Impossible demands

Amazon may claim that their employees work within a reasonable work/life balance, but you shouldn't believe a word of it! 

Amazon is a high-pressure environment. It is designed to create impossible demands on all individual contributors (ICs) and get them to compete with coworkers in order to squeeze out as much productivity as possible. Once you're burned out, then you're easily replaceable. You will then be replaced by constant stream of new hires. The whole system is designed to work that way. You are just a disposable cog in their machine.

If you moved from some distant location to join Amazon, you should expect to be saddled with many thousands of dollars in relocation bonus repayment obligations. If you have any thoughts of quitting after experiencing their insane work schedules, these obligations will hold you back from doing that. The only silver lining is that if you hold your ground and don't let the pressure get to you, you will just be put on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and then fired for "poor performance" (whether it was actually excellent or poor is irrelevant). As part of this firing, you will likely be offered a severance agreement which includes being released from your relocation bonus repayment obligations. But this silver lining does come with the high cost of being put through hell in terms of stress in the meantime...