Pluspunten
In the UK it's great pay compared to e.g. public sector, small enterprises. Strong workplace culture in Leadership Principles - if these resonate and reflect your aspirations, it will be a good cultural fit for you, and you'll come to a place where people act on them all the time. Big company so room to explore different role fits especially if you are willing to relocate. And if you really want to relocate, Amazon is a great way to do it. Strong personal development focus through career development plans and mentoring programs - managers are measured on doing these. Flexibility - in development roles you don't have to clock in at 8.30am despite the scary HR paperwork before you start that implies you do. Definitely one of those opportunities that come along once in a lifetime - working in a prestigious company on cutting edge projects (as well as some really creative problem solving that isn't always as cutting edge as it looks...) will advance your career and experience and is seen as impressive. You'll learn how to do things well as well as how to deliver fast here. Tolerant workplace - dress how you like, be geeky, be a brainiac. Data-driven approach is refreshing - you can make a point with data and then do it. Meetings result in decisions. There is a bias for action. You think, then do. Global company means people have to say what they mean. People are generally direct and this makes things clearer (but you do have to be attuned to hints that things are not as simple or on-time as they seem). Comfortable work environment - you can sit on couches, in the kitchen, in the library, etc.
Minpunten
Very direct communication style is refreshing if the people you work with are nice people - but if you work with difficult people then they can use being direct as a way to vent their negative character traits with impunity. There are a minority of alpha managers who act in an aggressive and controlling manner when provoked, and this results in a stressful work environment. The Amazonian way can feel a bit cult-like at first (e.g. when you first join, you have to listen to a video of Jeff Bezos laughing). We are a customer obsessed company but the tech mentality can be elitist and if you work on interfaces, you soon lose sight of what it's like to be an end user. Limited support for study. You get shallow quick training given in house, and then you are supposed to learn everything on the job. If structured learning helps you add value you have to pay for it all yourself and managers ignore it. For all the talk about International Women's Day, most of the tech managers are male especially in engineering. Women are almost all filtered out by L6 and L7. The company makes little data on gender equality available but in this data-driven company if you don't have the data the initiative goes nowhere and we can only speculate as to what is going on. There is noticeable under representation for other groups too: older people, BAME groups. Not an open workplace on mental health despite evidence of burnout among employees. High company turnover. Having skilled people leave, especially when most of the tech is proprietary, seems like a poor business strategy. High costs to teams in churn and productivity. Can be a very confusing work environment - documentation doesn't keep up with reality. You'll never get to a point where you understand fully what is going on so you have to develop strategies to get the essential understanding which is akin to solving the "how do I know what I don't know" conundrum. Even if you think yourself quite confident, resilient, stressful times at Amazon can wear these away.