You don't hear a lot of people praising AWS, the same way you don't hear a lot of people saying how great it is to have an iPhone. If I am happy, I have little incentive to post about it, since that should be the default state.
But the matter of fact is simple. If you end up in a team like this, switch and raise complaints afterwards. Nothing stops you from it. There is no "toxic engineering culture" at AWS. The problem is that AWS makes you into an owner and that includes owning your career. That means if you feel something is wrong, YOU are expected to act. No one will do it for you. And there are plenty of mechanism for you to act.
This is the greatest benefit of working at Amazon but its also the downfall of people who are not able to own things.
Firing me for correctly telling customers that their services are down is not my idea of making me an owner.
This sort of corporate jargon does not exactly instill confidence. I think I'm more concerned about Amazon's engineering culture now than I was before.
You definitely hear a lot of people praising AWS.
Disgruntled people are the ones who often cry the loudest. Just because there may be teams who act like this, doesn't mean that is the case in general.I think it's bigger than just "it's your problem, you own it". There are factors beyond your control.
Our competitors would have a field day with that