Former Amazon employee here.
This article grossly exaggerates the negative bits. And trust me I have no reason to take Amazon's side on this. I only want to balance the article out.
Your experience depends heavily on the division you're in and the position you hold. If you do blue collar work, yes it is indeed terrible. If you work in marketing and HR, it isn't that terrible. If you're an engineer with AWS or any front-facing services, your life is stressful. But if you work on tier 2 services, it isn't so bad.
I know several men and women who absolutely thrived at Amazon. Amazon was very good for my confidence and I say this as a woman of color. I was expected to criticize everyone's ideas if I did have a valid criticism. Your criticism has to have data backing it. Everywhere else I worked, I used to pussyfoot and not speak up because people used to react extremely to a woman of color criticising their idea. At Amazon, I could perform at my optimal.
The leadership principles are actually not as hitlerian as they are made out to be. They are invoked mainly to support any pitch you're making. Like you'd say 'doing this my way will save us $x, and since frugality is a principle...'.
Being customer oriented is a big part of working at Amazon. I appreciated the principle, but how it affected people was terrible in some ways. We did our own customer support, so if you worked in AWS or retail, you needed to be up at all hours. And this wasn't even just for the lower level employees. The heads of those divisions were also very very stressed.
Where the shit hits the fan is they want a certain kind of person - someone who drives themselves, has their work life balance figured out, and is cocky enough to stand up for themselves in the face of anything. Most people aren't this sort, me included. And that's where everything breaks down.
Additionally, everyone leaves in two years, because the transition from sde2 to sde3 is very hard. People realize they can get promoted elsewhere easier. So there's a huge management void. And the people who get promoted are the ones who have stuck around in this culture so long that they've forgotten everything else. Their management knowledge is bookish and they really don't know how to manage employees. I actually tried to get my manager from an earlier job who brought out the best in me, to join my team, but he interviewed and said no, firstly because the job was in Seattle and no one of any talent wants to live there in their thirties with wife and children, and then because he said no one there knew how to manage.
My manager was terrible and had no time for me. I was stuck on terribly boring projects for a year and was given no help to break out of that. They expect everyone to stand up for themselves like an alpha white male, (no matter what race you are) and don't realize some people need more attention and hand holding to being out their best. Then they fired me unceremoniously.
My last day at Amazon was when I realized I'm actually very very relieved. It felt like the first day of the rest of my life. I easily found another job because everyone wanted an ex Amazon on their team especially if they needed to work on cloud stuff. Besides, I had become as cocky as a white male, so every interview I attended was a slam dunk.
My current job made me realize another thing I didn't like about Amazon - they cheap out on employee amenities. There's no nap room or any space where you can take a break privately. I was the only woman in a group of socially weird men, so I really needed to have a safe space where I could feel unselfconscious for a few minutes a day. There's also no free food or snacks. Only a vending machine. Working late was hell as a result. My current job has free meals and snacks. As a single woman, I can actually work late without thinking twice because my dinner is taken care of, and I can expense my uber home. I can even get a massage at work.
At Amazon though, I'd have to consider which unhealthy alternative would deliver, and often I would go home just because I wanted to make myself a cheap healthy dinner. I needed regular massages because I suffered several computer job problems like chronic neck and shoulder pain, and RSI and the bills piled up. It's not about the money. I just feel like my company cares for me. So I don't mind slaving long hours. They got my back.
Perhaps the most telling experience was my RSI pain episodes at Amazon and at my current job. Both places I skipped work because I couldn't use my right hand. At Amazon, my emails were from my boss saying do send me your updated deadlines. At my current job, it was my boss telling me that it's important I get my RSI fixed asap as it only gets worse, and he gave me numbers of physios, links to wrist supports and exercises, and also requisitioned ergonomic computer accessories for me so that it was on my desk when I got back.