I haven't worked for Amazon, but have a few acquaintances who work there at different levels of hierarchy (but not very high-level execs). To comment on qualit

I haven't worked for Amazon, but have a few acquaintances who work there at different levels of hierarchy (but not very high-level execs). To comment on quality: Amazon software divisions have very few QAs per developer compared to many other large software corporations. This doesn't really mean they test less, it just means their developers are tasked more with testing. And... they don't like it. Frankly, we've developed s/w development culture in which QA is relegated to people with less ability and less aptitude. Most developers would be afraid of their resume mentioning a QA position, as that would imply some sort of deficiency. So, the reason isn't really the lack of testing or even as you suggested, talent retention (Google does even worse than AWS at this, for example), it's low morale. Also, when Amazon first came to Israel, for example, they didn't just offer competitive compensation, they beat everyone, even very high-paying places by something like 25%. It took petitioning them and signatures of a lot of local / international companies to get them to tone it down, as they would've disrupted local job market substantially and have a lot of local employers in a pickle. So, at least, on this front, Amazon invests into talent. From yet another perspective: Amazon, from the inside, looks more like a typical US s/w company. That is, lots of red tape, IT department that's trying to make developers' life miserable. Rigid hierarchy. Orders come from above, feedback never propagates back to the management. In other words: they pay a lot, but want you to shut up and do what you are told, don't get creative, don't challenge the PRD, or you might not do so well in the yearly review.