My impression is Amazon is mostly for people who don't land Google/Twitter/Facebook.
The quality curves mostly overlap (interview processes are noisy), but historically, Google has grabbed the very top -- the people who get offers everywhere. I think that's Facebook/Twitter now. I know fairly few really top people at Amazon -- the one-sided employment agreement, and harsh work conditions don't quite have the same appeal as work-life balance, fancy perks, and all the other stuff that comes with Facebook/Google/Twitter.
Compensation's similar, though, and about double what one would get outside of FAANG.
Twitter? Really? If you judge by the stuff they put out publicly it’s mostly google and fb. Even linkedin has kafka. What did twitter ever put out? Mesos? (No, thanks)
I wasn't judging by open source. I was judging by:
1) Who is hiring top people in my group of colleagues
2) Who is described by people who work there as having a healthy work environment (i.e. people want to work there)
For Twitter, I'll admit I have a small enough N that I can't speak with very much confidence at all. I have one or two friends there, but they seem very happy, describe their peers as smart, etc. They're competent and I trust them, but well, one or two anecdotes doesn't make data.
But Twitter did put out a few high-profile things like Bootstrap. I don't like or use Bootstrap myself, but it's predominant in that area.
The quality curves mostly overlap (interview processes are noisy), but historically, Google has grabbed the very top -- the people who get offers everywhere. I think that's Facebook/Twitter now. I know fairly few really top people at Amazon -- the one-sided employment agreement, and harsh work conditions don't quite have the same appeal as work-life balance, fancy perks, and all the other stuff that comes with Facebook/Google/Twitter.
Compensation's similar, though, and about double what one would get outside of FAANG.