Absolutely incorrect. I worked there for 3 years, saw one person fired, and everybody who joined with me ended up vesting their shares. Most got promoted too.
Shortly after I joined my team, everyone above SDE2 left and were replaced by college hires. There was literally no one around who knew anything about the original project.
Could be related to the stock development. My personal theory is that everyone who was hired around 2014 turned out to incredibly expensive, Amazon seemed to be surprised by the stock going about almost tenfold in the next 4 years. That alone made it really hard for that generation of hire to stick around, of the people I know who joined with me at that time I only know of two who were still there (out of a dozen) in early 2018. That ratio is a lot higher for those who joined before or after 2015. Not that I would complain so, including RSUs my last pay turned out to more almost three times what other companies in the same region pay.
