[amzn_thrwy_158]

My own Amazon interview experience went smoothly, but when I showed up in Seattle for my first day of work, they were all like "Your manager's not in today and nobody booked you into orientation, so we decided your start date is actually next week, can you just pause your life for a week while we don't pay you?"

The next week happened to roll over to the next month, which meant that my benefits were postponed. They direct-deposited my starting bonus for the original month, and then yanked it out of my bank account without notifying me. Then they deposited it again at the end of the next month.

[senderista]

I had a similar experience. My new manager (not the hiring manager I was supposed to work for, it was a bait-and-switch they announced on my first day) was on vacation for 2 weeks and unreachable via email. Since no one else could give me the access permissions I needed to do anything, I had to literally twiddle my thumbs for the next 2 weeks--I couldn't even complete the SDE bootcamp. It was a comically terrible onboarding experience that made me seriously question my decision to join.