Why the hell should I even continue if that's the case? I make a pittance and everyone in society thinks of me as a untermensch.
Let's keep it in perspective here. "Worthy" of what? Dignity? Respect? Every human is worthy of those things.
I don't work FAANG, never even gotten a callback interview. I am a decent software engineer at a small company. I do pretty boring things, in pretty boring tech. I don't even understand how our k8s deploy works. I have to imagine your "pittance" of a salary at Amazon is higher than mine.
But none of that is embarrassing to me. It's just a job. It's not something that defines who I am. I clock out at my 8 hour mark and I go do things I love with people I love.
Comparison is the thief of joy. You aren't measured against anyone else, least of all other FAANG employees here showing off the best side of themselves. Be proud of yourself, and don't let your job define you. You are worth more as a human than your job title, and certainly the company you work for.
AFAICT, Amazon has a terrible reputation because they are abusive and are known to hire-to-fire. If you don't feel abused and you've stuck around long enough to be confident that you weren't just hired to fill a firing quota, then these criticisms don't really apply.
Basically all big companies are large enough to offer a mix of good & bad experiences, prevailing reputation is going to be an average of that mix. But your own experience isn't an average, you don't have to measure it against some public reputation. Public reputation is for outsiders, it's for people to forecast what outcomes are likely before joining. It's not for you. When you can see sunny skies with your own eyes, you don't look at the weather forecast.
My comments were centered on the company's management structure, performance incentives, and business model.