Pluspunten
You get to work on the cutting edge architectures - webservices, SOA, middleware. There's a 360 degree view to engineering where you can get involved with not only the end-to-end SDLC but from an enterprise architectural perspective as well e.g. capacity planning, load/performance testing, senior management reviews and presentations etc.
Minpunten
Operational support, operational support, operational support! The development center I was working at (Tempe, AZ) had a slave driver for a manager. He replaced very competent, intelligent and hard working people with suck-ups. Completely took the joy out of working for Amazon due to his micro-management and paranoia - his philosophy was to be a dictator and believed any one speaking out for anything meant that it was a bad reflection on him so he was hard on those who raised ANY concerns. The MAJOR issue with all of this was that senior management in Seattle was made aware of these issues on multiple times and NO action was taken ever. This eventually made a lot of us to leave.