331–340 of 618 posts
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Seniors hit about 4-5k eur in Poland. Poland is far worse than Germany tbh.
On average, I would say a senior would get between 3k and 4k euros in RO, at a regular company. It depends a lot on city too. In bucharest salaries should be higher. Obviously Amazon thinks that mortages can be paid just by flexing their employee badge.
One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…
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I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.
I'd rather work one year at Amazon than 5 years at a nice European country in a walkable city, and that's how the numbers pan out if you're saving for retirement
My impression is that you work in order to do what you really want later, while we tend to focus on getting a job that pays enough to survive + bit more, but still allows us to do the things we want now, rather than later at/around retirement.
Insert story about The Businessman and The Fisherman
Why does anyone choose to work at Amazon? Given all the stories of PIP, it sounds like a not great place to work Go to other fang, or other tech. Lots of companies that pay just as well. Amazon would be my last choice - my job search is going awful, gotten rejected from most big tech companies, and I have well paying Amazon and a long tail of little shit companies that don’t pay that great (think of the equity!!)
One thing I liked was that Amazon puts up less of an act that everyone is one big family. I knew they saw me as a "human resource", and could behave accordingly. It was only when the stress started to follow me home that I got out, only sticking around longer than that to take advantage of the great health insurance for a big procedure.
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I'd rather work one year at Amazon than 5 years at a nice European country in a walkable city, and that's how the numbers pan out if you're saving for retirement
I'm guessing you're a US-native then? Where this salary/work obsession seems a lot stronger than around here (South-West Europe). My impression is that you work in order to do what you really want later, while we tend to focus on getting a job that pays enough to survive + bit more, but still allows us to do the things we want now, rather than later at/around retirement. Insert story about The Businessman and The Fis…
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Unless you're a director you will never come even close to $100K of stock vesting in a single event, and directors are not subject to PIPs. So that's a nice theory you have here but it doesn't work in practice.
Amazon has a weird vesting schedule (40% in the third and fourth year IIRC) and it has gone up quite a lot over the last few years. It also appears to have yearly vests. This doesn't seem implausible under those conditions.
I’m aware of a newly hired SDE2 (~2 years ago) that was hired with a TC of $305k. While the breakdown of compensation for an SDE1 and SDE2 might differ, an SDE1 breakdown is 5% vest after 1st year with 95% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. 15% vest after 2nd year with 85% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. Then after years 3 and 4 it was 40% vest + 60% from salary. It’s a little less straightforward than this because they build in an expected ~15% stock growth price YoY as part of your expected TC.
So assuming SDE2 payout structure is same as SDE1, their compensation might look like this for a new hire where the strike price is $100 for AMZN at their date of hire.
Y1: 165K salary, 15K stock (15 RSU), $120K bonus.
Y2: 165K salary, 45K stock (45000/(1001.15) RSU), 90K bonus.
Y3: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(1151.15) RSU)
Y4: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(132.25*1.15) RSU)
So their signing package would be like 300K TC with 15+391+1020+888 (2314) RSUs.
After year 2 or 3 stocks vest twice a year. So granted payout structure is likely much different now with higher base salaries I agree it is not implausible for non-directors to receive $100k in stock in a single vest.
One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…
I have posted this before, an argument in defense of stack ranking I had heard from a friend's father who was a long-time manager for a large industrial conglomerate from the 60's through the 80's. Simply put it was that they were far more willing to hire non-standard candidates on gut and hunches, knowing that if it didn't work out, it didn't work out they would be gone in 1-1.5 years and it would not be a ding agai…
Long term, it has been a disaster in every company. Because eventually you run out of fat, and then what you describe as "far more willing to hire non-standard candidates on gut and hunches, knowing that if it didn't work out, it didn't work out they would be gone" becomes "I need to hire people I don't want to work with, so I have someone to fire in the next stack rank". And that's its own form of fat.
In short, stack ranking makes some sense if you have a fat organization, not unlike restricting calories to lose fat when working out. But once you've lost fat, continuing to restrict your calories results in losing more muscle than fat.
One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…
You're mistaken in that you believe that the goal of culls is to cut underperformers. Stack ranking doesn't assess performance, it checks whether you're willing to do a little more to be ahead of your peers. The real goal of culls is to motivate people to work more, to be more accessible to their managers' requests, etc. so they make it "to the next round". It's a pressure tool, not a performance control tool.
My perspective: I was your everyday ordinary CRUD developer in 2020 with leading a few projects under my belt at mostly unknown companies who had two years of AWS experience and was 46 years old. A recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me on LinkedIn about interviewing for a software engineering position. At 46 years old there were a number of problems I saw with that “opportunity”: - I hadn’t done a real codin…
Yep, Assuming you will be fired eventually and will have to fall back to a normal CRUD job is the right play when taking these high pressure, high salary roles. Any idea why you were PIPed after 3 years?
On the other hand, the PIP itself was a setup. During the focus period, I met all of the criteria and had perfect CSAT scores on two customer projects I led (Professional Services) and the projects were both done on time, on budget and met requirements
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963737
Honestly, I didn’t look at the reasons why I was put on PIP on the remedies to stay until after I had another job. I didn’t even realize it was part of the paperwork.
As soon as my manager starting discussing them, I interrupted them and asked how much was my severance. After they told me 40K+ and paid out vacation, I asked where do I sign?
I knew someone would hire me. By the time the conversation came up, I already had a side contract with a former manager/CTO waiting in the wings for $135/hour. I also knew the director of a major non tech company who was willing to create a position paying more in cash than I was making in all at Amazon to lead the cloud transition and architecture.
We had worked together at AWS and he was the one that suggested I wait for the PIP. I ended up not taking his offer because I didn’t want the stress of the job even though I would have loved working with him again.
My compensation now is somewhere on the high side between CRUD developer and BigTech software dev. I can easily go up after a couple of years if I care too.
I’m working full time at a consulting company because I really don’t want the hassle of going independent.
Why does anyone choose to work at Amazon? Given all the stories of PIP, it sounds like a not great place to work Go to other fang, or other tech. Lots of companies that pay just as well. Amazon would be my last choice - my job search is going awful, gotten rejected from most big tech companies, and I have well paying Amazon and a long tail of little shit companies that don’t pay that great (think of the equity!!)
I have the impression that if you can survive for 4 years, you get some very lucrative wealth building stock options. But I also believe that most people don't actually make it all the way to the end. Kind of like a winning lotto card you get for standing in a boiling shower for an hour