I happily hire ICs that have been successful in the past at Amazon; they tend to have high output, good analytical / soft skills, and are generally pretty happy

I happily hire ICs that have been successful in the past at Amazon; they tend to have high output, good analytical / soft skills, and are generally pretty happy to not be at Amazon anymore. the middle management layer is way more mixed, and where a lot of the putative toxicity comes from. Those people often bring the bad part of Amazon culture with them (especially those from more recent vs. earlier years).