Amazon is well-known as the world's largest e-commerce retailer. What makes working in Amazon exciting- it is a pure technology company. We believe strongly in investing in technological solutions for solving real time problems and enhancing customer experience.

A customer returned a camera to us after having clicked a few pictures. He had forgotten to remove the SD card before shipping the camera to Amazon. In order to ensure customer privacy (as requested by the customer), our warehouse associates removed the SD card, packed it in a box and shipped it back to our customer!

I entered Amazon with 8 years of IT industry experience. I have played multiple roles in project management & program management areas in financial services, public sector & knowledge domains. I had no prior retail or operations experience – I loved the retail space and wanted to discover it further.

I worked in the reverse logistics space – still a niche function in the retail industry today. This gave me the opportunity to experiment a lot, to be able to deliver best practices. This has probably been the greatest learning experience in my career so far. Amazon gave me the freedom to experiment a lot in this space even though I am based out of India (where Amazon does not have retail presence yet). I got promoted along the way and currently I also oversee transportation space.

I have also spent time working alongside associates in our fulfillment centers- something that we are encouraged to do once 2 years or so. I have also had the opportunity to partner with esteemed technology & business schools in India on diverse projects.

Lots of products & systems are owned completely out of India. You own your system right from conceptualization to design to production & maintenance.

Sense of ownership is something that you are bound to learn from Day 1. You work with business, propose solutions, conceptualize, design, test, implement & maintain your systems – it's a full circle. Amazon is a very dynamic company. Given the short turnaround time, we understand & see the impact of our solutions on customers right away.

There is no hard bound schedule: you manage your own schedule. During the design phase, you work with people across teams. As an organization, we are constantly thinking of how to reduce operational burden for engineers: we have front line support teams. But as an SDE, you own your system and dealing with issues is part of the package.

Amazon is a flat company. If I want to talk to my VP, I can. If I would like to interact with a Senior Principal Engineer, I could reach out to him. It is never an overly formal setting.

Platform initiatives do not come only from business teams. Amazon Prime is a great example. The initial idea was proposed by an engineer and not a business analyst. It got rolled out in 3 months.

Amazon does not care about your academic qualifications as long as you have the "smarts". I have a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras; MS & PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University but I was able to apply and clear the interview for a software development engineer position. If you can write decent code, come up with good algorithms and solve problems – you will have the opportunity to work with bright minds and work on building complex scalable systems.

We deal with tens of millions of customer transactions – while the majority of our customers are honest, we do have few instances where some customers find a way to circumvent our terms of use. In other words, they find a way to bend the rules without actually breaking them – giving us engineers a very challenging problem to deal with. My team builds systems that measures and prevents this kind of abuse.

We have internal developer conferences where we have the opportunity to present our work that is noteworthy to the larger Amazon community. It is very motivating to hear what developers across teams & centers are working on.

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We start with the customer and work backwards. We obsess over our customers. As a company, we tend to think big and encourage the spirit of innovation, invention & ownership amongst our teams. And given the extremely dynamic nature of our businesses, we value bias for action and focus on delivering quality results in a timely fashion.

Our development centers in India are growing manifold – why? Because of the rich talent pool in India. Flat organizational structure, opportunities to work on solving complex technological and business problems makes Amazon a challenging & interesting work place. There is no dearth of possibilities – we encourage all our employees across teams, business & geographies to think like owners.

If you take a look at the selection on Amazon.com, you can see that it's huge - you can order anything from electronics, jewelry, grocery, sports gear to home improvement tools. WW Ops is committed to ensure that the immense selection is backed by world-class operations that ensure timely delivery of every customer order. The wide selection, world-wide customer base, complex business constraints and high volume make the optimization and operations very challenging problems to solve.

I joined Amazon in 2007 as a TPPM (Technical Product & Program Manager) which had both software development & product management elements attached to it. Even though I come from a technical background (Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University, Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech), the business side to things appealed more to me. I decided to transition into a full-fledged Product Manager role.

Right from conceptualization, design & delivery of Amazon Widgets: rich, interactive displays that bring Amazon.com functionality to your website. I have also been closely involved in launching an array of widgets including MP3 Clips, Carousel, Search and more. Complete ownership while shaping these products has been a highly empowering experience for me.

Tens of thousands of bloggers are out there: if one of them wants his blog made available for Kindle readers, he can go our website & register. Newspapers are delivered automatically and wirelessly to your Kindle, so it's waiting for you to read first thing in the morning. Kindle makes it easy to take your personal documents with you, eliminating the need to print. My team works on content ingestion/publishing for Kindle (e-book reader from Amazon). We take content publishers & authors in different formats (.doc, html, pdf etc) and convert the content into Kindle compatible format. Our goal is to have every possible book in our online catalogue.

I joined Amazon 2 and half years ago as a Software Development Engineer (SDE). After a year promoted to SDE II – after which I decided to take the management route, so I was a Software Development Manager for a year or so. That was not exactly my calling, so I decided to get become an individual contributor again, and continued working as a software development engineer for another year. I then got promoted to a senior software development engineer and I hope to become a Principal Engineer in the future.

Recently I completed my 10th year anniversary at Amazon. Over the years I had an opportunity to work in multiple development centers, interact with some of the smartest minds and tackle some of the most interesting technology and business problems. But the thing that amazes me the most is the way the company managed to safeguard its core values from dilution despite its meteoric growth. To date, every single decision that we make is by "working backwards" starting with the customer. It feels so ethical to work for a company that is obsessed with its customers.

I have been working on project Junglee for the last 8 months and have been responsible for recruiting sellers for the Platform. Not often do you get opportunities to work in a "start-up" like environment within the precincts of large global companies - Junglee presented me with one such opportunity and it has an been an exciting journey and a great learning experience.

I joined the customer service team at HYD and have been with the team for 6 peaks now. Each peak has got bigger and better and it’s a privilege to be part of an organization that is growing exponentially every year. I have worked with a lot of “Amazing” Associates, Leads, Trainers, CSMs, Ops Manager and Site Leaders. Over the last 5 years, this HYD team has accomplished a lot of milestones through numerous key projects, initiatives and improvements and the best part is – “We’re just getting started !!”. We are well on our way to make Amazon the “Earth’s Most Customer Centric Company!”

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of what inspires someone at Amazon would be the learning experience. Being part of the growth and learning process each day is truly inspiring.

My advice to the next level of leaders: to be honest and sincere in your job and the rest will take care of itself. Amazon is a meritocratic organization and performance speaks for itself. Live by the 14 Leadership Principles that have been very carefully crafted so that we can be successful.

I am an Amazonian, my customer obsession hat worn for almost 16 months now. My role aligns me to the training team for CS-HYD and my team and I take responsibility to work with every new hire to imbibe the Amazon culture on day 1, and every day and lay strong foundations.

Amazon has been an enriching experience for me. I was drawn to apply for this organization after the many testimonies I heard of its customer service, and after serving in the customer service industry for over 10 years, I thought I knew it all -- until Amazon happened and I saw “Customer Service” taken to a new level. I’ve seen us relentlessly drive to make every interaction for our customers, one where they would return, for the next best buy! We strive in CS not to exist, and to allow our customer the right experience the first time and use technology marvelously well.

There is empowerment at every level to make the best decisions for our customer, we take pride in being maddeningly customer obsessed, and why not, they are the reason we are here

I have learnt to be an owner of the business and to trust others in the organization and respect them as owners with a common vision, our customer’s best. I am appreciative of being vocally self-critical as it creates a path to learn, overcome and deliver results. Amazon allowed me the opportunity to learn a new skill of leading a training team, developing a new training style, something I had never done before!

@Amazon every day is Day 1. In Amazon change is constant, and for anyone who seeks this as an adrenaline rush, this is the place to be. I am part of an organization, where I admire the uniformity of vision of all leadership and the direction to every employee to make Amazon the Earth’s most customer centric company. It’s what has and will keep us going.

Amazon was my first stint. It has been an incredible journey since day one. What is amazing about Amazon is the culture out here, the people, no dress code concept and being so customer obsessed. I don’t think any other company can compete with Amazon on being so customer focused. Everyone in Amazon is so approachable be it Vice President of the company or any Senior Leader. It is so inspiring to hear them speak. Every day I see an opportunity to learn & grow.

Amazon is a dream company to work for. The fact that we have ‘Rehires’ tells us how the company has left a mark on individuals.

Each day is a new beginning out here and we look at how we can change & build simpler processes that are scalable and are customer focused