Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?
Former Amazon (retail division) mobile engineer here.<p>A lot of the comments in the OP are true, but possibly a bit overstated.<p>They definitely expect a lot of engineers to leave after one year with only 5% options. In fact, they'll refuse to give raises if your stock price hikes put your pay "above band," but then they won't make up the missing raise if the stock price tanks.<p>They do PIP a fixed percentage of the workforce every year, even if they're talented at their jobs-- but it was about 15% when I was there-- and half got to keep their jobs if they ran the gauntlet of hard tasks without a complete mental breakdown.<p>There's no question Amazon is a difficult employer. But the exact details vary from division to division. It can also be a place where you meet a few very talented engineers and learn a lot. But the good ones rarely stick around. I found that the best managers got quickly hired away for better positions at other companies. I personally had four managers within the span of one year.<p>They also seemed to have a ridiculous legal policy that drastically limited speaking at conferences, blogging, or personal open source projects. It was far easier to moonlight and get the okay from legal than it was to give a talk at your local Meetup or contribute to Open Source outside of work. I stopped asking for permission or telling anyone.<p>I also noticed that the corporation seemed to encourage taking on unpaid extra work as a bar raiser or security reviewer, but your division might take no interest in anything you did to help the wider company when performance review time happens. There's a lot of politics and jealousy at play. If your team is working 60, 70+ hours, they won't care that you're producing just as much quality work in 40-50. Managers routinely sacrifice their employees as pawns to gain favor for themselves.<p>One of the most troubling things wasn't the long hours, busy on-call periods, stack ranking, or PIP policy, but their complete disinterest in firing execs who used abusive behavior. There was one in particular who would scream at our managers and cause some to cry in meetings, but rather than disciplining him and making him change his ways, he was able to transfer to another division where he continued his abuse.