Joined Amazon Dublin in the Summer of last year as SDE2 (that's the category where most engineers will fall into), so way after the NYT article.
Pay is very good for Europe - AFAIK one of the best for the position and above G/F/MS in Dublin (according to Glassdoor), though I think that at the end of the day you might take more home if you're working for G/F and living in London/Switzerland (due to lower taxes).<p>As for the work environment, like in all big companies, it really depends in which team and project you land. My team and adjacent teams are full of respectful people and work is pretty good. We're building some "large scale" systems, and technology wise it's pretty cool. But I've heard stories from people in other teams where they were relegated to doing oncall and fixing bugs. I also know 1 person that didn't make it through the probation period (he was in one of those oncall teams). The company is big and has a lot of different projects, so YM(will definitely)V. I've had to interact with a lot of different people across the company and my impression is overall positive.<p>In terms of work load, it's not light. At the same time, right now, it's not that high, but that will probably change once we're closer to the deadlines. I enjoy it, it keeps me active and not bored at work. I know people who do 8-17 (1 lunch hour) EVERY DAY. Pretty much everyone around me works 8-9 hours. The teams around me are also very flexible with remote work (a lot of us work remotely 1-2 days a week).
In term of the actual work, me and my team have had to design systems, write documents (the 6 pagers, design reviews, etc), and we're implementing them. A lot of technical freedom.
I also hear manager refer to people as resources and I dislike it - not sure why/where that terminology comes from, but I think it's something common inside and outside the company.<p>Yes, perks are pretty much non-existent. No snacks, no free lunch/dinner, no gym, just water, fruit, and coffee. Heck, not even free tshirts and the employee discount is ridiculous. But if that's what you're looking for in a company, then I'm sorry, you won't find it here.
Yes, you'll also get stack ranked at the beginning of the year, and getting promoted to SDE3 is not easy.<p>One interesting thing, at least around me, the vast majority of people seems to be 30+ old. From the teams around me, I think no one (apart from me) reads HN. People come from all around Europe (and some from Asia).