Such comments is what changed at Google. There are other excellent places to work at these days, like Microsoft (also Amazon) if you are interested in large scale cloud services and not advertisement.
Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its employees. The curious vesting schedule means you instantly lose 10% of your stock grant value. The company expects you to pull more hours and do some real oncall duties: this means less free time for you and less pay/hour rate. Good and gym are out if question. And don't forget to pay for your parking spot. IMHO, if you aren't big enough to demand a custom contract, you don't go to Amazon unless you have no better choices.
My question is still open: what are those better places?
By the best place I just meant best in terms of getting knowledge, status and pay with the least effort in the least stressful conditions.