IC3 Amazon SWE Experience - Last 1 year

Joined the company as an IC3 SWE about 1.5 months after graduating and it's been just under a year. Here's a few of my thoughts and hopefully any juniors starting their careers looking at Amazon find this helpful. I would love to hear if anyone else has similar feelings to this, or if I'm just being reactionary.

I had little industry experience coming into the job. I'd only done an internship for about 6 weeks in an accountancy firm which was super slow, and that was my entire view of the industry before joining Amazon... I couldn't have been more wrong.

Culture

I was excited to join, and meet my team over the first week and mingle a little bit. Again couldn't be more wrong. The second you walk through the door, there's something about the employees there. No one is particularly welcoming or conversational. It was just weird. In my first 1:1 with my manager, he didn't even ask about my background. Just laid out expectations and gauging my experience (I had none) for what workstreams would suit me.

Not just my manager, in my first week the main conversation topics I heard from everyone was PSC (bi-yearly performance review):
"You're lucky you don't need x on PSC as an IC3",
"make sure you're ramped up quickly enough to get meaningful PSC contribution" blah blah blah.
And the second thing was people just complaining about losing benefits, refreshers being cut, layoffs, wlb, etc... It's a perfect culture if you enjoy moaning. And over the last year it's seeped into my personality too lol (you can probably tell). That's some people, most other people don't even bother to introduce themselves even though they're only sitting a few desks away.

Work

Initially, work was interesting. The space the team works in is really exciting, and it actually made me enjoy being a SWE. I hated my internship and I didn't think I would enjoy going into work every day. But that changed. There's a wide range of different tasks and areas to dive into and learn about. That's the case for most teams in my org.

After a few months you realize at Amazon that if you're a good employee, being productive, enjoying work, enjoying life - it's not enough. You need to spend your life gaming the system. Doing projects for efficiency, direction, organising socials (not because anyone on the team is social but because you can put it on your PSC). You learn quickly there's no concept of goodwill; it's just people doing stuff for PSC. Even if you ask someone for help, guess what... they'll mention it on PSC 😂

Over the last few months AI has been draining and it's become a trigger word for me. Every day it's AI this and AI that. New AI tool, AI metrics, AI contributions, AI impact, AI tooling, AI efficiency, etc... Every single week is an AI Week, where we get new AI slop to live with. Take that, and combine this with BS AI contributions for PSC, and you suddenly have AI bots spamming the team chats for random pings, like on-call stuff, outstanding tasks, even people organising 1:1s and team meetings. Just to show that they use AI...

Work Life Balance

Last thing is work-life balance. I'm writing this after midnight and I'm still working. This is regular, working about 12 hours a day. As an IC3 I'm clearing my scope and level for expectations, and not even a thank you, or a well done, or any appreciation. You can ship 200+ diffs by March, and start work at 5am aligning with XFNs in different time zones and directing projects. Then work until midnight... But you can't get promoted because

1. I'm already on my 4th manager and there's no stability or consistent growth plan
2. I didn't apparently organise enough team socials last year (actual feedback I got as to why I wasn't put up for promo). As if I want to organise a social where 15 people put their name down, 5 turn up, and 3 leave early because they have to work.

It's just a testament to the shitshow we're in.
Is the pay really worth burning yourself down to zero mentally and having no life outside of work? Depends on the person I suppose. Each to their own.

Overall

• Work is interesting, impactful and I enjoy being on-call. We get loads of different tickets and I learn something new every time. I don't mind working late if I enjoy what I'm doing.
• I'm very fortunate to be employed out of uni, let alone at Amazon, so I'm content and grateful for where I am. I have many friends struggling to even get a position. Not everything is doom and gloom.
• But it is super draining and I'm slowly losing my energy. And like I said, it is a complete shitshow.
• Culture is -100/10. No one wants to take a break and play table tennis, or chess or anything. No one has any interests or hobbies (not a single sport to talk about).
• Not to mention I don't understand like 80% of conversations happening because no one's speaking English. If you want to become a mundane personality who's always negative and patronising. Look no further.

TC: 140k USD