From what I've heard, read and experienced, I'd argue that Amazon (or at least its Seattle HQ) is likely the company that offers the best benefits. And real benefits that affect the employees' lives, not things like beanbags in every office and foosball table.
One of my best friends recently got hired by Amazon. I won't disclose his full benefits+relocation package because that's private to him, but it included many little things that just make it feel like Amazon deeply cares about its employees: for example, they paid a special recruiter to help his fiance find a job in Seattle, bought a plane ticket for his cat's relocation (the devil is in the details), and so on.
Having had firsthand experience with Google and Microsoft, and secondhand reports about Amazon from many friends who've worked there, I think Amazon is the lowest of the three for benefits - although all three are spectacular when compared with average companies.
Both Microsoft and Google have similar white-glove treatment for relocation. For example, when I was recruited to MS out of college, I got a gift bag of scuba gear and a call from a local dive shop because I asked the recruiter about diving in the area. Microsoft paid for movers to pack me and ship everything, while my dorm-mates looked on with envy.
Google, in turn, makes Microsoft look stingy. Everything you've heard is true and then some. Random example: most BigCos have top-notch coverage if you have international problems while traveling on business, provided by an expert 3rd party. Google extends this to international travel you may take for pleasure.
Amazon is very good by the standards of all companies, but not particularly notable when held up to its closest competition.
On that note, I think Amazon's tuition reimbursement is also more meager than that of Microsoft's, if not absent altogether. MS is happy to cover something close to 10k a year for your graduate degree.
That's comparing very differently compensated employees, though. This Amazon program is for hourly employees, such as warehouse staff. My guess is that Microsoft's willingness to pay $10k/yr for graduate tuition only extends to their salaried white-collar employees, unless they treat their hourly staff a lot better than I'd realized.
Disagree heavily - I worked for Amazon between 2009 and 2011. The benefits are easily the worst in the area, particularly when you compare it against MS's famously generous benefits.
And we're not talking about beanbags and foosball tables, we're talking real benefits like, say, health insurance.
I'm working for a 20-person startup now with better medical insurance than what I had at Amazon. Amazon really scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it comes to employee health (though I suppose stacking them up against even worse horrors like Wal-Mart would make them seem positively saintly).
Compared to Google, Microsoft, etc, Amazon's benefits are horrid, even when completely disregarding the "pointless" perks like foosball and cereal bars.
Side note: Did you know Twitter is catered by Bon Appetit, the same company that runs Amazon's (very expensive) on-site cafeteria? They serve the same level of food, for free, every single day. If you ask people, it's a benefit that actually really matters - it saves people oodles of money, is better quality than what most people can pull off by themselves at home, and people seem to genuinely put it up there as a major reason to stick around.
I think it's safe to say that Amazon is like most companies: The more they want you, the more they'll pay to get you. I've heard of exceptional relocation packages (all the way up to "having trouble selling your house? no problem, we'll buy it from you for its assessed market value") being provided by many different organizations to a select few recruits.
Obviously Amazon is enthusiastic about your friend!
I think it's because relocation is a discretionary case by case expense. The standard stuff, like health insurance, is on the "frugal" side, or so I've heard. But that's because you set that up all at once for the whole company. You can't offer a better health insurance plan to an A player the way you can offer a more generous relocation package. Which I will add is little consolation to anyone who already lives in Seattle.
Yes, relocation is definitely an easier place for a company to provide special treatment to a prospective hire than "boilerplate benefits" like medical. I've heard of exactly one case where someone managed to get special treatment in the area of health insurance -- a diabetic who found that the corporate health plan wouldn't cover an insulin pump until he had been on it for X years, and was told "ok, we'll throw in a free insulin pump as a signing bonus".
I'm interning at Amazon at the moment, and I can say that as far as office perks go, they don't have many. But when it comes to the connivence of living, they do far more than I would have ever expected.
For example, I got corporate housed pretty far away from work (hour by bus), Amazon not only payed for a shuttle every morning to work and every night from work, they also reduced my housing costs and offered a rental car for the summer. And this wasn't just to me, every intern that didn't get housed right next to campus got some sort of benefit to make getting to work easier.
They take almost the opposite approach to some places. They assume you'll take care of yourself at work, and then they take care of you outside of work.
I think that's because they want to maintain the culture of frugality on-campus. Wastefulness on the job is pernicious because it adds up and cannot be tracked the way employee benefits can.
Another point is that internship programs are for recruiting. I expect that Amazon's internship program and all its perks cost less per hire than their regular recruiting process.
Having had an Amazon offer and being able to compare it to others, NO!
* Amazon's health insurance offering is vastly inferior to that of, say, Microsoft or Google. I don't know what Google's health plan looks like, but I know that Microsoft's was "pretend your Canadian". Everything sensible and necessary is fully covered, with copays never being anything more than nominal. Everything: medical, dental, optical, disability, family, all of it.
* Amazon requires longer hours and offers less vacation and holiday time than both Microsoft and Google. As a nice touch from my MS offer at the time, they offer 3 "floating holidays". These expire every year instead of accruing like vacation days, but they are usable more-or-less whenever for the purpose of accounting for cultural/religious occasions (Eid, Rosh ha'Shanah, Tanabata, Easter, Denali, whatever).
* Amazon and MS both have cafeterias, but make you pay. MS has free drinks, though, and Google has free... everything.
* Amazon offers higher salaries and attracts money-grubbers. MS offers lower salaries but better benefits. Google is more selective about hiring but offers higher salaries and better benefits.
* Amazon requires almost every engineer to spend at least a month per year doing 24/7 on-call support. No other company I've ever seen practices this.
Overall, Amazon appears to have caught itself in fantasies of being Galt's Gulch, while Google and even MS (not to even talk about Valve!) offer a lot more stability and benefits. It gives the impression that Amazon is perfectly happy with its high worker turnover, whereas the other two intend to hire for the long term.
One of my best friends recently got hired by Amazon. I won't disclose his full benefits+relocation package because that's private to him, but it included many little things that just make it feel like Amazon deeply cares about its employees: for example, they paid a special recruiter to help his fiance find a job in Seattle, bought a plane ticket for his cat's relocation (the devil is in the details), and so on.