>>> I didn't start off criticizing AWS; just large companies in general, based on my experience with them
I will reply on that because I have experience with both.
If you worked in big companies, you do have to constantly debug half baked internal tools written by other people, with little or no documentation. It's horrible when you change company later, the institutional knowledge is lost when you leave and it's worthless for you to get a new job.
AWS is absolutely nothing like that. The tooling is working and polished and documented. It's much much better than any internal tools you will find in big companies. When you're out of your depth, you can just google for help. When changing company you can continue to apply the experience and never worry about the tooling in place.
I will reply on that because I have experience with both.
If you worked in big companies, you do have to constantly debug half baked internal tools written by other people, with little or no documentation. It's horrible when you change company later, the institutional knowledge is lost when you leave and it's worthless for you to get a new job.
AWS is absolutely nothing like that. The tooling is working and polished and documented. It's much much better than any internal tools you will find in big companies. When you're out of your depth, you can just google for help. When changing company you can continue to apply the experience and never worry about the tooling in place.