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Amazon Web Services

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No time, high stress, high turnover - Software Development Engineer (SDE) Amazon Web Services Employee Review

4.0
19 Jul 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Knowledgeable coworkers, high impact & visibility, ability to work with massive amounts of resources. Internal transfers are possible.

Cons

1/3 of the time oncall, getting paged 20+ times per day for issues that are often out of your control. Insane turnover, so that people who stay >6 months are some of the most tenured. 9 of 10 people turned over on my team in about 8 months. Because of this, the ops schedule is constantly shifting and doesn’t consider planned days off, to the point where I’ve had to reschedule vacations and plane tickets because no one could swap for that week. No time for documentation, and tribal knowledge gets lost when people leave. There is also little time for mentorship, which in high stress situations leaves junior engineers feeling unsupported and even more stressed. Managers are non technical, and care more about getting results, as opposed to creating robust systems or taking time to plan and act proactively. They would rather re-architect an entire system than move slower and build a well thought out one to begin with. That said, experience depends a lot on your team. My advice is to ask about operational load, work life balance, and project work before joining.

Explore other reviews about Amazon Web Services

5.0
22 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strong engineering culture, competitive pay, great learning opportunities, and excellent internal mobility across teams.

Cons

Work-life balance can be tough, on-call rotations are demanding, and the pace is fast with high expectations.

3.0
21 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Ambitious projects if you're in the right team. Typically great team-mates. Don't believe the memes, the ppl are not back stabbing jerks but are overall genuinely nice. Not constrained by budgets when building cool things. Tools while sometimes clunky are powerful.

Cons

Schizophrenic lack of focus, entire teams get split, merged and upended multiple times a quarter. Some product managers are disconnected from reality. It didn't use to be the case, the PM-Ts were previously top notch. You're pushed to vibe code everything. Established products with loyal customers are getting neglected. Newer VP level leaders don't seem to know what they are doing. Veteran OG VP level leaders are either leaving in droves or seem stressed or checked out.

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