Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

danielvassallo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 241 posts

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

#141

Post by endangered »

Someone1234 wrote: post #35
Dayshine wrote: post #6

> When I first hit $100K income, I would take a peek at my W2 for a few days admiring the six digits, but then it wore off. When I hit $200K, $300K, $400K, and $500K, it was the same thing. I would be delusional to think that earning $1M, or $10M would suddenly make it different. >What is out there that I could do that would make me excited waking up every day for the next 45 years that could also earn me enough mone…

> you'd have $275k net. If you remove generous expenses, you have $200k a year in savings. In Seattle Washington? You'd have an extremely hard time making ends meet on $75K, it certainly isn't "generous." For example median home value in Seattle is $725K.

It's generally a bad idea to buy a house, so I don't really see how the median home value is relevant.

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

#142

Post by duxup »

hinkley wrote: post #107
duxup wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a lot of that in some odd lifestyle bloggers and media folks. They have a bunch of money, move upstate, talk about all these crafty / cosey things they do and how great a life choice they made and contrast it with a lot of bad things .... that are the only reason they can make the choices they can now.

I’m about to downshift myself. I have no illusions how much lower my cost of living will be due to selling my big city house and needing a comparatively tiny loan for the next one. I’m reminded regularly about a line from the Dalai Lama. When we are young we sell our health for money and when we are old we will pay anything to get it back. My original life plan was to do this maybe 8-10 years earlier. But the startup…

Yeah I think that quote is a lot more apt than some of the descriptions we see otherwise.

I'd like to do it, maybe try my hand at woodworking.

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

#144

Post by DVassallo »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #100
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.

From the description in the blog post, the author was a high performing L6 SDE[0] getting paid the rates of an L7 SDE[0] because he was about to get promoted. Amazon has very few L7+ SDEs (~1% of SDEs). So when you read that salary, you have to remember the author is relatively rare even within Amazon. [0] https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Facebook/Google

Yes, I was told to not expect another big increase after the L7 promotion.

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

#145

Post by grigory »

tyler- wrote: post #76
TACIXAT wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Senior at a lot of the larger companies I've interacted with is often a kind of a "terminal level", meaning that you're not expected to rise above it, and can comfortably spend most of your career at that level.

Staff, sr staff, principle and other monikers are usually about affecting change at the scale larger than your team, operating at larger scope, and growing people around you.

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

#147

Post by icedchai »

justicezyx wrote: post #139
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.

I have personally had this happen, also. The "inertia" of the current situation is almost always underestimated. Kudos to the author and his ability to move on...

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

#148

Post by DVassallo »

meritt wrote: post #135
DVassallo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The grants were based in AMZN shares. Yes, if the stock had fallen I would have make less. If it falls significantly (happened only once in 2014-2015 when I was there) the company typically tops you up with the difference (or part of it).

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

#149

Post by startupdiscuss »

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.

Huh? This seems like a non-sequitur. What does leaving in 2 years have to do with your worth this year? How many years would he have to stay to pay off this year?

By that logic hires are bad deals if they ever eventually leave because you "lost" the money of their last n years.

Post reply on HN