[amznthrowaway5]

The majority of AMZN's tech employees (ie. average SDE) know they are not elite and often talk about how they consider themselves failures for not being getting into better paying companies.

[hogFeast]

I didn't say either that employees are elite or that they think themselves to be elite. I said that is the hiring culture, which is something quite different.

[amznthrowaway5]

You did say

> So you have this awful culture where everyone views themselves as this unbelievably valuable "alpha dog"

In my experience this may be true of upper management, but it simply isn't true of most employees.