Pros
- You will never have another job with as much impact in terms of the number of people you serve with your product, the number of people you manage, or the number of people you are able to help. - Everyone that asks who you work for will admire your answer. No one is unhappy to receive an Amazon package and that carries over to your day to day with a sense of pride that is difficult to match elsewhere. - The sky is the limit. If you have an idea, implement it. Within my first year I was able to ideate, develop, and launch an application that became standard practice in every warehouse around the globe - and none of that responsibility was within my job description.
Cons
- The culture is addictive, but toxic. The ability to do and (almost) say whatever you want means a lot of lines will be toed if not crossed altogether. Ideas will be shot down - and not gently. You will be questioned by peers trying to outdo you, employees trying to take your job, and bosses trying to prevent you from taking theirs. The result depends on who is heading your org. - A strong leader can turn this into an incredibly fun culture to experience and be a part of, where the above is embraced healthily without angst or turmoil. A weak leader... well, let's just say I watched a warehouse tear itself apart at the leadership level; I fully credit my ex-GM with destroying a billion dollar business (no joke). - HR is meaningless for both the associates and the employees. If you feel you were wronged, you probably were. But there is no mechanism internally to achieve any kind of remittance. I filed an ethics complaint with a supposedly external auditor and it was routed directly to the head of HR in my org. Result? Nothing. - Your life will be about chasing a different metric every day without having achieved any improvement on the metric you were chasing yesterday. But that's old news so no one cares. The focus changes so often that nothing is tangibly accomplished.