Having spent a decade at Amazon, across several organizations, I don’t recommend it as a place to work.

There was a NYTimes article about the company in 2015. Everything there still reflects the day to day culture of the company.

For me Amazon took an unprecedented toll on my mental and physical health. I did earn enough money, but I immensely regret all the time I didn’t spend with my family over the years, all the friendships that faded, and the constant reminder from leaders how I could always do better - nothing was ever good enough.

Amazons leadership fundamentally does not see their employees as human beings. As I grew the ranks over the years, I was directly coached on removing myself from certain day to day interactions, because it would simplify decision making if I didn’t have an interest in my own people, that simply forming just work bonds was a conflict of interest in terms of doing what’s “right” for the company.

Any non compete you’re concerned about isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.

Good luck to you.

I'm there right now and this is very true.

It isn't even a hidden truth about working there. In fact, the company has a set of principles [0] that are necessary to adopt and use to justify all decisions you make or feedback you give to others.

And missing from this set of principles? Any mention of the humanity of those you are leading. The only empathy encouraged is for the customer. It's a cold cold place to work.

[0] https://leaders.com/articles/leadership/amazon-leadership-pr...

The two new principles are less than a year old. They aren't taken as serious as the other originals. The culture is already established.

If you want to argue that the culture doesn't match them, whatever, but you can't say nothing's mentioned.

https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/leading-an...

https://www.carrus.io/blog/amazon-newprinciples

Alternate links

After that, your kids will start to turn towards friends, teachers, and other relatives. As they should--it's an important part of becoming a full fledged human.

But it's still a bit bittersweet to see the end of being able to do no wrong in your kiddo's eyes.

Really? I’ve always felt that the Amazon brand is relatively low quality. I’ve also heard that tech-wise it’s less interesting than you might assume from the outside, and they just burn out engineers on problems rather than solving them well.

I’m relatively uninformed so don’t make a decision based on this, but maybe something to consider.

I will agree that Amazon has some weird stuff around their internal development environment, which I think is well documented elsewhere. OTOH, when you're building services to handle billions of customers all around the world, there are some things you have to do a little differently.

NYT's story was very controversial.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/17/432555175...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/amazon-...

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/17/9166023/new-york-times-amazon

NYT has a tremendous agenda and often goes unchecked.

Anonymous discussions are as far as most people will go.

From the poor tooling to the most toxic "team" of co-workers I've ever been on.

I don't regret joining but every month I deeply regret staying. Props to Amazon for providing me with the motivation to find something better.

I find that a lot of Amazon’s management systems appear to be built as safeguards against the pitfalls less experienced leaders might not know how to handle. Unfortunately it is optimized for the “least common denominator” of human collaboration, which is basically coercing individuals to behave like machines. I agree with your characterization of the problem.

I would go so far as to say that I disagree with the system in a philosophical manner. It is opposite of good leadership, in motivating humans to grow, innovate, and create success, in my understanding. Yet I cannot ignore Amazon’s market success; it may have succeeded in spite of these flaws.

I do not know how long I will stay. I anticipate a deep enough philosophical conflict to motivate my eventual exit.

Until then, my team will benefit from stronger cohesion, shared knowledge, clearer prioritization, growth, work life balance, and ultimately happiness. Some of them have taken their first vacations in the last few years, in the few months of my tenure so far, because of the changes we’ve embraced.

I will create a healthy environment of leadership for my team, and we will succeed. We will show Amazon what is required, as long as I can.

If past experience is any indication, I will carry my team’s allegiance because I look out for their interests, individually and collectively.

And when we deliver strategic advancements, we will gain autonomy. If not, I know that my talents can be impactful elsewhere.

I hope that I can quell the tide of dynamics of which you warn.

I keep waiting for that shoe to drop, and so far it hasn't.

We recently had an off-site meeting for everyone in the organization under our L10, and I now feel so much better about where we are going and how we are going to get there. I didn't realize how much pent up angst I had until the end of the first day of the off-site, and I felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders, and that I had finally seen the light.

That said, my history with employers is that everything can be perfect and great up to a certain point, and then there is a sudden change. In the past, that change has usually been because of a change in leadership somewhere, possibly just down at the level of the new manager hired right above me.

After that change, what was one of the best places I've ever worked suddenly becomes one of the worst. I've seen this happen time after time at virtually every single employer I've had since 1989. I can count on one hand the number of times where this didn't happen.

So, I will continue to keep an eye out for that dropping shoe. But I will also continue to enjoy working on this team, with these people, and this leadership.

And with any luck, we will be able to successfully change the world for the better.

How many hours a week did you average at work? A lot of tech jobs will expect working 9-6. If it was over 40-45, did the money scale linearly to the hours you put in? If it was 40-45 then it's equal to most other jobs except with higher compensation?

But even here, the company is not generous at all. Your stock grants vest 1-2 years out. If the stock climbs during that time, then in next year, you get no additional compensation. My initial years at amazon, I received little to no compensation increase, even with multiple promotions, because the stock had climbed significantly in value.

So if they don’t give you more shares when the stock appreciates, then what happens if it doesn’t grow or declines? They try to compensate you by giving you more shares that vest over a 2 year time frame. So if the stock does good, you get screwed. If the stock performs poorly, you get screwed too.

Did something else bad happen at the company?

I guess our definitions of screwed are slightly different. It sounds like they are giving you extra compensation in case your options happen to do poorly one year. They could have chosen to say "we can't control the market, you received 10 shares and whether they go up or down is out of our control". This way you win some and lose some based on the market. Even with having to wait for 2 years that's not too bad (it's basically free money).

Holding for a year also means your stock compensation is taxed at long term capital gains instead of income. If I were working at a stable and successful public company I'd prefer stock options if you were comparing $1 in cash vs $1 in options. After taxes, etc. your options are going to be likely 20-25% more valuable due to less taxes (no risk) and it has the chance to potentially to go higher (risk involved). The only time it's worse is if the stock tanks hard (the 20-25% tax difference) but that's not going to be a common event in a company like Amazon.

Combine that with you entering in 2012 when they were trading for 215 a share, that's a 15x return vs today. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing how that outcome isn't good. If you worked let's say 45 hours a week, combined with 10 years of a competitive tech salary + having options in a company that has had massive growth that's a combo where you end up being pretty much set for life (multiple millions of post-tax money available).

Were you working something like 80 hours a week for 10 years straight? That would make the decision much harder but at the same time you're trading 10 years to never have to worry about money again so even then it's not a hard no, 80 probably is a hard no because but 60 hours brings it closer to "maybe, it depends".

I will try to explain again. Let me offer an example that captures one part of the problem.

Let's say you join Amazon today (Day 1). In a year from now, let's say I promote you and give you increasing scope and responsibility. Now if the value of your previous stock grant (from Day 1) has appreciated, I will give you no additional compensation. As your manager, I can get you through multiple promotions without providing you any meaningful compensation increase since Day 1.

Now because your compensation weighs heavily on stock vests, let's say Amazon's stock performs poorly, falling behind even the SP500. So, your total compensation this year will drop significantly. I will offer you additional stock grants that vest in a year from now and two years from now. So if you stay with me for at least two more years, you can "earn" the compensation that you did not receive THIS year. If the stock continues going side ways or drops next year, you can make next's years losses by staying another 2 years (3 years total).

To put it bluntly, if you perform well and the company's stock increases, thank you very much. You previous stock grants have brought your compensation this year to its maximum. We won't have give you another dime.

If you perform well and the company's stock doesn't increase or drops – that's too bad for you. This year, that's YOUR loss to deal with. If you stick with us two years, we'll "try" to give you back the money we "hoped" to pay you this year.

>Were you working something like 80 hours a week for 10 years straight?

There are few people in Amazon engineering that work 40 hours a week, and any organization that normalizes that will get either re-org'd or have their products/services completely canned. 55-60 hours is a baseline. 80 hour weeks is not unheard of, for even 6 months at a time. There is NEVER a down time. You do A and then you move on to B and then C. If you fail to do A or if you decide to take a break between B and C. We do stack ranking and drop whoever falls at the bottom of the stack, even if they're pretty dang good. Somebody HAS to be let go. No way around it.

I don't know where you live. In my country (France) overly broad non compete are not enforceable, and also you need to be paid during the non compete period (at least 1/3 of your compensation or something like this), which means that employers will almost always waive them except for very rare exceptions.

Oh that's interesting. That is the first time I've seen a justifiable contractual consideration on the employer's side for a non-compete.

https://lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/workplace-policies/Non-Com...

These things are generally very unlikely to happen when the employee is a low earner.

To really drive home how much of an advantage employers have, even with a non compete ban, employers in California were found to be colluding to suppress employees’ wages.

https://www.latimes.com/80014970-132.html

1. This can impact behavior of the labor force despite lack of enforcement. Not everyone can afford to pay a lawyer to review their employment contract, and not everyone will have the knowledge to know if such terms are applicable or enforceable to their situation. This causes fear and hesitancy which in turn drives behavior and decision making.

2. If you're unfortunate enough, there's nothing stopping a company from attempting to make an example out of you. Even knowing it's unlikely a former employer will come after you, why should individuals be forced to take on that risk to earn a living?

I saw that on an offer and asked about the compensation, ready to negotiate at least 50% pay for that part.

The person on the other side was surprised, also when I asked if anyone actually signs this.

I do not understand how a non-compete compete for key people can be one sided.

In other parts of the world it is just the bog standard notice period and nobody is escorted out of any building and expected to keep working during that 3 month period.

I am also NAL, but I don't think moving to CA gets you out of non-competes and I've seen evidence of this (one well covered story involved an Amazon exec going to a Bay Area company and getting sued).

For warehouse and delivery workers... There's probably a chapter in the Bible just covering that.

I’m not now and never have been an Amazon employee, but the bonus plan just seems sensible to me.

Also, once again, do check the law where you live. It's very possible that non-compete only apply on stuff you worked on. For example, maybe if you did not work on S3 specifically, you might even be able to work on Google Cloud Storage if all you are considering are companies that make public clouds.

> It basically limits me for working for a competitor of ALL of amazon for 18 months.

Amazon have an incredible long-tail of badly-made products across the entire software market. They do a lot more than cloud hosting & book delivery.

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-i-turned-down-an-aws-...

They made me feel like a jackass when I did.

Less than a year later I was vindicated:

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-ruins-own-attempt-at-...

And your timing is apt! "Should I Accept an AWS Job Offer?" went up yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCiUulzr9f8

If you were being hired in as a VP or CxO and were extremely well known, that’d be one thing. But only a few people have that sort of privilege and clout.

(Disclaimer: I work for AWS but am not involved in the hiring process other than interviewing. My views may not represent those of my employer. Opinions are my own.)

Never actually had it be a blocker or a problem. I'm just an engineer.

Lots of people will say it's a problem. They will claim it's going to be a big issue.

It isn't. Just stick to your guns. Be polite and be patient. Make it clear you have plenty of time available.

I had someone try to get my spouse to sign a contract without seeing it. The woman even had the gall to be offended when we declined without seeing it. After some hutzpah, we ended up literally sitting at this random employees desk for 20 minutes reading the contract before signing it.

Even that, while stupid, was not a big deal.

You always have the right to have a lawyer review documents. You can always take it home with you. You can always ask for changes. The worst they can do is say no - and usually they will say yes.

Yes, I was already an employee, which probably changed things. Still I was very surprised how easy it was. I would not count on that every time, especially if you are not an employee yet and like me not a really famous case that your employment would make headlines.

P.S. I did not shred it, but kept it for the case I would need it for any purpose. I never needed it, I was fully paid as agreed by email but never signed on paper.

Addendums are much easier for them to agree to.

Second, did the addendum directly contradict or void language in the standard form lease crafted by corporate legal? If not, there's probably more room for negotiation there.

Even in standard employee agreements, there's often an "invention disclosure form" that sort of operates as a built-in addendum for the new hire to fill out. This helps prevent the employer from claiming ownership over things the employee worked on prior to hire.

I didn’t ask for much but I limited my liability back to common sense.

Also note that Massachusetts recently (2018) signed into law restrictions on non-competes. One of the major aspects is that such a clause provide "garden leave" pay for employees during their noncompete period. [2]

You can alternatively/also simply ask for more pay in compensation, claiming such a clause is non-standard in the field (personally, I've seen very few), and thus it's a material change to what was previously negotiated. That didn't work for me (I was already at the top of the salary range for the level I was assigned to), but since it doesn't involve lawyers, it's more likely to happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contrac...

[2] https://www.slnlaw.com/massachusetts-non-compete-act.html

Jurisdiction matters, as non-comps are common, and many firms rely on a lack of knowing to pressure folks into behaving the way they like, regardless of actual legal sturdiness.

As long as this is the case they will continue to try pulling crap like this.

Some commenters on this thread think that they are too unimportant for AWS to harass them after they leave. The issue is not how important the employee is, but how dangerous a competitor the next employer is from the perspective of AWS. If AWS wants to slow down the competitor, they will use all legal means available to them.

His advice was thus: technically I am prohibited from working at this new company; Amazon would need to be aware of my new role to enforce it; courts have expressed criticism of over broad non competes so I could challenge it if it came to that. I was not L7+ so his added advice was basically keep your head down for the next 18 months.

It’s bullshit though, and from now on I will always engage an employment lawyer before signing on anywhere. He looked over my new company’s non competes and they are much more reasonable.

I used to work in LegalTech, and contracts have a ton of little bits and things that can get the outcome Amazon would want in a legal battle. Provisions, Certain wording, etc. I've seen all kinds of nasty shit employers try to pull, from trying to prevent interactions with (any) "institutions", to my salary being "conferred" (a gift, not consideration) to me by the company at it's discretion.

For one, in this comment section, I see people suggesting you move to California, but in my experiences contracts often have a Governing Law provision, usually set in a jurisdiction the assigning party would feel comfortable in. Again, not a lawyer, I don't know how California's law works, but, if you worked in California, and the Governing law provision says Delaware, well, guess where you're (probably) flying to for those proceedings.

If it's not worth that much to you, I probably don't possess enough super secret special sauce stuff for you to need a non-compete anyways.

I'm not sure making this about confidential information is helpful -- there are already other provisions in the contract, I'm sure, relating to that.

In general yes all contracts are up for renegotiation and in house lawyers fully expect this kind of push back. If they rescind the offer then they're a.holes and you shouldn't work for them anyway.

It seems to be a concept in law that you can't enforce overly broad and unreasonable provisions like this so they are being a bit cheeky slipping it in anyway. Again there's a legal term I forget for this but it means "something only a fool would agree to".

Nevertheless, we do push back on those things that are most important to us, like my ability to support existing open source projects like NTP.org, which I have been involved with since 2003.

I'm personally not too worried about the non-compete, because I'm so low on the totem pole that I really don't think the company will care about me if/when I leave. I strongly suspect they won't even notice -- there's at least six or seven layers of management between Andy Jassy and me.

> Employee worked on or supported, or about which Employee obtained or received Confidential Information.

Totally fair if you don't want to enter that agreement, but the language is pretty standard.

If that's your measure of "are you really sure you want to work for this company", then I think I would ask if you're really sure that you want to work for ANY company. Or even just work at all.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-...

https://www.brodyandassociates.com/blog/even-amazon-trouble-...

I personally as an individual contributor (IC) who's not a distinguished engineer would not worry much about Amazon chasing me down to my next job. Not a legal advice obviously.

To my knowledge, this is one of those overly broad statements they put into the contract because it's advantageous to them and to reserve the right to sue the "VP of something" who took the knowledge and ran away. They won't act on it for your regular employees because it costs them money to do so and developers _routinely_ jump ship, though they want you to know that they technically have the power to because you signed that contract.

Like others said, there are other problems with Amazon you might want to focus on. This one may not be worth fighting over, but you can use it as part of a response with multiple requests, to let them say no to something and accept your other requests.

This kind of thinking is exactly why these clauses get worse and worse and worse over time, I'm afraid.

People should be prepared to argue the toss over every single line of an employment contract, and seek advice for every single line.

Anecdata: at a different FAANG, I requested a less important clause to be removed and the lawyers denied even that request. Lawyers will tell hiring managers to pass on a candidate in the name of protecting the company. They won't pass on everyone, but it's a long way to get there.

I think that having access to specialized legal council would have helped, but attorneys have a reputation of being expensive. I wish levels.fyi offered a legal service as well, in addition to their negotiation coaching service.

There is another strategy than asking them to remove it, though. Ask them to qualify it. I've done this in the past (a long time ago, mind you, and in the UK, where employers are still somewhat bound by decency as well as law). I was asked to sign an extensive NDA for a short period of employment, and I agreed, on the condition that I could decline to join any meeting that wasn't strictly related to the project I was hired on, and that the same NDA bound them when discussing my personal projects.

'Amazon is suing a cloud employee who left for Google, rekindling the debate over non-compete agreements' https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-...

Both times the new company withdrew its employment offers. It is pretty terrible. It leaves the employee at a company they don't want to be at.

This was in Colorado and Texas FWIW

Not because the non-compete is scary, but because the potential new hire is clearly an idiot.

A potential hire might also open up about their casual drug use. Would that be points in their favor vs. the other candidate who might very well also take drugs but chooses to not advertise this irrelevant detail to potential employers?

And lying to your employer about things like drug use will get you fired faster than just about anything else.

Yes, I did start work in the basement of the Pentagon in 1989 for what was then the Defense Communications Agency. I will let you ascertain for yourself what I may have told them during that interview.

I think you know damn well that jobs requiring a security clearance are a special case. It really doesn’t make sense to bring this up in a general conversation about jobs.

> And lying to your employer about things like drug use will get you fired faster than just about anything else.

If your employer is the DoD, sure. If you work for a normal company, they’ll never find out unless you have a real problem (or are stupid enough to advertise it).

The current employer tracked down the new company after they gave notice, found the hiring manager, and started making threats ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not having it in the first place is a way better solution.

https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.62.020

Think about it: if you had issues with AWS related to your non-compete, you probably reached some form of agreement or settlement. I'd assume in a large number of these cases, part of the agreement is to not disclose anything about it in public.

Take my two cents: talk to a good, really good, lawyer.

The final reply in my email thread with them: "I will take a look at these messages and will inform our recruiting team of your concern if these messages are found to be legitimate. Thank you again for sharing your concerns. I wish you well in your future endeavors!"

I'll clarify: The "I" pronoun in the reply I got isn't referring to Mr. Bezos. The email is signed by an Amazon employee who I won't name for his privacy.

"This past October, a federal judge placed major limitations on his Moyer’s role while also criticizing Amazon’s non-compete policies. Moyer was not allowed to work on any financial services projects, his area of expertise at AWS, for Google Cloud. He was also barred from contacting any AWS customers and any potential financial services customers. The conditions were to stay in place until the lawsuit was fully resolved, or until his non-compete expired in November 2020."

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-settles-non-compete-law...

Big companies love the free market, except when it means they have to pay more money to employees...

My first proper job after being a freelancer I felt it had an overly broad clause about ownership of work done in my private time. When I asked, they clarified, and I told them directly, that makes sense, but that’s not what’s written. They just changed it for me! No problem! It was no Amazon but a large company in my book.

If (with the help of a lawyer) it isn’t clarified to your liking, do not work for them.

No is good.

1. Do you live+work in a state where non-competes are enforceable?

2. Does the contract say they need to compensate you (e.g. some % of salary) for the period during which they want to enforce the non-compete?

If you are in CA(or ND or a few others) this would not be an issue at all. Non competes are illegal with few exceptions.

Amazon does have a history of enforcing this against competing employers/former employees, against working at google or microsoft specifically

There are plenty of areas where Amazon doesn't compete and plenty of areas they do compete. If you stay away from bigger firms you should be okay.

Should you accept the offer is laying low a strategy you can live with for 18 months?

The turnover rate is extremely high at Amazon. I don't even consider my non-compete clause when looking at other roles. If you're really worried then don't update your linkedin right away when you leave. After a few months no one will notice.

I've read the following things:

- Amazon caps salary, and uses stock options for comp

- vesting is 3-5 years, and Amazon loves forcing people out before you vest, either by natural attrition from their toxic HR practices/stack ranking/ridiculous workloads, or by just forcing you out

On top of that, they will then noncompete you after you leave?

AVOID.

It's one of the reasons I left Amazon after nearly a decade. There was stuff I wanted to do and the non compete made it impossible.

Or you provide a list and ask them if they agree you cannot work at those.

I left a really crappy employer about two months into a three month notice period as it was just pointless drudgery. I just kept a low profile on LinkedIn for a year or so afterwards. Didn't think they would have any way of finding out I joined another company straight away.

https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in...

If you live somewhere else, I don't know if California law would apply or your local laws, so like other said you should consult an attorney who specializes in this area.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer.

Edit: and I glossed over the part about "employees living full time in California." My bad.