Vantaggi
Working at Amazon for the last 4 years, it has been the best place I've worked so far. Engineers and management loves the customers. Pretty much any great idea can be taken to market - who would of thought a book selling company would be a world leader in cloud computing ? There is also lots of opportunity to move around the company provided that you have good relationship with your peers and direct manager. Last but not least, the CEO is really really smart and genuinely cares about his top performing employees. Whether he anticipated it or not, the hiring freeze BEFORE the recession hit was pure genius. One of the few companies with zero recession layoffs.
Svantaggi
Biggest complaint is the spotty performance of managers, especially the bad apples. Bad apples are allowed to work their employees like a dog and fire them even if they are really good performers. If you get stuck with a bad manager, be nice and quietly change groups before they ruin your reputation. If you are not a top performer in reference to your peers, best not join the company because your pay is highly tied to how well you do in your performance reviews.