It’s hard to believe that we actually got to visit one of the biggest names in the tech industry – Amazon! I had no idea what to expect between the random horror stories I’ve heard of their warehouse work culture and the huge successes they’ve had. Our initial arrival at Amazon immediately set them apart. We were not greeted by friendly staff members but were instead given confidentiality forms to sign and were told that we couldn’t even take pictures of their lobby. At the previous site visits, I definitely felt more welcomed and comfortable. While some of the members in our tour group argued that this gave Amazon more credibility, I felt that it immediately felt standoffish. However, I still tried to keep an open mind and was eager to get to the heart of what it’s like to work at Amazon.
I thought it was so interesting to hear about Amazon’s Alexa! Even if some of the content was a little tech heavy, I really enjoyed hearing how it works and how their technology can be implemented into different products. The first speaker was very engaging and did a great job at answering all the questions our group threw his way. However, I started to get lost when we moved on to the next speaker. I thought was difficult to follow along and gain interest in their programs because they were geared heavily towards engineers or CS majors. They seemed very reluctant to share information on their company culture and gave very vague information on what the culture was like. Because it was a new office, there were hardly any workers there that day and it felt very dull so it was hard to judge what it was really like to work there. Based on the information they did share with us and our interactions with the Amazon staff, I do not think I’d be a very good fit. I’d like to have more flexibility and be able to collaborate with others around me. It seemed to me that Amazon was much more focused on individual accountability rather than collaboration. Overall, I enjoyed visiting the offices. I think that their lack of flexibility, not tailoring their speech to their audience of business students, revealed a lot about their company as a whole. With that said, I would still love to get others’ perspectives on Amazon’s company culture and the different roles available!