Makes me wonder if junior developers are getting bait and switched.

They get pulled away by the lure of money into an environment that causes them to stagnate in their skill and career development, then companies pull the rug after only a few years of this high pay with layoffs. Now you've got hoards of developers with junior/mid skills who expect senior salaries and can't find jobs. Amazon doesn't want them anymore, because the new grad pipeline has plenty of people nearly as technically capable and much hungrier.

Only those who manage to recognize this short term period of plenty and rapidly stack investments toward financial independence will be alright in the end. Those who thought the raining cash would never end are in for a world of hurt.

On the bright side for Amazon, they get to trim off the employees who a) aren't paranoid enough about the viciousness of the business world, and b) are looking for a way to cruise and do minimal work.

I think Amazon would have a better rep if they didn't have a stack ranking system.

People are typically ranked by influence at companies as well. If you want to increase your influence, hire more people beneath you. Amazon managers specifically will be looked at for how good they are at hiring and how many people are beneath them to see if they're ready for the next level. At least this is what an Amazon EM told me.

I definitely empathize.

I worked for a while at another company also known for being hyper-aggressive and a brutally difficult work environment -- probably the poster-child for that sort of thing, back then. I burned out hard after a couple years and ended up prioritizing "work-life balance" in my next job searches.

I landed at a 40-hour/week place where I usually work less than that. There's a strong appeal to working so little for a solidly decent salary. I have to remind myself often how good I have it, especially when others don't have jobs at all -- or they have to do back-breaking labor for table scraps.

But I agree it's also undeniably boring. I constantly find myself fantasizing about being back in the adrenaline-fueled environment of my last job. A large part of why I burned out was my own poor stress-management skills, and I like to imagine that I could probably perform well -- and excel -- in that sort of boiler-room environment now. (Especially if the comp could be what it was, too!)

On the other hand, I think all companies that have tried that aggressive approach have not made it sustainable. People burn out, or the whole company burns out, or both. It's tough to keep it going without lots of support and motivation (financial and otherwise).

The idealistic part of me likes to imagine it's theoretically possible to sustain such a thing, though -- a healthy, psychologically-safe place where people could work on ridiculously impactful things at a velocity and scale not available anywhere else. But it doesn't seem like anyone's cracked the code -- not my former employer, who faded away in a blaze of toxicity, and certainly not Amazon.

When I left Amazon, I never thought I'd miss it, but I'm finding this true for me as well:

"My job is so boring now. I miss Amazon. But It's not stressful (because there is no pressure on me), and I get paid more money"