I worked there my friend, and know a ton of people who did and still do. Ask any one of them. One of the missions of a VP/SVP back in the day was to make Amazon a place where engineers go and build careers, and not quit in 2/3 years. Go check out reviews of Amazon on Glassdoor. They celebrate frugality. Engineers don't even get free pop. It is not an engineer's paradise like Google. Can you even a run a show like this in the valley, and expect top engineers to work for you? Free food is almost the norm now here in the valley.

just curious, what group did you work in? was it AWS?