Sounds just like the world of large law firms, actually. They hire top people from top schools, most burn out within 2-3 years and leave, occasionally someone i

Sounds just like the world of large law firms, actually. They hire top people from top schools, most burn out within 2-3 years and leave, occasionally someone is sociopathic enough to make it to about year 7 where they're made partner. No efforts are made to retain the people, they're just worked crazy hours until they either crack or, rarely, make partner. Even the incentives are kind of the same: Great pay and looks great on a resume. The latter allows one to move over to things with much more reasonable hours if desires, albeit for lower (but still very decent) pay. Not sure how interesting the work is for an entry level position at Amazon, but I can say at large firms, the work for first years is mind-numbing and useless, basically reviewing documents for minor things.