I haven't done any interviews since before covid. What resources do people suggest reading in order to prepare? I'm familiar with leetcode but I'm wondering what books I should read besides Cracking the Coding Interview.
Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
211–220 of 462 posts
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#212I'm amazed both with the number of messages I get from Amazon about job openings and the aggressiveness of them. Add on how many are for ill fitting or basically Hail Mary type positions (During the height of the pandemic I got one wanting me to move to Ireland to work in an Amazon office there. They even acknowledged the oddness of the situation but they were really desperate for people to fill those roles). Seems l…
Amazon is the only FAANG recruiter I ignore. Working 60 hour weeks just so I can get PIPed within 9 months of starting? No thanks.
Your mileage may very but I only worked 40 hours a week when I was there and I also got promoted in about a year and a half.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#213I'm amazed both with the number of messages I get from Amazon about job openings and the aggressiveness of them. Add on how many are for ill fitting or basically Hail Mary type positions (During the height of the pandemic I got one wanting me to move to Ireland to work in an Amazon office there. They even acknowledged the oddness of the situation but they were really desperate for people to fill those roles). Seems l…
Amazon recruiting is a disaster. I’m used to receiving a reach out once or twice a year, but late last year I had at least four recruiters reaching out, three simultaneously. I think one even attempted to automate the process because I received two separate emails from him along with follow ups on each in a matter of four hours, and my replies never got through as they were completely ignored as he continued to follo…
No joke there about how disorganized they are. At one point a couple of years ago I had 3 different recruiters simultaneously reach out to me to work for Audible for the same role. I wonder if their pay is partially commission-based and they have to be so cut-throat, even against fellow recruiters.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#214Or they are pushing more compensation into cash because cash is a lot cheaper for them than equity. What I mean by that is that they have almost unlimited borrowing capacity at near-zero rates, versus a fixed amount of equity, and as long as the equity keeps growing, the cash pool grows with it. If the employees want to then purchase the equity, then that is upward pressure on the price, versus downward pressure on the price when an employee sells equity for cash.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Why give your future self that risk instead of looking for a higher base salary that is stickier over the long term? You're exactly right. Signing bonuses - and even equity compensation - are designed to lower your TC over time. The idea is that companies offer a high TC to entice you through the door, with the understanding that at the end of your 4 years your TC will drop precipitously but at that point you'd be…
Only because I'd rather ask and make sure I'm tracking acronyms properly while reading comments:
TC is "Total Compensation" right? As in salary + equity and other benefits and etc? Or does it usually refer to just cash salary?
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Amazon offer from last year was one of my highest ($500K first year TC for senior SWE in Seattle). Amazon has trouble retaining talent but I doubt compensation is the real cause (at least for recent hires).
At 500k are you actually working 40 hours or expected to be always working? Also what is considered a senior engineer? Someone specifically specialized in a field or management type role?
Senior SWE in the tech industry is typically someone with > 5 YOE who has led at least one big project and is considered a leader in their immediate team. It is not a management role.
Yeah, I’d probably work more than 40 hours a week at Amazon, which is why I didn’t take the offer (I accepted another offer with similar comp and my WLB is pretty good).
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#217I'm amazed both with the number of messages I get from Amazon about job openings and the aggressiveness of them. Add on how many are for ill fitting or basically Hail Mary type positions (During the height of the pandemic I got one wanting me to move to Ireland to work in an Amazon office there. They even acknowledged the oddness of the situation but they were really desperate for people to fill those roles). Seems l…
Amazon recruiting is a disaster. I’m used to receiving a reach out once or twice a year, but late last year I had at least four recruiters reaching out, three simultaneously. I think one even attempted to automate the process because I received two separate emails from him along with follow ups on each in a matter of four hours, and my replies never got through as they were completely ignored as he continued to follo…
lmao there was a period of time where I'd get 3 or 4 Amazon recruiters at a time emailing me. It started with polite "no thanks, I'm good" and worked to "please stop emailing me". Then when no one would respond to those, I started saying "yes, I'd love to work for you", just so I could get a response from a human and get them to acknowledge my "stop emailing me" requests.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#218So the base pay was 185, now 350k Doesn't really make much difference, unless you were hiring finance bros. The total comp is what mattered.
Not entirely, RSUs are harder to use when qualifying for a mortgage.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
100-200k is incomprehensibly large for me
It is indeed incomprehensibly large compared both the rest of the world and compared to the cost of most necessities (food, clothing, electricity, whatever electronic gadget...) Yet, everything changes if you consider housing, medical expenses, childcare, pensions: ta-dah the ratio between income and expenses is worse than in Europe. Then count your real working hours over a 30-years period and redo the math.
Perhaps health insurance costs FAANG employees several hundred thousand dollars, but if it doesn't then it's hard to imagine it being better elsewhere.
In my part of Canada, a decent dev salary for a new grad is about 45k USD. After taxes you'll be left with about 32k USD. Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment within a half hour drive of the city is about 1k USD, food for one person for a month is 200-250 USD if you don't eat out but do eat reasonably healthy (frozen vegetables, ground beef or pork chops, pasta, stuff like that). After internet, power, car expenses, telephone costs, etc. come out, you're maybe left with 10k USD to spare each year.
If a new grad in California making $180k+ is left with that little after the same expenses in the USA, I'd be impressed.
Granted, other things become more expensive later on. No doubt childcare is more expensive in California, as is housing. But it's not cheap here - a cheap house within a 30 minute drive of the city here costs about 500k USD, while that might be, what, 1-2 million in California? But a senior dev salary here is about 80k USD, vs 300k+ in California. And sure, the ratio might seem not too bad - 80k vs 300k is like a ~4 times difference, 500k to 2 million is like a 4 times difference. But after you deduct living expenses, you're looking at a much different ratio - unless every living expense is 4x more in California. But I'd be shocked if, for example, 1kg of medium ground beef that costs $10 USD in Canada costs $40 USD in California. Or if a $100 internet plan for 100 Mb/s up/down here costs $400 in California.
Re: Amazon more than doubles max base pay to $350k
#220We had an office near an Amazon office. I interviewed a lot of people trying to leave Amazon. I don’t ask candidate’s compensation, but a lot of them volunteered it anyway. I was always surprised at how effectively low their comp was in the first few years due to the vesting schedule. The internet is adamant that everyone with FAANG jobs is rolling in TC, but there are a lot of people out there who are getting into F…
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…
>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.
Jeebus man. What is it that you FAANG developers do that is so much more complex than what regular developers do?
For reference: I do Angular and Python development. Is there like some open source project or code samples that give an idea of the complexity of code that 510k developers are writing?
Man you got me day dreaming about that kind of money: I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities.