I have not used AWS a LOT, but I have used it some, and did run into issues with throttling CPU and what at least seemed like random times (after some quota of cycles reached or something?). That did not happen on Linode and Digital Ocean. I cannot verify that this type of thing happens for network and larger instances but I believe him if he says it does.

I'm guessing their philosophy is to be more strict so they can predict and ensure they will have available resources to spread around.

For me, AWS has some things like VPCs, S3, DynamoDB, etc. that are hard to get unless you go with something like GCE and not available in VPS provider like Linode and Digital Ocean. So far I have found the smaller simpler providers to be a much better deal and generally to perform better for the same or less money. If I need those other features though then I would have to use an AWS or GCE.