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Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

danielvassallo.com

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Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#71

Post by pantaloons »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #16

> I made $75K in my first year and that gradually grew to $511K by my last year. Wow, I'm envious of this rate of internal raises. Is this consistent within Amazon's culture, or other SV companies? I've found (in the small-town Midwestern shops I frequent, not in the FAANG bubble) that I have to change employers to do better than a token 3-5% annual raise, even if my value to the company is increasing much more quick…

This is largely due to Amazon stock appreciation. Amazon does not pay senior engineers $400K, let alone $500K. In FAANG, a typical non-promotion raise is 5-8%.

The author could probably have been a bit more specific and noted that his income was actually quite likely to go down for the next several years, but it wouldn't have made for such a compelling post.

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#72

Post by cowsandmilk »

halfnibble wrote: post #14

I've heard of Amazon paying between $200 and $300K for software engineers, but this is the first time I've heard of them paying $500K! Goodness, I don't have any work/life balance now, so it really makes me wonder if I shouldn't start applying at Amazon.

the 500k is due to Amazon's stock value going up. The amount of stock you'll be receiving is set several years out and is frequently a major portion of your salary. Amazon's stock tripling has put many people at high salaries.

OP is an SDE3, which levels.fyi puts at $154,259 base, $150,648 stock, $19,227 bonus. The stock goes up 3x in the years between the grant and when you vest, you are making tons of money. Most people don't expect Amazon's stock to triple again in the next few years.

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#73

Post by TheShrug »

DVassallo wrote: post #63
TheShrug wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product, no business".

Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have no income right now.

You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#74

Post by [deleted] »

emilfihlman wrote: post #54

Most of the comments seem to not understand that he wasn't developing per se anymore. He was managing, which explains the larger payout. In addition, I greatly dislike how the top post is negative on the story: it disregards the idea behind the post and instead replicates the typical "you have things good so fuck you" response.

[deleted]

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#75

Post by mixmastamyk »

nodesocket wrote: post #20

This is a very common theme. Once you reach a certain threshold of income (not everybody though) you start valuing freedom, flexibility, traveling and start looking beyond work. This is primarily because money has lost its forcing function. Even if you have the best setup in terms of work, compensation, co-workers, you lose motivation and drift away. This isn't true of everybody though, most successful entrepreneurs…

The idea of "enough" in the book by Joe Dominguez.

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#76

Post by tyler- »

TACIXAT wrote: post #67
tyler- wrote: post #15

What kind of companies pay software engineers 300k+? Is it realistic to make 500k-1 million+ at these companies as a developer? What sort of title/level are these developers at? How much is it in stocks/rsus vs salary at that point? Can someone lay out a traditional example at this level? What skillsets do these people have?

300k+ is senior. The higher ranges would be principal / individual contributor. This is a pretty common pay scale in the Bay Area. https://levels.fyi

Thanks! Roughly, what does is the difference between a senior and principle engineer? How common is it to reach senior for a normal dev vs principle?

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#77

Post by kookoopuffs »

DVassallo wrote: post #18
mprev wrote: post #4

The tl;dr is that when someone is paying you $500k a year then the work itself might not be all that motivating. However, within time, the money isn't enough to motivate you either. You gotta wonder, though, what the rest of the world would think if they stumbled across this kind of blog post.

Author here. Agree. But I bet most of the audience here is already earning enough. Once you cover the basics, the returns of additional income diminish quickly. I chose to say how much I was earning just to emphasize that everything was really going well at my job, including compensation.

Have you ever thought that the amount of motivation for money is the issue? In other words, what if the main factor that motivated you to work hard was not money? What if you kept the job but you shifted your motivation on producing impact for other people instead of yourself? To add to your point, even if you do build a successful business, you'll get to a place where you will have this same problem correct of diminishing motivation correct? In summary, I think it is necessary for us to sit down and ask ourselves what are living for?

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#78

Post by pxue »

DVassallo wrote: post #50
Dayshine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need income with $1M. If you chuck that into an index tracker you can safely withdraw $40k a year...

Author here. My expenses are more like $150K a year, so my runway is only a few years. I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this experiment I'm doing with my life.

hey man. just FYI i'd kill to be in your shoes.

- almost broke startup founder

Re: Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

#80

Post by sockgrant »

tyler- wrote: post #15

What kind of companies pay software engineers 300k+? Is it realistic to make 500k-1 million+ at these companies as a developer? What sort of title/level are these developers at? How much is it in stocks/rsus vs salary at that point? Can someone lay out a traditional example at this level? What skillsets do these people have?

> What kind of companies pay software engineers 300k+?

The big ones. Google Facebook Microsoft Amazon.

> Is it realistic to make 500k-1 million+ at these companies as a developer?

It's realistic but not a given. You've gotta be into staff software engineer+ range to be making that much. Plenty of people never make staff.

> How much is it in stocks/rsus vs salary at that point?

Probably around 50/50. 50 salary 50 bonus + rsus. Or maybe even 40 salary 60 bonus + rsu.

> What skillsets do these people have?

Be one of the better software engineers at a company that can curate top engineers.

Strong communication, high interpersonal skills, ability to lead complex software projects, high intelligence, fast learner, breadth and depth of understanding of software. Plays well with others. Generalist -- able to work in a variety of languages with different tools, with no hesitation to learn and quickly understand new environments. These engineers may be domain experts at specific things, but they are by no means pigeonholed.

Usually, but not always, these engineers are also very productive and motivated.

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