<p>I acknowledge what BCEagle is saying about Amazon not being hugely profitable. However, considering that the OP (along with your average employee in the tech industry) is probably going to change jobs at some point in his/her career, the best option is the company that is going to provide the best career growth and learning opportunities.</p>
<p>The fact remains that Amazon is still considered a highly respected software tech company. By working at Amazon you will have the opportunity to work on (depending on your team) databases, machine learning, cloud computing, front-end/back-end web development, data analytics/mining, operating systems (Kindle), mobile applications (Kindle), the list really goes on and on (though the OP will probably only ever work on one or two of these areas). Amazon has a heavy software focus. Amazon is not going to fail anytime soon - revenues were 13 billion this past quarter (more than the previous quarter). Many of these skills will be applicable/transferable to working at Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, or at working at a startup (no guarantees, since it does depend on your team/project assignment). Working at Amazon you will be surrounded by other software engineers and can build a network through these colleagues.</p>
<p>Qualcomm is a fine company. It’s focus is mostly hardware, however. I’m sure there are interesting projects in low-level firmware, audio codecs, and mobile networking. However, I just don’t see it as offering the same kind of breadth / opportunity for future growth as Amazon does.</p>
<p>Even if Qualcomm offered $10k more in salary, I would still take the Amazon offer. You’re young and a fresh graduate. You should be optimizing for future advancement.</p>
<p>As regards the work-life balance; that is a valid issue, but I have no experience with that. It seems like it varies.</p>