I worked at AWS for 8 years. Overall it’s a good place to work, and I’d highly recommend it to junior developers just starting out. I left 4 months ago, but it wasn’t Amazon’s fault. I was treated well, was paid very well, and I liked the work. But I was always going to be working on someone else’s terms there, and I realized that wasn’t the ideal career path for me. I like working for myself better, but I don’t regret my time at Amazon.

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Edit: Here’s my comp progression at Amazon for those curious:

2010: €50K - Joined Amazon in Dublin, Ireland as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team.

2011: €75K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promoted to SDE-2.

2013: $150K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2014: $185K - Promoted to SDE-3 (senior level), same team.

2015: $230K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2016: $390K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2017: $470K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2018: $511K - Still at Amazon, same team.

2019: Left Amazon last February. You can read more about why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399

All figures are gross income as shown in my W2. My last 3 year-end (Dec) paystubs: http://imgur.com/a/EgIVQln