But I've heard too many horror stories to ever take that risk myself.
"What have you got to lose?"
By that I mean, we're in a hot tech market. If it doesn't work out, you can likely find a job elsewhere with ease.
OK, but we're about to hit a recession. I'd venture Amazon is a lot safer than many other tech companies to ride out a recession in - the core business (cloud and retail) is fundamentally sound. The company is only ever not profitable when it chooses not to be because it invests all gains into new R&D and lines of business. When things tighten in the market, Amazon refocuses on core optimizations, and realizes massive profits again. Certainly I can't predict layoffs or no layoffs, but noone can, at any company.
If that's true then I could just skip the Amazon pain and go straight to the "job elsewhere".