No Work Life Balance

I have spoken to several dozen engineers who fled Amazon like me, because they couldn't take it anymore. My experience was confirmed by what I heard: there is nothing but politics driving everyone's careers forward and any kind of real work/life balance is the last thing you'll get there. Apparently, Jeff Bezos said this directly to many people: "I don't believe in work/life balance".

In addition, if you join Amazon don't make any plans for Thanksgiving or Christmas. You will be crushed with work during that time and it's not a coincidence that the annual review process starts right afterwards so that they can fire so many tired people and bring in the new batch right in the new year.

After leaving Amazon, I went to work at Microsoft. Even with Microsoft having its own really bad problems especially with so many failed acquisitions and other screw-ups, compared to Amazon, I think that Microsoft is heaven.