> Nobody from Stanford or CMU goes to work at Amazon after college, while like a third of the class goes to Google. > Because of that, the culture and people filter don't filter into Bay Area startups (which Amazonians usually can't get interviews at).

This is so blatantly wrong. A ton of my peers went to Amazon after graduating, very few went to Google, and certainly nowhere near a third of the class. I can confirm this from my linkedin connections/groups, but I can't even believe you're making this claim. It's also ridiculous to state Bay Area startups wouldn't give interviews to Amazonians - in my experience they would kill for a solid engineer from Amazon. Do you have any evidence this is the case?