I would be able to finish everything by the deadline. My manager did not bother asking why I had to ask for permission to work from home or why I was on leave. She just asked me if I was fine every time I went back to work after I was sick.

Start-up culture

Join a start-up company and you will know its benefits. While I was working here, I thought it would be great to experience the Mac. I emailed the IT department, and immediately replaced my Windows machine with a Macbook Pro, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD.

Jeff Meyerson, former employee of Programming Technology Department

When I work at Amazon, I always come to the office before 6:30 am.

At that time, there were not many vehicles and you could cross the bridge from Bellevue to Seattle. At this time, most of the other Amazon employees are still sleeping.

The parking fee in Amazon is $ 25 per day, as a reminder of the proud thriftiness at Amazon. My card helped me get into almost every building here, as if I had a ticket to go to every amusement park. And at 6:30 am, I want to play whatever I want.

Browse through a forest of movie poster from Amazon Prime Video. Look at the chart on the whiteboard of a team working on the attribution database. Read the confusing rules posted on the customer support team’s wall. Every building in the Amazon seems like a rich university campus.

The buildings are very beautiful. However, there is no free food like at Google, because e-commerce does not encourage it (unless you are a talented engineer working on a secret project and are likely to leave the company) .

Amazon offices have beautiful elevators that lead to the top floors of skyscrapers. In addition, the chairs for reading in the buildings are equally beautiful.

I read Netflixed, Hatching Twitter, and Founders at Work. I read books about chakras, how to compose music. I reread The Everything Store, then read the content of interviews from Hedge Fund Market Wizards. Thinking about the books as I walked through the buildings of Amazon, I felt like I was moving inside the brain of Jeff Bezos.

When I left Amazon, the reason was not resentment or dissatisfaction but because there was nothing left to learn. In Amazon, one can learn how to build Amazon. Amazon is not created from master plans, but by gradual expansion, spreading to the next.