The whole point is if you're getting a TC of 180k at a startup and Amazon offers you 550k/year, Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google are all likely to do similar

The whole point is if you're getting a TC of 180k at a startup and Amazon offers you 550k/year, Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google are all likely to do similar numbers. You don't have to already be working at one. In fact a good number of companies are likely to be closer to 550k/year than 180k since they're also aware they need to compete with FAANG offers. - Meanwhile Amazon is not particularly easier to join than the rest of FAANG (modulo the specific team), they're not particularly more prestigious than the rest of FAANG, the work is not particularly more exciting than the rest of FAANG... meanwhile the culture aspect is a huge negative outlier. Amazon almost has this cartoonish level of negativity hovering over it ever since things like URA and Focus have slowly come out to actually as real things... between all that and the on-call and the general work you'll be doing, it's just not an amazing choice.