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Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

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Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#161

Post by valbaca »

neogodless wrote: post #81
caaqil wrote: post #3

About time, given the amount of horror stories coming out of The Forest . More money will definitely increase (at least to a certain extent) how much bullshit people are willing to put up with.

It's a horror game[0]. Never thought it was an allegory for Amazon, though. Unless you mean something else? [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/242760/The_Forest/

It's a joke. Amazon (the company) is named after the river and so is the surrounding rainforest.

I think "The Rainforest Bookstore" would've been cuter and clearer

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#162

Post by RussianCow »

MisterPea wrote: post #127
bin_bash wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what a poor comment. What would've been nice if you could've explained what I'm missing. For the record I work at a different big tech company and was given a massive sign-on bonus. I also have received an offer from Amazon in the past. I know how to read levels.fyi so I'm not sure what it is that I'm missing exactly.

If Amazon and a standard tech company both gave ~200k offers with a 100k base they would look like this: Amazon: 100k base, 250k stock over 4 years (5-15-40-40), ~175k sign-on over 2 years Other: 100k base, 400k stock over 4 years (25-25-25-25), ~25k sign-on immediately Essentially the lack of stock over the first 2 years is offset by the sign-on

What company is only giving $25k in signing bonuses? Everyone I know who works at a (non-Amazon) FAANG got significantly more than that.

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#163

Post by bagels »

loeg wrote: post #51
yanslookup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match my experience. I guess it depends on the role but for engineers it's well known Amazon has been throwing large sign on bonuses to close the vesting gap for years. For instance I received an offer that was 160 base, 325 cash bonus and 5% of my RSUs for my first year, putting my TC at ~510k. Second year was a slightly smaller bonus, and 15% of my RSUs. Is it possible that when folks were voluntarily…

I’ve had a similar experience, albeit with lower TC numbers. The RSUs were backloaded, but there were big cash grants for years 1 and 2 that flattened it out somewhat. Another thing to keep in mind is that Amazon values their stock grants as if it grows 15% every year. Obviously this is pretty optimistic and makes their offers not directly comparable to other companies that value their stock using current prices.

When does the 15% come in to play? If your recruiter tells you $xxx in stock, they actually discount that and you get a grant for 15% less shares than current market price?

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#164

Post by goodpoint »

coding123 wrote: post #84
f6v wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly browsed Zillow in Seattle. It looks like a good 2-3 bd house is 700k+. And of course you need a car since public transport isn’t a thing there. Sending children to a good colleage is probably 50k+ a year just in tuition. I get a feeling money is different there.

It's comical though - the reason the pay is so high is because the housing prices are so high. The housing prices are so high because the pay is so high. It's a never ending cycle.

...with an interesting "side effect": it allows most people in those cities to buy plenty goods and services made by people in poor countries. And not the opposite.

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#165

Post by ssfrr »

discodave wrote: post #101
dymk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's only a scam if you assume the first year you work there you are as productive as the 3rd It's a scam when it's compared to how every other tech company does it. The standard is a 1 year cliff at which point you get 25%, then uniform vesting every quarter. > that you're not eligible for a bonus until you have been with the company for a full year for exactly this reason This is exactly the standard in tech as w…

Do you get a sign on bonus thats like 50% of TC for the first two years at other companies? Because thats what amazon does.

Yeah, I wonder if that's part of the confusion. "Signing Bonus" is a weird name for what amounts to a large salary boost for the first 2 years. I think a lot of people think of a signing bonus as a lump sum you get when you are hired.

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#166

Post by mrandish »

dymk wrote: post #75
LatteLazy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a scam if you assume the first year you work there you are as productive as the 3rd. It takes most people at least 3 months just to get started, let alone actually contribute. Based on that, I don't think it's unreasonable to pay less for the first X months etc. That's all this is really. It's pretty standard in Finance that you're not eligible for a bonus until you have been with the company for a full yea…

> It's only a scam if you assume the first year you work there you are as productive as the 3rd It's a scam when it's compared to how every other tech company does it. The standard is a 1 year cliff at which point you get 25%, then uniform vesting every quarter. > that you're not eligible for a bonus until you have been with the company for a full year for exactly this reason This is exactly the standard in tech as w…

> It's a scam when it's compared to how every other tech company does it.

Often but not always. I worked as a senior exec in a near-FAANG, large public corp and at one point the board changed the equity comp of my level and up execs to a pretty complex formula that was significantly back-ended but also had possible multipliers in the event our stock metrics exceeded the avg stock metrics of a composite of several similar firms in similar markets. At the time it was started, a lot of us assumed we might get about the same at the end of the day and maybe a little more but have to wait longer for it.

After four years, we actually maxed all the multipliers and ended up making >200% what we would have under the previous standard vesting. I heard that HR and the board comp committee felt they'd made a 'mistake' because we'd ended up getting so much more than the 'intended' range - however, we also worked our asses off and the companies stock was soaring, so they couldn't really complain. BTW, the net-effect of the back-loaded vesting and soaring stock was that we all ended up holding for longer than we otherwise might have which ended up adding nearly another 100%. Since we're already talking about pretty hefty comp numbers, post-multipliers plus a ~doubling of the stock price, it ended up being life-changing money. Good times, indeed.

So, not every 'non-standard' equity vesting schedule is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes they are structured as a set of trade-offs, where the downsides are balanced by upsides tied to certain things and need to be assessed on that basis.

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#167

Post by bagels »

munificent wrote: post #146
yanslookup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match my experience. I guess it depends on the role but for engineers it's well known Amazon has been throwing large sign on bonuses to close the vesting gap for years. For instance I received an offer that was 160 base, 325 cash bonus and 5% of my RSUs for my first year, putting my TC at ~510k. Second year was a slightly smaller bonus, and 15% of my RSUs. Is it possible that when folks were voluntarily…

> I received an offer that was 160 base, 325 cash bonus and 5% of my RSUs for my first year, putting my TC at ~510k. I don't understand the appeal of cash signing bonuses. This just seems to me like another way of saying you got hired for a $485k annual salary while giving Amazon the freedom to cut your salary a year from now by up to ~67%. Why give your future self that risk instead of looking for a higher base sala…

Cash gives you the freedom to diversify. If you really wanted to be all in on Amazon, you could use the cash to buy shares. You get RSUs in the latter years to make up for the lack of cash bonus, which you can hold or sell.

I don't see what downside there is?

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#168

Post by AlwaysRock »

xiphias2 wrote: post #13

As a Googler I was approached by Amazon, and when I started to look at the culture, a photo came out with Jeff Bezos using a door because he was too ,,frugal’’ to buy a desk… I would never join an office where people are proud of that.

What a weirdly specific issue to have. Almost every company will have stories like this where founders were being scrappy or wanted to be perceived as scrappy.

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#169

Post by gregdoesit »

I’ve been talking to close to a dozen current and former Amazon employees since the end of 2021, and reached out to people publicly sharing attrition observations. Amazon attrition is really bad, even in AWS (Amazon employees all agree that AWS is a much better place to work in tech than Amazon retail).

At the same time, Amazon has had to pay very high for new hires. Hiring managers used to need to get L10 approval to go out of bands on offers outside bands, but starting late 2021, they could go out of bands up to ~20% higher with no approvals.

To top all of this, Amazon has a 6% internal URA (non-regretted attrition) target: something that has been in place for close to a decade. The Amazon Music group revolted late 2021 as reported by the Big Technology publication in-depth [1] as they didn't have 6% of people to fire, at the very time when they could not hire. Yet they were forced to hit this URA target, just like all other orgs in Amazon. Apparently this “rebellion email” leaked across the company and is sparking Amazon-wide outrage, and adds fuel to the fire.

Amazon has been extremely frugal for the skillset they hire for, very demanding and have created a stressful workplace. They still force 6% of engineers to be fired, even when their own leadership opposes this (Amazon Music).

I wonder why they can’t hire. Also, why is Amazon still part of the FANG abbreviation when they have this culture across many of their organisations?

[1] https://bigtechnology.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_...

Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k

#170

Post by techsupporter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #78
f6v wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly browsed Zillow in Seattle. It looks like a good 2-3 bd house is 700k+. And of course you need a car since public transport isn’t a thing there. Sending children to a good colleage is probably 50k+ a year just in tuition. I get a feeling money is different there.

> And of course you need a car since public transport isn’t a thing there. Are we talking about Seattle? We definitely have public transit here. > Sending children to a good colleage is probably 50k+ a year just in tuition. If they don't get into UW you mean? UW in-state tuition is only $11,745 (I say "only", but it is much higher than when I went there). However, it is a very competitive state university to get into…

> We definitely have public transit here.

I suppose this light rail train I am watching go by outside my window is just a mirage or something. Same for these buses, obviously a plant.

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