First week at Amazon.com

As I wind up an exciting first week some first impressions about the earth's most customer centric company. Ok, so we have a distinct technology intiative here at Amazon and dont like to be viewed as just an online retailer ... Amazon focusses a lot on self-learning and the wealth of intranet resources bears testimony to that. One thing that I really liked was a neat collection of how-to guides for new hires. The 4 hour long orientation too got off to an unusual start with a trivia about company facts .. We were smartly told that there are coveted prizes for grabs but we knew that it was all in good spirits .. All the teams ended up being winners .. as if that wasnt planned ..

I was received very warmly by my rather young manager .. he treated me to a lunch in PacMed cafe after which we set off for US1 (my office location) .. I got introduced to a whole bunch of young software professionals from the various teams working under Fulfillment Center Systems team .. I was all set with a laptop and a Linux dev desktop at my disposal .. I started perusing the vast amount of online materials that were available for me to get started .. few things that did not meet my expectations ... employee discounts suck bigtime !! why so? If you read our company policy it clearly underlines the fact that frugality is one of our core competencies .. I understand that from a customer perspective but it is rather difficult to digest from an employee perspective .. so I convinced myself not to be disappointed if there was no free food on offer .. We do enjoy free caffeine though .. well it works to increase the productivity of employees after all .. so that they can make us work for long hours .. At Amazon, we believe in raising the bar and hence there is a lot of emphasis on hiring quality resources .. Amazon invests a lot in hiring initiatives and in interviewing candidates .. Conveniently located in the beautiful
Seattle downtown, Amazon does seem to be an exciting place to launch one's career .. there is a lot to learn and gain from the expertise of principal engineers over here .. I realised that I have already spent a lot of hours in the office than usual .. This is just a precursor of things to come .. as I have fully understood that software development is not just about coding .. it involves an SDE to participate write from inception to providing production support.. phew .. only if things could get any easier ..