Pros
- Good exposure to large scale operations and high operational standards(2 years is enough to gain such experience if you haven't before) - Working with highly skilled individuals everywhere - Mobility in meaning of moving between teams/countries/roles(it is very wise not to stay in your team after promotion) - Interesting challenges that you won't see in smaller companies - Location of Dublin office is good - Budget for conference attendance/trainings
Cons
Worked in Dublin office more than 4 years - It is not a global company and I don't think they want Amazon to be one. Shut down all offices except the ones in Seattle today and it will continue 99% of its operations fine. - If you are not based in Seattle, accept limited visibility and slower career progress for yourself. - All the tools you will be spending nights to figure out are internally developed, so there is no use of this experience outside except AWS services you are exposed to. - Due to internally developed tooling everywhere, you will be working far from open source/commercial solutions exist on market. - Contradicting leadership principles allows your manager/peers to knock you out or praise about you depending on what he/she wants to do. - High performance culture is internally interpreted as step over others to climb up culture unless you are a genius. - If you are type of the individual(a political animal) who will not mind to crush anyone in your path to succeed, Amazon is a great place. No one will stop you as long as you have enough political(not technical) skills to project how good you are and how bad others in your team are. - If you are type of individual who cares his/her team and team goals, you will be penalised for your good intentions in the process. And when you question it, you will be thrown at couple of leadership principles and told that your career is %100 your responsibility. So unless you end up with a good manager(actually good ones don't last as culture doesn't want them to be supportive and good to their directs), you are always in danger and eventually going to leave. - Office environment is pretty bad in meaning of positive energy. Burned out engineers who never smiles at work shouldering heavy on-call duties due to duct taping approach to bad solutions everywhere. - Anyone joins as level 4-5 engineer in an office outside of Seattle should expect to spend 8-10 years to be promoted to Level 7/Principal even they exchange their life for it. - If you are not based in Seattle, accept that you will hear important details after you missed the opportunity to react or grab it and nobody will care as everything in Seattle is awesome. - Work/life balance doesn't exist and it will drain you quick. - Stress of covering your corner everyday doesn't worth it. - Health insurance for family is not fully covered - Pension plan is below average (3% if you don't contribute)