While the above may have been a joke, its not a secret that work life harmony and culture are perhaps the worst aspects of Amazon (talking of the corporate side of course, not including warehouses)

I'm not sure "aren't compensated well" means what you think it means.

That's insane money for just about any region in the US, outside of maybe the bay area. I'm not trying to offend you, but the fact that you're making that much as a mid-level engineer with what I'm assuming not a lot of experience and still think you're under-compensated tells me you're not connected well with reality outside of Amazon and FANG in general. In fact, you'd be lucky to be making 6 figures outside of the FANG bubble at mid-level.

LOL you do realize that is way above market value for a mid-level engineer?

Look up L5/T4/1-level-below-senior on levels.fyi. I don’t think this is above market value at all.

Edit: Not an uncommon view either, see - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473505

The weird part about the wide range of pay across the country and companies is, I cannot tell if this is a joke or not.

I’m not joking

Doesn't that depend on how high on the hierarchy you are and whether you're doing infrastructure work versus a more laid back product or sales role?

I know people at AWS, Alexa, Prime Video, PeopleTech and they all have roughly the same experience.

I have heard this at Facebook though, where 9-to-9 is more typical, but you know, you don't see people complaining about that online.