Amazon

Amazon can be a great place to work. Employees are generally empowered to take full ownership of problems and drive solutions entirely. This means that you can have an outsized impact relatively early on. If senior management is on your side, you'll be able to push your vision forward and change the world in a meaningful way.

The primary drawbacks are that the hours are long, and if you have a bad manager, your life will be miserable. In many respects, this isn't all that different from most companies, but you'll feel it more acutely at Amazon. Also, if you work on an unsexy, unglamorous team, your best bet is to switch teams.

Hiring for SDEs is getting worse, not better. Raising the bar is only meaningful if the best people stick around, and that no longer seems to be the case.