Amazon FAQ

Pros

Great benefits and sometimes good perks like free shoes each year from Zappos.

Cons

Very Strict with attendance and don’t make any exceptions really even if the absence is due to a death of a relative or a sever illness of your own.

Pros

*Pay is going up to to a better standard. We just received two standard pay increases this year, withing a few months of each other. *Employee "appreciation" events are frequent. Lunch is provided at least a couple times per month, and usually from a decent restaurant. *There are some good people to work with. I've made some really good friends here. *Very diverse company. Amazon employs a very diverse group of people, ethnically, culturally, etc. They employ people of all difference races, colors, cultures, LGBTQ+, etc. *The company does offer benefits, including insurance (health, dental, and vision), as well as an Amazon employee discount (10% off a single order, up to $100 per year), and offers $110 per year credit toward safety shoes.

Cons

While there are plenty of pros to working for Amazon, there are many, MANY more cons, in which you should weigh each heavily before deciding to work for Amazon: *Management across the board can be extremely toxic, and there are more toxic managers than not; most act only in their own best interest. Some managers are very hands off, just allowing people to coast through work without much direction or anything, and then one day, they'll call those people in for disciplinary action, and without prewarning; I've seen many an associate terminated out of the blue, and those associates often say the same thing; "I had no idea I was even making mistakes," or "No-one ever said I was performing badly." Other managers are very much the micromanaging type, in which any little thing you do (or don't do) that isn't up to par results in a coaching and/or quick disciplinary action. Both types exist in all buildings, and it's just a lottery as to which type you might have above you. Many associates move departments, not because of the work, but to try to get a better manager; this is ever constant. The managers often say one thing to appease associates, while doing something completely different behind the scenes, and will make promises that they either can't, or have no intention to, keep. *Favorites is played hardcore across the company, by all associates above T1, including PAs, DAs, AMs, OMs, and even Site Leaders. Very often the favorites of the managers will get preferential treatment, often putting them in very light-duty positions, especially those in which no hourly throughput rate is measured, and even within those people, they're pulled off of light-duty tasks to perform other even lighter duty tasks; these favorites get put in these tasks each and every day, while the rest of are left in very demanding, high rate-heavy tasks, and then scrutinized heavily on rates. If you happen to be on someone's bad list, you will be treated as a slave, basically, and given little to no leeway for things like going to the restroom outside of a break. Others on the favorites list will have their Time off Task constantly adjusted by management to make it look like they were always doing something, in effort to avoid discipline from higher up, or are allowed to come in late daily, or even allowed to go negative on Unpaid Time Off, which is like our point system, without repercussions; the OM over my department was even bragging that one particular employee was negative on UPT, but that he really liked that person, and asked us to keep it quiet, so that this person didn't get terminated for it, in hopes that this employee would make it until we received another allotment of UPT hours, which happens at the beginning of each quarter; this particular employee was eventually separated for his negative UPT, though. *Whether you work an 8-hour shift, a 10-hour shift, or a 12-hour shift, you only get two 30-minute breaks per day, one of which is your unpaid lunch break. This wouldn't be too much of an issue, except that our break rooms are not the largest, and there are only about 20 seats in each of our two break areas, meaning that, because of social distancing, there isn't enough seating for everyone, forcing most people to have to go sit in their vehicles during break, wasting fuel to keep cool or warm; this is made even worse when it's pouring rain outside, due to no covered parking, and we're still expected to get right back to work after coming [back] in soaking wet. *You are not allowed to sit down during the day, for any reason, unless you're a PA, DA, AM, OM, Site Leader, or otherwise anyone higher than T1. This is problematic, because it's these people, who are usually sitting at a desk somewhere, hawking on people who have spent too long on a task or too long between tasks, and then come questioning why you aren't working hard enough. *T1 associates are expected to stand all day, and not stop moving at all, while anyone above a T1 does next to nothing all day long, and has the ability to sit at any point during the day. *Most associates will be stuck with either a Front Half shift (Sunday-Wednesday) or a Back Half shift (Wednesday-Saturday), meaning you're stuck working 10 hours per day, for four days straight, and have to give up one of your weekend days. There are other shifts that don't require weekend days, but those are few, and often department specific, where favorites are again often rewarded with these shifts and positions. *There is no standard of training across the company, and they give out the role of "Learning Ambassador" very freely; my building alone has more than half of our associates in learning ambassador roles, and many of these people can't do their own job correctly, let alone teach someone else how to properly do the job. Training in general is also very all-over-the-place, often being little to no direction, depending on how busy things are. Most often, learning ambassadors do not have the ability to train someone and stay with that person throughout the training, often meaning they're trying to train while simultaneously trying to do their own work and maintain an acceptable hourly throughput rate; much of the time the "training" you get will be a quick "do this, and this, and this," and that's all you get, with expectation that you come and ask questions. This results in people being under- or ill-trained, making mistakes, and receiving coaching or discipline for not knowing what they're doing, and there is never any repercussions going back up the line to the learning ambassador for having not done their training properly. *The company is constantly talking about safety, and touting it as one of their biggest priorities, while not actually doing anything to be safe. We have a whole safety committee, which has dedicated members, as well as associate members, many of whom only joined the associate safety committee to get breaks from work periodically during their several hour meetings they have, and many of these associate safety committee members are some of the most unsafe employees. Additionally, they claim that you are supposed to ask for assistance with lifting anything heaver than 50 lbs, but still expect you to maintain an acceptable rate; however, I work in an XL facility, meaning that almost everything is more than 50 lbs, and anything over 85 lbs is supposed to be handled by PIT equipment, i.e. a forklift or clamp truck, yet asking for assistance lifting all of these heavy items would mean we would never meet our goals, so management looks past, and I dare say expects, us lifting these heavy items by hand, and alone, which results in numerous hand, back, shoulder, neck, and leg injuries on a frequent basis. *The company does not take COVID seriously, AT ALL. While we did have mask mandates, social distancing, disinfecting measures, onsite COVID testing, temperature checks, etc, literally none of it meant anything. For starters, the mask mandate is a joke; around half or more of the associates do not even wear their mask properly, most of the time wearing it either under their nose, under their chin, or so loose is doesn't actually touch their face at all, and nothing is ever said about it; all levels of associates, from T1 associates, all the way to the site leader fail at wearing their mask properly within the building, with managers often pulling their mask off their mouth and nose to have discussions with other employees in close proximity. After our site began receiving numerous notifications of a COVID confirmed case in our building, one associate submitted an HR ticket asking that they please take measures to make sure the mask mandate is taken more seriously; however, corporate HR responded by stating that they were forwarding the case to site HR, where the case actually sat, untouched, for over a month, and nothing ever done, and then was quietly closed out. Recently, another associate opened another HR case regarding the same exact issue thing, as we've had over 10 confirmed cases in our building alone so far for the month of September, and he has received the same results; corporate HR forwarded it to the site HR, and while we do have a new site HR representative, and did ask this associate to come and discuss the issue, still nothing has been done about it within the building, so this associate wound up filing a complaint with the ethics team, and has still not heard anything back. With temperature check, this was so shoddily ran that, usually, people would come in, the camera would take their temperature, and when the alarm would go off, the associate running it would just waive them on, chocking the alarm up to the heat outside, which was often the case, but still, no precaution even taken. Additionally, most of the time, the person running temperature check was sitting there with their mask off their face, or at least below their nose. The COVID testing center was not much different, in terms of the associates running the operation, in that they wore their masks improperly. As far as disinfection measures, people would come around with sprayers and soak everything with a pump sprayer; this eventually just disappeared, and stopped happening. Social distancing is the only measure even taken somewhat seriously, and it's literally only because the cameras in the building actually monitor this, and the building is graded on it. When the cameras detect that people are too close, snapshots are taken, faces are blurred out, and those images are sent to management, and score results are sent to corporate. Due to this, managers will often walk around, mask below their nose, or completely under their chin, yelling "SIX FEET!" at people. For a brief time, starting in May of this year, anyone who was fully vaccinated was allowed to completely remove their mask, though for a short time, temperate check and social distancing remained in place; disinfection measures had long disappeared, and then shortly after masks were allowed to come off, temperate check disappeared, the COVID testing center disappeared, and social distancing checks were removed. Very shortly after, as the Delta variant started ramping up, and not enough employees were interested in getting vaccinated, we were all required to put masks back on, though they're still worn improperly, and social distancing measures were put back in place; we did not get temperature check or COVID testing back, though. *At times, when orders are low, departments will ofter VTO (Voluntary Time Off), which is unpaid time off, where they allow you to leave early, or not come in at all. This VTO is supposed to be posted to the Amazon AtoZ app, an employee app, where it's picked up on a first come, first served basis. However, it's rarely posted there, instead, they make you drive all the way into the building, and then send you back home on VTO the moment you walk in. Other times, VTO will be offered at various time throughout the day; however, VTO is often falling prey to the same favoritism that other aspects of the company fall to; favorites will get offered VTO before non-favorites, and often, non-favorites walk into the building and then get labor-shared out to another department that isn't offering VTO before VTO is ever offered to the department, meaning non-favorites are never even offered the VTO from their own department. Another issue is that managers will VTO nearly a whole area of one department, Outbound Dock, for example, and then pull associates from another area of the same department, Outbound Picking, for example, to make up for the spots all their favorites left when they VTO'd them all out, meaning that no-one in Outbound Picking would have an opportunity to get VTO at all, when it could have been split between the two departments. *If you hire into one area of a department, Outbound Picking, for example, and then get placed in other area, Outbound Dock, for example, and they find that, even though you do a sufficient job at picking, you do an even better job on the dock, they will constantly put you on the dock, even though that isn't what you were hired to do; management is always interested in doing whatever they can to pump numbers and make themselves look good to higher managers; this includes taking unsafe measures, like breaking social distancing rules and having more than a safe number of associates in a trailer at one time, or having everyone log out of their scanners and then log back in as a manager and continue working (seen this done numerous times), or even hiding slower associates under other departments, to keep their slow performers' lower numbers from going against their department's total. *You have to keep a close eye on your different time off allotments, especially unpaid time off, as there will be times when you'll just randomly be deducted time for seemingly no reason. Often times, if you've scheduled PTO to miss a full or partial day, you'll notice that not only has your PTO balance been hit, so has your UPT balance, and you have to create an HR case to have it corrected. *You only start with 10 hours of unpaid time off to start, and you earn PTO and vacation time as you work. PTO is earned somewhat quickly, while vacation time is earned very slowly. You are granted 30 hours of UPT each quarter, which is basically one day per month. In short, don't expect much paid time off, or much time off at all, for that matter, for a long while after starting employment at amazon. *Since Amazon is technically a 24/7/365 operation, you will be expected to work any and all holidays that fall on your normal workings, though you do receive 8 hours of holiday pay, on top of your normal pay, even though the typical work day at Amazon is 10 hours. This is, of course, unless you're an operations manager or higher, including the site leader, in which most do not show up on their normal work days on holidays. *Multiple times per year, mandatory extra time will be enacted, meaning that you MUST show to work on one of your days off, and work an entire shift, whether that's an 8-hour, 10-hour, or 12-hour shift; this is kind of unbalanced, since the longer shift you normally work the longer you wind up being forced to work on your day off. Usually during the periods of time that MET is enacted, vacation approvals are frozen, and no vacation will be approved, though you can still used UPT and PTO; this includes the entire month of December. *Due to the high volume expectations that the company has on hourly throughput rates at facilities, XL facilities especially, product is mishandled constantly, meaning product is either mislabeled, mishandled, or misshipped. If you've ever ordered a product and received the wrong color, wrong size, or wrong product altogether, it's most likely due to someone being in a rush to try to meet their numbers, and it was either mislabeled as the wrong item, picked wrong, or had the wrong shipping label applied, i.e. your shipping label put on someone else's order. If you've ever received a package, especially a large package, in which the box is damaged or completely destroyed, that likely happened at the Amazon facility before it was ever shipped out, and it was just shipped out anyway, rather than being damaged out and a new product picked. This happens because the pickers, especially in XL facilities have to work alone on their paths to handle all of these super heavy items, some weighing over 200 lbs, while trying to maintain a rate of 17 picks per hour (one pick every 3.5 minutes, using a forklift in racks up to 40 feet high), and to do this, the working pallet is dropped on the floor, a pallet of product is brought down from the racks, and the product they're picking (that you ordered) is shoved off of the product pallet, while still elevated on the forks, onto the working pallet on the floor, where it hits the wooden pallet itself or the other items they've picked, damaging one or both items. Additionally, PIT equipment damages products, either due to forks being stuck into the packaging, being hit by the PIT equipment itself, or being dropped from the PIT equipment. If you've ever ordered a product, gotten notified that it was shipped, and then gotten notification that it couldn't be delivered, it was most likely because someone was in a hurry to load trucks on the dock, again trying to maintain the company's ridiculously high rates, and loaded it onto the wrong truck, meaning it wound up at the wrong shipping hub. *The insurance, while good in some aspects, is bad in other aspects. I've needed to have some imaging done for a while now, due to a medical issue, and while the insurance company has no issue with the surgeon jumping right into doing a surgery to HOPEFULLY resolve the issue, they have denied the surgeon's request for an MRI numerous times, so in order to have this issue resolved, I either have to continue to fight with the insurance company, for who knows how long, or let the surgeon go ahead with a surgery he's reluctant to do, and hope the issue is isolated to the area in question, and that it actually resolves the issue. As far as dental goes, Amazon uses Delta Dental of Washing State, and while they do generally cover all of the preventive care, like cleanings, they do not allow claims to be filled out online, and my dental office will not fill out and mail forms for their patients, which means I wind up having to file all of my own dental claims, paying up front for the services in the meantime. I've never used the vision plan, as I had LASIK surgery done years ago, so I can't say how decent it is. *Due to several of the other points made, a work/life balance can be hard to achieve, especially around the holidays. The list of cons can go on and on and on, and there's always something new coming up that's just completely asinine to most people who know they deserve better from their employer. Due to this, I would never, ever recommend working at or for Amazon.

Advice to Management

Stop playing games with people, period. The rampant favoritism needs to be investigated and stopped immediately. Stop expecting so much out of employees that they get injured, damage product, or get reprimanded simply because humans aren't robots. Listen to your employees when issues come up, and not just listen, but figure out a way to do something about it, and not just the things that are easy, cheap, or convenient to resolve. When problems come up with an associate's performance, rather than just jump on the path to discipline, talk to the employee in question, figure out where things went wrong, investigate whether it was out their control or not, or whether someone else is just playing games with them too, and then figure out how to resolve the situation permanently, rather than just taking a short-term measure that winds up hurting the employee in the end.

Pros

You get exposure to a high volume of scheduling and also a lot of outside project s that you can get involved in. You can learn a lot from Amazon as you will be working with many different hiring managers , recruiters etc and will need to learn how to navigate them Good team members who under stand your struggle as there are whole teams of just recruitment coordinators Good tools that you can learn and you become organised very quickly

Cons

Work-life balance is probably the worst I have experienced and I have worked in a fair amount of roles. There is a real culture of throwing eachother under the bus . If you make a mistake ... You will be made very very aware of it and sometimes people escalate to your manager for minimal reasons The main benefit is a sign on bonus and stocks however .. your stocks do not become accessible until you're with Amazon 2 years ...a long time especially on a fixed term contract . There is a lack of job stability in the Recruitment coordinator role as everyone is hired in on a fixed term contract or through an agency, you can feel the unease amongst your team with this The benefits are ok but not fantastic . Apart from stocks the only other benefits are healthcare and pension which most tech companies offer in ireland. No support whatsoever working from home . All you will get is a laptop... No chair/desk/ screen .

Advice to Management

Listen to the RCs when they are telling you about struggles / blockers to scheduling Hire / convert more people in the team so there won't be a sense of insecurity among the whole org Actually tell people during their first week what their break entitlements are Hire more people if the volume is too high

Pros

Great work life balance, great benefits, strong leadership culture

Cons

Swift changes in structure that you have to adapt to

Pros

Good health and stock benefits, opportunity for internal transfer, surprising amount of entrepreneurial culture given size, cutting edge technology, smart coworkers. Leadership Principles (ALPs) permeate the culture and guide actions.

Cons

Employee leveling and role classification is highly subjective and counterintuitive. High performance and role expansion does not lead to promotion - surprisingly, (by policy) neither does transferring to a higher level/wider scope position, as you have to prove yourself in the new role to even be considered for the advertised level of the position. Time Off policies are on the weak side - save for places like CA that have better employee protection laws, salaried employees get six paid US holidays, max of 4 wks of paid vacation earned per year (after 6 years), with 160hr accumulation cap. 48 hrs/yr of personal/sick time with 72 hr cap where required by law, otherwise 'use or lose'. Want to take a paid 6 week sabbatical after years of dedicated service? Forget it - you'll burn all your PTO and still not have enough. Amazon subscribes to the 'open workspace' idea, so if you find having your co-workers on every side of you without partitions counterproductive you won't be happy here. You can request a set of headphones to block out the noise. Amazon has a mentor program, but it isn't well executed or promoted - more of an opt-in wild west sort of thing. I've seen other companies build and promote highly qualified employees through good mentorship and oversight - Amazon should do the same. Amazon has a very low top end cap on base salaries, preferring to pay employees in stock for tax reasons. This is nice when the stock does well, and supposedly the company will adjust payouts during annual reviews if the stock isn't doing well. Conversely, if the stock happens to be doing well during the review period then the company sees that as the equivalent of a pay raise, i.e. you won't get one. Thus an average employee and an exceptional one are rewarded equally.

Advice to Management

Fix the promotion/transfer/raise policies to incentivize motivated employees. Require mentors for L6 and above who are interested in long term leadership. Allow more workspace customization and flexibility, or, at least, partitions.