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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

#131

Post by DVassallo »

hinkley wrote: post #123
DVassallo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My expenses are about $150K a year. Fixed costs per month: * $5K mortgage * $1.2K health insurance * $300 life and disability insurance * $800 utilities * $2K home services: nanny, sitter, cleaner * $800 school / preschool and kids activities * $2K groceries, essentials, etc 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 somewher…

I live a comfortable life in Seattle and my mortgage is $3k a month including taxes, in a house that’s too big for us to keep clean. I think “comfortable” might be understating things. If I moved into my neighborhood now it might be closer to $5k (without a bigger down payment) but I wouldn’t recommend it.

$5K includes property taxes, HOA, and home insurance. The total was $4K originally when I bought a $850K townhouse in 2015. But I refinanced recently to get some cash out and that got it to $5K.

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

#133

Post by justicezyx »

DVassallo wrote: post #31
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…

Author here. I got a big bump from $230K to $396K in 2016 when I got a competing offer and Amazon matched it so that I wouldn't leave. From then on, the growth from $400K to $500K happened because the AMZN stock nearly tripled in that time frame.

Thanks being quite open about what's changed the trajectory!

I do share the same sentiment as yours. I'll be closely watching your experiment and hopefully learn something from you!

Good luck and best wishes!

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

#134

Post by beefalo »

blunte wrote: post #64
DVassallo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I got a big bump from $230K to $396K in 2016 when I got a competing offer and Amazon matched it so that I wouldn't leave. From then on, the growth from $400K to $500K happened because the AMZN stock nearly tripled in that time frame.

Well, this just illustrated why a company shouldn't play the matching game. What did Amazon get for matching the offer? They got to keep you for a couple more years at a premium. I'm sure you did some good things in those two years, but the accounting side would probably have a difficult time assessing the real value of those two years.

Hiring a replacement would cost them a lot of money and the replacement would also expect $400k for the same responsibilities anyway.

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

#135

Post by meritt »

DVassallo wrote: post #116
jayonsoftware wrote: post #21

How do you make 500K at Amazon, is that 200K base, 50K bonus and 250K in stock ?

My base was $160K for a long time. I think it's the max at Amazon. The rest was stock. I got lucky that AMZN stock grew a lot in the last few years. Without the growth it would have been about $380K/year (i.e. that's what I was granted originally before the stock grew).

I'm not following how $380k is the baseline. Were the grants based in dollars or in AMZN shares? I assume it was based in shares and if the stock had fallen you'd have made less?

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

#136

Post by j4kp07 »

DVassallo wrote: post #84
pkaye wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you still have good health/life insurance. Maybe you are young but life changing events can happen to anyone as it did to me.

I do. Got a $5M life insurance, and disability insurance that pays $10K/month if I can't do my work anymore. Got a high deductible health insurance through the ACA exchange. Life and disability insurance were quite cheap actually: about $3K/year in total (age 35 and good health). Health insurance is obviously expensive. The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible…

> The cheapest is about $14K/year here in WA for a family of four (which is what I got). Deductible is about $7/$14K IIRC.

Just think, you need to have $21k in medical receipts before you can even break even. ACA is such a joke and yet many people in our society believe MORE "free" healthcare will drive prices (ie. taxes) lower.

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

#137

Post by ryanSrich »

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.

I get your point, but if you’re not making any income from $1m in liquid assets you’re doing something wrong.

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

#138

Post by startupdiscuss »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

I’m going all in on independence, and I’m going to try to make a living with my own bare hands starting from nothing. 500k/year in your last year is "nothing", huh? It really undercuts the entire thrust of the post, because you're starting with a nice big war chest and a hell of a safety net, not "nothing".

You're looking at it the wrong way (i think).

The point is not that he is starving, or that he is desperate. The point of that number is what he gave up!

The point is he gave up a job of 0.5 million, potentially 1 million in a few years. To top it off the job had reasonable hours, great people and he was getting positive feedback.

You would not expect people to give that up. The question is why?

Instead, you're pointing out how lucky he was. Well, that is his point! He was so lucky and is giving it up! Aren't you curious why?

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

#139

Post by justicezyx »

icedchai wrote: post #110

Why not stay there and milk it for a few years? Once you have that safety net built up, there is little reason to care. So do as little as possible... Come in late, leave early. Do this a little bit at a time. With your good reputation, you can probably get another mil out of them.

Not the author.

One issue I see is that you'll always face this same question again and again, as risks are way less quantifiable than one expected. I was at multiple occasions that I made up my mind to move on, but at the juncture of making decision, the previous thought process just fell apart for no reason; because when risks become more realistic, its mental pressure is way heavier than the expectation.

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