[tidepod12]

There are certain circles or communities where that's the case, unfortunately. I casually browse Blind sometimes and the overwhelming attitude there is that Amazon is the "lesser" FAANG and is where you work if you couldn't cut it at Google/FB/Netflix. There's a lot of negativity about things like "Amazon doesn't provide free lunch? why even work there? Google gives me free lunch and free dinner!"

There's also a huge emphasis in such circles on compensation, and Amazon supposedly has a somewhat lower total compensation for entry level engineers than Google et al. That's a huge deal to status chasers who only measure their self worth in money.

FWIW I do not recommend browsing Blind because it is full of toxic mindsets like that, nor do I agree at all with it... I'm just sharing some context that such communities do exist.

[lowiqengineer]

Same at the top schools. I've never heard of someone at a top school be proud of going to Amazon - it's only something they do if they have no other options in my experience.

[tidepod12]

In my comment I shared some context about how there are such mindsets in certain circles, but I want to make it clear that those circles are unequivocally wrong. You should ignore them, full stop. They don't deserve that space in your mind.