That's not completely true. Amazon's offers/pay isn't tied to the cost of living of an area, but to the cost of labor in that area. When I had an engineer transfer from Seattle to San Francisco there was an adjustment.
Are you sure about that? I have at least three anecdotes that seem to directly contradict that claim, and while I realize the plural of anecdote isn't data, but it's still enough to make me skeptical of your claim.
This is what I was told, but others ITT seem to have heard differently. In the examples that you know of, was the person relocating to Seattle or somewhere else, like SF?
It may be that what I was told was correct, but they were referring only to Seattle and not places like SF where cost of living is very high.
A college friend and I both got hired to Amazon in the same round of campus hires. We both accepted Seattle positions, but then between accepting the position and graduating, his team moved to SF, and his offer got increased to compensate for the higher COL there.
Two other situations involved coworkers transferring teams from Seattle, one to Toronto and one to India, both had COL adjustments to their salary.
(Admittedly the evidence is less strong in the latter two cases because they involved simultaneous country changes)
It isn't, but it's hard for outsiders compare that pay to their local pay. Ex: if you are making that in SF, then that's different than making it in Billings, MT, or remote.
So for example, that seems about right for Portland, OR.
Additionally, you don't mention how many total years of experience you have which would also let people compare. Ex: 2 years of total experience (straight out of college) vs 2 years at amazon, and 10 years elsewhere.