Does this exempt Amazon as well? I heard from an ex Amazon employee saying that 50-60 hour work-weeks is the norm there, and they work you to the bone, but he also didn't specify if that was for his particular team/department only.

I'm guessing this is one of the exaggerated downsides, possibly coming from a skewed perspective of what is "normal" for a SWE if you spent your entire career in FAANG.

In any case, I'm still sure that working as a Amazon SWE would be light years farther ahead than working in a bottom of the barrel chop shop that pays less than half of market salary.

In other words, worst of the FAANG should still beat the best of the bottom-tier companies, especially if you're taking home much more money in the end.