I'm genuinely curious, this post has over 208 points and is only 3 hours old.. why is it falling off the front page already?
And now just suddenly it's back to near the top of the front page. What's going on HN mods?
Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
101–110 of 717 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#102This is for a new grad in 2014.
* Area: Seattle, WA
* Position: SDE
* Base Pay: $90k
* Signing Bonus: $20k immediately, then $17k paid in 12 monthly installments after you reach 1yr in employment.
* Stock Units: $53k (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on) Note: this vesting schedule is AWFUL.
Needless to say, I rejected this offer and did not work for them. Best decision I ever made.
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
People value transparency, and it might be that they would prefer a lower salary at a more transparent workplace. In addition, providing wage transparency allows for further transparency in other business areas, such as gross margins, R&D costs, etc. which may be valuable in allowing employees to understand the business better and contribute in more meaningful ways. You are also only addressing the workers with below…
If we focus on Amazon, lack of information is going to be asymmetric, with Amazon as a large employer holding the informational advantage. Amazon can see what the salaries are, what people accept, and what people were making when they left. If people want to try bargaining up because they think they deserve more, Amazon knows better if it can ignore the request and find the same talent for less. And I don't see how i…
You assume that more information asymmetry always helps the employer; it is also possible that a lack of information makes the employee think they're getting a 'bad deal', because they overestimate how much their coworkers make (possibly due to something akin to impostor syndrome). If Amazon thinks they can find someone of equal skill for less money, they should make the change, and if the employee thinks they are worth more than they can get with Amazon, then they should leave; I really don't understand your (second?) point.
I never said the above-median wages had anything to do with national figures; I meant that depending on what the employee and employer were bargaining around (more likely to be company median wages than national), the comparison would help the employees bargain up half the time, and the employers bargain down half the time.
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#104I make roughly $20 an hour (about 16 after taxes :( )at the moment as a junior full stack intern working part time (I live and work in US). Sometimes I wonder if I should move on to find some other job, even if its remote... On the other hand, my work is not that stressful, and I'm still going to school so my job is very flexible on time. Anyone else been in a position like me?
My first couple of programming jobs I was making about 60% of what you made, although I had no degree at the time. I was the only programmer for one company.
You can relax, but you might not want to. My salary has been artificially lowered because every previous company likes to make an offer based on your previous salary, or I've made so little that I had no savings and had to take the first job offered to me every time. It wears on you after awhile, and I probably could have made a lot, lot more money if I made better choices earlier (although I also wouldn't have some of the wide range of job and life experiences also, so there's that).
But every once in awhile it's nice to take a breather, sit back, recalibrate yourself, get your work/life balance back in check, work on some creative things in your spare time, etc. Easier, non-stressful jobs will allow that. So I guess it's wherever you need to be in life right now and how much you need to be compensated.
But if you're not getting challenged at your work, you're probably not learning skills that are in demand and your next job hunt will probably be more difficult.
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#105Ex Amazonian here. I worked as a SDE1 in the Downtown Seattle set of offices from about 2012 to 2014. My compensation was $95,000 base, and about 105,000 once you took into account stocks.
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#106You need more context to make sense of pure dollar values - in which city/metro-area do you work?
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#107Ex amazonian here, but in Ireland, I left (thankfully) at the end of 2015. I was a systems engineer in Dublin and the only significant payraise I got was after I left the company for 4 months to then rejoin, my salary was bumped up 12k euros, for a total of 62k/yr, with 150 shares over 4 years (sorry I do not remember the vesting scheme). The HR department in AMZN has the tendency to screw internal employees upon pro…
Seems dickish toward the company you work at for 4 months though. Were your offices by that famous Gaol? I thought it was interesting seeing a mix of the old and new so close together.
That's pretty harsh for not knowing any of the circumstances.
Who said he was at another company for those four months? And who's to say the company didn't just fold in that time or earn someone walking out on them?
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you taking stock into consideration? At current price, 104 shares of AMZN equals $57,408 which puts my total 2016 pay at $130,408.
Yeah that helps, but then the question is do you really want to work somewhere that directly ties your compensation to the company's share price? If Amazon has a few bad quarters and you lose 20% of your yearly income that's a major deal. In Seattle you probably want to be making around $120-160k/yr to live a solid middle class life, afford a house, etc. I would still look around at MS, Google, etc. where they give y…
I find tying my income to stock highly motivating :)
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#109I hope this takes off. I always thought it was weird hiding how much you make -- this only helps employers, and not employees.
I am not sure whether keeping salaries confidential is good for the employer, employee, neither, or both, but you are stating what appears to be the most common belief. Different people have different preferences, and some managers probably have mistaken beliefs about what is good for them and their employees.
It may be zero sum or not zero sum depending on different situations.
If all employees values transparency and fairness and would rather have a lower but more fair pay, them the transparency may work.
However, the employer typically derives more profit per unit of work if they employee makes less. Also, if you are a good negotiator or you are the type to always threaten to leave if not given more pay you benefit from the opaqueness. If the company has a lot of good negotiators it may make sense to be more transparent to keep the overall wages down since no one can exercise that benefit.
There are probably other factors such as supply and demand beyond individuals at specific points in time which need to be taken into account (surge pricing?) we need someone for this project now, so we will pay them a premium even if we would normally pay them the same as everyone else, even in consideration of long terms costs this may make sense.
Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon
#110I'll add my $.02 for LinkedIn.
Sr Software Eng at LinkedIn in CA.
$165,000 Base
$25,000 Hiring Bonus
$300,000 Stock (25% 1st year, then quarterly for the remaining 75% over 3 years) ($300,000 at the time, now it's only about half that).
10% annual bonus.
Male. Native English Speaker.
I can also speak to a friend here all the stats are the same except he got a $35,000 moving stipend instead of a hiring bonus.