Inside Amazon Engineering Culture: Insights from a 12-Year Veteran and Early Retiree

Amazon is often viewed as a tech giant shrouded in mystery, known for its relentless customer obsession, operational excellence, and a unique internal culture that sets it apart from other big tech companies. Recently, I had the opportunity to dive deep into what it’s like to work as a software engineer and engineering manager at Amazon with Dave Anderson, who spent over 12 years at Amazon before retiring early. His candid insights shed light on Amazon’s engineering levels, hiring practices, on-call culture, performance management, and even the path to financial independence that working in tech can offer.

Amazon’s Developer and Manager Levels: A Unique Structure

Amazon’s leveling system starts at Level 4 for new college graduates, which contrasts with companies like Google or Uber where entry-level engineers often start at Level 3. The progression is typically:

• L4: Entry-level engineer fresh out of college, needing assistance and mentorship.
• L5: Early to mid-level engineers who can own smaller projects and work independently.
• L6: Senior software engineers or software development managers (SDMs) who usually manage a "two-pizza" team without managers reporting under them.
• L7: Principal engineers or senior managers overseeing multiple teams and broader architecture.
• L8: Senior principal engineers or directors managing larger organizations.
• L10: Distinguished engineers or VPs, representing the pinnacle of technical or managerial leadership.

Promotions become exponentially harder as you climb higher. Early promotions (L4 to L5) are relatively straightforward, often based on project completion and demonstrated competence. However, advancing to senior levels (L6 to L7 and beyond) requires detailed documentation, multiple endorsements from peers at or above the targeted level, and sometimes rigorous technical assessments.

The Hiring Process: The Bar Raiser and Rigorous Interviews

Amazon’s interview process shares similarities with other tech giants but has its unique elements, particularly the Bar Raiser role. The Bar Raiser is an experienced third-party interviewer who leads the debrief sessions and holds veto power over hiring decisions to maintain high hiring standards. Candidates typically face a loop of around five interviews covering coding, system design, and leadership principles.

During debriefs, interviewers independently submit detailed notes, including votes on whether to hire. The Bar Raiser facilitates a fair discussion, balancing diverse opinions and ensuring decisions aren’t skewed by individual biases or single poor answers. Becoming a Bar Raiser requires extensive interviewing experience (often 100+ interviews) and training, making them highly trusted voices in the hiring process.

On-Call Culture: Ownership and Customer Obsession

One of Amazon’s defining cultural elements is its extreme ownership principle, particularly evident in how on-call rotations are handled. Unlike companies where dedicated teams handle emergencies, at Amazon the engineers who write the code also support it in production. This means that if a system breaks, the people most familiar with it are paged and responsible for fixing it, often late at night.

While this can be stressful, well-managed teams prioritize fixing root causes immediately rather than applying temporary patches. Managers closely monitor on-call pages to ensure engineers aren’t overwhelmed. If on-call disruptions become frequent, teams reprioritize resources to fix underlying issues. This tight coupling of ownership and responsibility leads to faster incident resolution and a culture that values operational excellence.

Handling Outages: The Severity Scale and Leadership Involvement

Amazon categorizes outages on a scale from severity 1 to 5, with Sev 1 and Sev 2 being emergencies requiring immediate attention and escalation. For major incidents, senior leaders including VPs often jump into calls, providing direct support like provisioning additional servers or coordinating with external providers.

Dave shared a revealing story from Uber contrasting Amazon’s outage mindset: while Uber’s Senior Director casually joined a payment outage call, Amazon’s leadership would treat a similar event with the utmost urgency, highlighting the company-wide seriousness around uptime and customer impact.

The Culture of Frugality: Efficiency Over Perks

Amazon’s well-known leadership principle of frugality permeates everything, from day-to-day operations to employee perks. Unlike some other tech giants with lavish offices and free meals, Amazon is highly cost-conscious, partly due to its massive fulfillment center workforce operating on razor-thin margins.

Engineers often start with minimal resources (e.g., a single small monitor), and perks are limited unless justified by clear productivity gains. This focus on efficiency means resources are allocated carefully, avoiding waste and encouraging teams to build with cost and speed in mind.

Performance Management and the URA Target

Amazon enforces a strict performance management system, with an Unregulated Attrition (URA) target requiring managers to rate a certain percentage (typically 6-10%) of their teams as low performers each year. While this sounds intimidating, Dave explains that for most employees who consistently perform well, it’s not a significant concern.

However, for larger teams and at higher levels, managers face pressure to identify underperformers, leading to tough conversations and performance improvement plans (PIPs). Communication is key—employees should receive ongoing feedback rather than sudden surprises at review time.

One critical piece of advice Dave offers is that if you start receiving negative performance feedback, it may be wise to seek an internal transfer quickly, as changing teams can sometimes revive your career.

Why Startups Value Amazon Engineers

Despite some cultural challenges, Amazon engineers are highly sought after by startups and other tech companies. Their experience running production systems end-to-end, handling emergencies, and working in small, autonomous teams resembles startup life. Moreover, Amazon’s decentralized approach lets teams choose their own tools and languages, fostering adaptability and broad technical exposure.

Amazon engineers often bring invaluable skills in ownership, operational excellence, and scalable system design, making them excellent hires for fast-paced, resource-conscious environments.

Early Retirement and Beyond: Dave’s Journey

Dave’s story extends beyond Amazon’s walls. By embracing the principles of financial independence—living frugally, saving aggressively, and investing wisely—he planned and achieved early retirement in his 40s. His strategy involved:

• Keeping expenses low relative to income
• Maximizing savings rate over time
• Investing in index funds and tracking financial math around withdrawal rates

Post-retirement, Dave started a popular newsletter, Scarlet Ink, sharing insights on software engineering and tech culture. His success shows how a career in tech, combined with smart financial planning, can open doors to new creative and personal pursuits outside traditional employment.

Final Thoughts

Amazon’s engineering culture is a unique blend of high standards, deep ownership, operational rigor, and frugality. While the environment can be demanding—especially with on-call duties and strict performance management—it equips engineers with skills that are highly valued across the tech industry and beyond.

For engineers looking to thrive at Amazon or leverage that experience elsewhere, Dave’s advice is clear: focus on building strong relationships with your managers, be proactive about feedback, and if things aren’t working, consider internal moves. And, importantly, develop a financial plan to give yourself choice in your career and life.

If you want to learn more from Dave Anderson, check out his newsletter at scarletink.com, where he shares thoughtful articles about engineering culture and career advice.

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