First, the revamp post that New York Times article ended with a new HR head at the helm with new ideas that aren't strictly worse but none too much better.
Second, the peer review system, Forte, is a hogwash, from what I hear. It isn't taken into account for the infamous OLRs where employees are stack-ranked, which are now based exclusively on the inputs from the managers and the metrics they choose to focus on and the supporting documents/emails they bring to the table to support their bias.
Third, the metrics collection is relentless. Right from tickets resolved during on-call, to issues resolved during regular maintenance work, to code reviews or commits pushed, to design documents/wikis created/edited, to time spent building software, deploying it, code velocity... it's a mess.
Fourth, the employees get sent a daily questionnaire. And it is evident from the type of questions that they're trying to collect information on how employees react to those and if their answers are outliers or if their answers are trending towards employees who have shown poor performance previously and so on. The worse part is, when I refused to answer any of those questions, I was warned of "consequences", just as how I was warned of consequences for not submitting patents on behalf of Amazon for what they thought were valuable inventions.
Fifth, there are other internal tools (including build/deploy/test tools) that have sprung up that collect metrics per developer to see who's productive and how.
Sixth, the promotion process has changed so much that it has been reduced to a checklist and only when a manager deems his reportee fit enough, does the stars align and they get to tick off things on the checklist to get promoted. If you're not in the good books of your manager, or simply report to a manager who's biased, good luck with ever getting any recognition despite the metrics.
A lot of policies are straight out anti-employee, imo, right from how they decide compensation year-on-year, to their OLR process, to international transfer policies, to how employees are sometimes treated by the HR, to how 'well maintained' the offices are... it isn't even funny. Some engs truly are having a blast working at Amazon. I can't help but think they are in the minority (and these are mostly folks stack ranked in the top 10% to 20%). I can see them defend Amazon to death. I wouldn't fault them. They will come around some day.
I think, this culture/behaviour takes its seeds right at the top of the executive chain: The kind of hypocrisy that goes around at Amazon is plain for the HRs and Executives to see, and if they can't, I believe it's the stock price that is blinding their mind, clouding their judgement.
Apologies for the rant, and I admit that Amazon, specifically AWS, is otherwise a great place to hone your skills even if its relatively akin to baptism by fire.