I got a job at AWS/EFS from a post here on hacker news. Stayed there almost 2 years until RTO took its toll (left early 2024). If not for that, I'd still be there... and I went in with full knowledge of all the horror stories. Perhaps the EFS org was just a diamond in the rough, but it was honestly one of the best jobs I've had. Even the on call wasn't so bad, with management taking an extremely hands-on and proactive approach to reducing operational burden. Extremely high technical bar which taught me a ton about building and operating large distributed systems. I do wonder if EFS is still run so well.

I've since been at Oracle/OCI (absolute dog shit with the worst on call I've ever seen, and I've been in the military lol), and now at Microsoft/Azure, which so far seems like a decent workplace.