[Music]

i think the biggest question about

amazon internships is that is amazon

still worth it in my opinion the answer

is yes an amazon internship is still

very much worth it let me explain it is

fact that amazon has been doing massive

hiring in recent years it is kind of a

joke that everyone and their mom get

into amazon because so many people share

that they get an offer from amazon it

seems like today amazon recruiters are

so desperate to get talent and that is

kind of true amazon is one of the

biggest tech companies with most

engineers in 2021 amazon hired over 10

000 interns so my estimation is that

there were at least 1 000 sde interns

last year you might look at those

numbers and think that amazon internship

is no longer competitive but that is not

quite true amazon is doing this kind of

massive hiring for a few different

reasons of course the biggest reason is

that it does need a lot of engineers to

grow its businesses like aws but another

reason is that amazon is suffering from

big cultural problems for those of you

who read blind or read it a little bit

more frequently you might have heard

amazon's toxic culture being talked

about a lot on the internet so let me

explain a little bit in my opinion there

are generally three different problems

when it comes to amazon's culture the

first one is ura and pip the second one

is work life balance and third one is

compensation so first let me explain

what is pip and ura

pip stands for performance improvement

plan it's just sort of bad kid list at

amazon if an engineer gets pipped it's

implied that this engineer is getting

fired if you go on blind you will see

tons and tons of posts about amazon pips

but here's the thing there's nothing

wrong about having pips every single

company has it facebook has it google

has it apple has it every single company

has to fire on the performers that is

totally okay what is not okay is what's

called ura ura stands for unregretted

attrition which is a metric that a lot

of managers at amazon has to fulfill

basically it means that managers have to

fire a certain percentage of its team

every single year that doesn't sound too

bad let me use an analogy let's say you

are taking a major class that you have

to take to graduate and on the first day

of class your professor says i'm going

to fail 10 of you regardless of your

grades this year i don't care what you

think that is just how i do things so in

that kind of class as a student you have

absolutely no incentive to help others

because you don't want to be one of

those 10 percent of people who fail the

class and have to take it next year

right so there's no reason to help

others at the end of day your safety and

your grades matter imagine how toxic

that class is going to be and then think

of the same environment but in the

workplace now do you see how bad that is

i'm not saying that all managers and

amazon have to do this in fact a lot of

managers at amazon do not have this

quota to fill but the problem is big

enough that a lot of people are posting

similar experiences online so that's the

main reason how amazon has earned its

pretty toxic reputation but what's good

is that this problem does not apply to

interns because interns cannot be fired

so if you are about being pipped as an

intern don't even think about it there's

no way you're getting pipped so you can

just take the internship and enjoy how

much time you have to learn new things

but the second problem might affect you

as an intern and that is work life

balance

in a lot of teams at amazon work-life

balance seems to be an issue and there

are a few reasons for this one is that

the business is growing and there's a

lot of work to do especially in cloud

like aws which is how amazon makes a lot

of its money two is that there seems to

be a lot of ops work for engineers to do

so a lot of engineers have to be on call

while doing the day job that is pretty

rough another thing is the swim or sync

culture because on a lot of teams that

have ura there's no incentive to help

your teammates otherwise you might get

fired so you might not get to

collaborate with your teammates or

really just get to know them and help

each other on that kind of teams interns

might not get enough mentorship or they

might not even get interesting projects

to do so that could be a problem so not

so good work-life balance on a team

might affect your internship experience

but that's also totally random because

you don't know what kind of team you

will be on and you will only be there

for three months so i don't really think

that's a problem

the last thing about the culture problem

is the compensation which a lot of

people might say that's not even a

problem because you're already getting

paid a lot it used to be that amazon

pays a lot less than its competitor like

meta but recent years i think amazon has

made its compensation more appealing so

i don't really think that's going to be

a problem especially not for interns

because interns salaries are exactly the

same across the board with some

variations based on location so we don't

have to worry about that if you want to

see real examples of amazon's cultural

problems let me show you two of them

the first one is what i call the woods

incident so when i interned at amazon in

fall 2021 i saw the entire woodstock go

down and i'm gonna link the business

insider article down below for you to

take a look all of this has already been

public information so i'm not breaking

any ndas so basically this absolute chat

whose nickname is woods got kept in

early 2021 and he went on an mfla leave

a medical leave allowed by some

california act what he did was that

while he was gone he changed his

internal nickname to pipt and he started

two internal slack channels for people

to freely talk about the pip experience

that is a lot to take in i remember when

i was interning that was really the talk

of blind especially in the blind

internal channel for amazon like woods

was the topic of every single person he

was seen as this kind of heroic figure

for a lot of amazon engineers who had

the pip experience and was very upset

about how they were treated i have no

comment on that a lot of this is public

information so you can decide for

yourself

another example is this job way post on

linkedin basically this person wrote

about his experience of getting pipped

and made this linkedin post to look for

another job it is worth noting that this

post has some credibility issues as some

people pointed out that he actually

didn't do as much work as he was

supposed to do when he was on the team

but whether he was a good engineer is

beyond the point the point is that this

post got a lot a lot of support from

people and that just shows you how many

people were resonating with his amazon

experience and those people were also

acknowledging amazon's culture problem

so what i want to say is amazon does

still have some of the culture problems

but it will not affect you as an intern

however if you have a new grad offer

from amazon and you are still watching

this video i would recommend that you do

more research to figure out what's the

right decision for you again i'm not

saying amazon is going to be a bad

experience in fact i think your amazon

internship experience will vary a lot

personally i did a brief informal survey

from all my friends who interned at

amazon

so here's what i found about 80 percent

of them went to a different company

after the internship and about 20 of

them actually accepted the return offer

i think that's a pretty good return rate

one interesting thing to mention is that

out of the 80 of people who did not

return about 10 of people told me that

they actually had a pretty negative

experience at amazon mostly because of

terrible work-life balance so i guess

that just really depends on luck and

what kind of team you get placed on but

the fact that 80 of all my friends chose

somewhere else means that they have the

option to choose somewhere else after

they get that amazon internship that

means that amazon is still super super

valuable on your resume regardless of

your experience because recruiters still

recognize amazon as a big name and when

they see amazon on your resume they know

you're at least this good so they're

more likely to hire you plus another

really good thing about amazon

internships is the money sd interns get

paid around eight thousand dollars a

month and around nine thousand dollars

for premium cities like nyc or san

francisco plus we also get a relocation

bonus for about 5k in longsum and that

is a lot of money

so think about it this way you are

taking this internship to learn new

things and get paid handsomely and you

don't have to worry about a lot of

things that full-timers have to worry

about i think that's a pretty sweet deal

so if you are lucky enough to get an

offer i would still say that amazon

internship is still a very strong offer

and you should think about it for those

of you who didn't get it it's not a big

deal don't beat yourself up getting an

offer from amazon has so much luck

involved you have no idea if you are

going to do well on any of the oas and

you have no idea if you will get a good

interviewer who will give you a

relatively easy problem there's so much

available in the interview process most

of the time it's not up to you so if you

didn't get the offer don't be too upset

just try next time i would say that

amazon is like a bad russian roulette

they're good bullets they're bad bullets

you just have to try it for yourself is

it worth it to take the offer only you

can decide and i hope this video can

help you get that offer and make the

right decision for yourself that is

everything i wish i knew before i

started my amazon internship let me know

in the comments down below about your

amazon internship experience and i hope

this video helps i'll see you next time

bye