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Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

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Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#661

Post by lsc »

pyre wrote: post #606
lsc wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most everyone I know who is primarily technical who's total compensation, ah, starts with a two has a base that isn't out of your range and the rest is bonus/stock. So yeah, on a good year? (like last year) a quarter million is completely reasonable, but that's not gonna hold if the company has a bad year. also, everyone I know in that income tax bracket works for those big companies. Startups just don't pay that kin…

> why don't you want to work at google, facebook, uber, apple, etc...? (amazon, btw, is on that list, too.) I've never come across an ex-Amazon employee with good things to say about the company (though this is admittedly a small sample-size).

>I've never come across an ex-Amazon employee with good things to say about the company (though this is admittedly a small sample-size).

paying better is a good thing. It's certainly not the only good thing, but it's an advantage that amazon often has. Most of the people I know who currently work there[1] are like "The work is only okay, and they kind of treat you badly, but the pay is really nice"

I was out drinking the other weekend with a good friend who works at amazon, and we were comparing notes. As a contractor at google? My perks are way better. The free food at google (which I get to eat as much of as I want, and can even take home, even though I'm just a lowly contractor) is way better than the not-so-free food at amazon. At google, even as a contractor, nobody gives me shit about leaving my car at work while I'm on vacation. The contractor next to me has had his clearly inoperative vehicle parked at google for the last month or two. They asked him to verify it was his car, but didn't tell him he needed to move it. All my interactions with security and google corporate, and, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner, kind of made me feel how I imagine the coddled children of the super rich feel when they are on the campus of an elite college.

At amazon? even full employees get shit for just leaving the car there over the weekend.

But my buddy, I mean, he is a little better than me, but he's not, you know, amazing, like the guy from apple we were hanging out with at the time, but he's making a lot more money than I am. Really dramatically so.

[1]I'd expect reviews from current employees to be rather better than reviews from ex-employees; the current employees clearly aren't annoyed enough to find another job.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#662

Post by YetAnotherMSEng »

kolistivra wrote: post #585
YetAnotherMSEng wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some outliers, but mostly in terms of promotion velocity. I assume you know about the "bench program"? (Microsoft Fight Club) That could potentially explain it. I really want to empathize with your underpaid for level statement, I certainly have a pile of stories, I'm just hesitant to tell them because they're rather identifying to anyone who knows me, so you'll have to trust when I say "A good number of us…

What's the "bench program"?

An internal "High Potential" program in which candidates get faster promo tracks, bigger promos, face to face access to higher level execs, and other perks. They are not supposed to talk about this program, as well, and it is invite only.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#663

Post by argonaut »

trapped wrote: post #512
argonaut wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not care about this for entry level engineering positions.

He is not working at entry level engineering positions.He mentioned 4 years experience.

What I mean is, Google does not care about the specific technologies you've worked with if you're joining the company (as long as you've worked with some technologies). E.g. it doesn't matter what databases you've worked with, just that you've worked with databases in general.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#664

Post by new2amzn123 »

amzn wrote: post #651
new2amzn123 wrote: post #415

* Area: Seattle, WA * Position: SysDE II * Base Pay: $120k * Signing Bonus: $75k over 2 years * Relocation: Fully paid + $2.5k * Stock Units: $115k [200 RSUs] (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on) * Gender: M * Native English Speaker: Yes I have ~2 years of experience.

This seems ridiculously good for a SysDE with that much experience. I had two years at a smaller company previously and was hired as a SysEng I for way less. Not in Seattle but still felt as though I got a raw deal underestimating myself.

I think I understated my experience in my first comment, total I'd put it closer to 4-5 years. But yea, the amount they offered me was more than expected.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#665

Post by zaroth »

a3n wrote: post #471
zaroth wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the outside offer is an absolute game changer, which IMO puts it in the same league as actually changing jobs. Often you have to show that you are willing and able to leave for a much better salary to actually get the much better salary. If you are just internally lobbying for a salary increase at your existing employer, regardless of how successful you may be, how much revenue you are bringing in, etc. I would s…

My opinion only, but if I had to bring an outside offer to get an inside raise, I'd take the offer. "We'll pay everyone what we can get away with, except the few who we need for the moment that make a stink." But then, I make too big a deal about personal relationships, and I forget that it's just bidness. That said, I did get a raise once with an outside offer. But I left just inside a year later.

I agree and it can be personally very distressing when you know you are delivering tremendous value and are not getting nearly the financial reward for the value you bring.... and yet can't seem to convince the bosses to put up!

That's why I look at it now as a system that just needs the outside data point in order to properly process the request. It's not a person holding back the raise, more often the process which the outside offer fixes.

If there was such a thing as an "employee appraisal" service maybe you could do it without actually going to interview, which would be pretty cool!

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#666

Post by codeisawesome »

duskwuff wrote: post #142
sterl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find tying my income to stock highly motivating :)

Maybe in a small company, where your efforts can have a direct, meaningful impact on the company's net worth. For a company as large as Amazon, though... there's so much going on, and so much of it completely unrelated to your personal work, that I feel like it'd be kind of meaningless unless you were in a really high-level management position.

I'll have to disagree with your exception as well. Data has shown that CEOs at giant corps have no impact on how things go down. It comes back to your statement of how much is going on. If all the goings on in the corp mesh perfectly with the goings on outside, success happens. A single human CEO can neither be credited for success nor blamed for failure in these cases.

I agree with your premise, but don't give too much credit to "the high level management". Most of them are groping in the dark.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#667

Post by dimdimdim »

jondubois wrote: post #405
JoshDoody wrote: post #14

I'm not an Amazonian, but I wanted to chime in here to say I think this thread is a great idea and I would love to see more like it. I write about salary negotiation and coach people through it, and I think sharing salaries publicly will encourage more people to negotiate and get paid what they're worth. I recently coached a new Amazon employee, and he got a very good offer, which he increased by about 15% using VERY…

I think you should share your salary with as many people as possible. This "don't share" policy is just a trick used by companies to keep labor costs down. If employees know each other's pay, they will start demanding raises - Then you get in a situation like in the finance sector where companies will be forced to pay big bonuses to hold on to important employees. Companies don't want that - They want their engineers…

I think you should share your salary with as many people as possible. This "don't share" policy is just a trick used by companies to keep labor costs down.If employees know each other's pay, they will start demanding raises.

------ Keep in mind that 2 employees with the same education and years of experience might not always be "equal in all respects". There are so many other things which come into play - taking initiative, energy they bring to the company, team play etc. etc. most of which cannot be measured. So the reason for 2 employees with apparantly equal qualifications + experience not getting the same salary is not always the company "trying to fuck them" or because they did not "negotiate hard".

If you make all salaries open, keep in mind that so many employees will get demotivated to know the colleague next cubicle gets paid more. Serves no purpose.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#668

Post by g8gggu89 »

ee_tossout wrote: post #634

This thread is depressing, but I'll post my information: Company: small, non-startup software company in DFW Position: Senior Research Software Engineer Tenure: 4 years Experience: 14 years (4 EE, 2 non-IT SysE, 8 SwE) Salary: $92,500 (started at $78,000) Signing bonus: $0 Yearly bonus: $0 Stock: 0 Many of the comments here make me feel like I ab seriously underpaid. However, over the past several years in my interac…

Of course they all want you to feel like you're paid above average. :| How much are houses in your area, within a 20 min commute?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#669

Post by maybeunderpaid »

YetAnotherMSEng wrote: post #662
kolistivra wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "bench program"?

An internal "High Potential" program in which candidates get faster promo tracks, bigger promos, face to face access to higher level execs, and other perks. They are not supposed to talk about this program, as well, and it is invite only.

I had never heard of that. I'm fairly sure my team has two people in the "club". Both are quite young and are already principals.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

#670

Post by cellularmitosis »

grogenaut wrote: post #527
diskcat wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because he's talking to you. He's not gonna tell you he despises you to your face. But secretly he wonders: "why does he get more than me, im smarter than him!!". This is then bottled up under 10 psi of pressure until the perfect moment when the slightest thing sets it off and creates a scene in the office.

Fyi standard temp and pressure at is 14 psi, so 10 is actually a slight vacuum. Or 10 over current is still not very much. Usually not enough to even explode. people can blow up to about 20psi, eg 6 psi over stp (otherwise we couldn't breathe). So it'd be more like a birthday baloon that flubbered around for 4 seconds and then went flat.

Of all the times I've ever heard a pressure figure mentioned in casual conversation, I cannot recall a single time where the person was referring to absolute pressure rather than gauge pressure.

In fact, if I were at a party and I mentioned something about "10 psi", only to have someone correct me by saying "actually that's a slight vacuum...", I would assume they were trying to be mean.

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