You will work the equivalent of several normal jobs for slightly above average pay. This means that per/hour income will be in fact lower than the average job.
There is an aggressive 'mechanism' to put low performers (most of which would actually be high performers compared to industry average) on improvement plans and clear them out periodically through mass layoffs (or RTO policies, etc). Due to this everyone is working crazy hours to keep their jobs, at the expense of everything else in their lives. Nobody counts your hours because anyone who doesn't do meetings, training, and other BS during the day and project work during the night will fall through. You don't stand a chance if you have children and you actually want to see them. Even if you work like crazy, you might get unlucky and you won't be able to meet targets because targets are vague when set, but super clear when your performance is judged. Hello burnout! Hello mental health issues! Also, almost everything managers tell you is a lie. The largest cloud provider in the world has a policy to delete all email after 30 days. Let that sink in.
During my time at AWS I developed health issues, my mental health is a wreck, I've lost friends, I've lost ties with family, and my relationship with my wife is not what it used to be. All because I gave 110% to a job where I was mismanaged, lied to, and marginalised. When I left I was in such a state that I considered getting a job as a van driver just to be relatively mindless at my job, release some pressure and anxiety, and to get space to rebuild relationships.
If you decide to accept an offer from them, my advice is to do the minimum necessary to take the paycheck. Hack every 'mechanism' they have. Find the metrics that the managers use and optimise for these. Nobody really cares about the leadership principles (culture), they're just things to include in your vocabulary to signal virtue, or as a scapegoat for nasty policy like RTO. When it's decision time, leadership principles get the backseat over everyone's individual performance goals. Your manager is just as desperate to keep their job as anyone. They will pose as your best friend today, lying that everything is going super well, only to roll over you tomorrow with no explanation. I guess the reason they lie so much is to make sure you score them well on the daily surveys you are asked to fill in. Promotions are not guaranteed, I don't think the effort you put in is worth it given the risk.
Finally, beware of positive Glassdoor reviews. Managers ask everyone to post a review at the end of a very long onboarding when things look very rosy. I did this too because it took me a full year to start to understand what is going on and how Amazon exploits people.
It's really a s*t job in the long run and I'm not sure the money is worth it. In hindsight, when AWS made me the offer I was thinking about going into consulting and now I feel very sorry I didn't do that at that time. I'm fairly confident that anyone who has what it takes to get a senior job at AWS will do much better on their own by starting a business or doing consulting.
