Amazon Robotics Reviews

They have a holiday party in February because they are too busy working from sometime in October to sometime in January for the peak retail season. (They do not understand the words work life balance.) The benefits year starts April 1 which can make it difficult to line it up with the IRS tax year or a partner's benefits year. Everyone is terrified of being ranked too low and being put into a Performance Improvement Plan which is just a slow torture way to fire someone. If you have health problems or personal issues that take any time to deal with you might as well start looking for another job. You get to work with great technology, but you won't be able to tell anybody about it. Nobody will see it except if it is used as part of marketing in the media right before the holiday shopping season. There is no career advancement for technical work, only for support and management. They fired one of the two highest rated software people because he moved to a state where Amazon does not collect sales tax. (The other one quit when the founder quit.)

This is a really tough place to work. Stress levels are through the roof, and aggressive and ever-changing deadlines and goals are pushed all the way through the organizational chain. The culture in many departments is such that very long hours are expected. Middle management is poor, but this is a consequence of the acquisition environment: (a) Amazon sets very aggressive goals which change frequently, (b) Kiva upper management, which contains many long-time "key employees", are essentially required to stay at Kiva for several years to cash in on stock / bonuses and likely required to meet certain business targets that Amazon demands, and (c) as a consequence, management has no choice but to push aggressive and unrealistic targets are pushed down the chain. A lot of unhappiness all around. Middle management sees no flexibility from upper management, and is forced to push a very large burden on employees at the bottom of the chain. Managers are conditioned by upper management to "spin" any critical feedback or negative news in a positive way during any meetings that include Amazon. If it isn't a "good story", then it it shouldn't be communicated. Several upper managers look terrified and act frantically when certain key Amazon deadlines appear at risk. This creates a culture that is very high paced, requires long hours, is stressful, yet is often successful at achieving short term goals. However, long term goals suffer, and employees leave in flocks. Another huge problem is retention: There are far too few employees for the tasks at hand. The turnover rate has been off the charts post-acquisition. This only compounds the problems above, and creates a downward spiral that is difficult to reverse. This used to be a five star company. Don't be fooled: it isn't anymore. As a final note: be advised that most of the five star reviews in 2014 occurred in a time frame when Kiva was initiating a major hiring push. Most of these reviews were from key managers and employees, and probably not representative of the types of jobs you'll be applying for.