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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

#351

Post by _dain_ »

goodpoint wrote: post #132
_dain_ wrote: post #43

Earlier 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.

>Yet, everything changes if you consider housing, medical expenses, childcare, pensions: ta-dah the ratio between income and expenses is worse than in Europe.

this is a gigantic cope. it may be true for lower middle class earners, but in the tech sector american workers really truly are staggeringly more affluent than their british and european counterparts even after you subtract the tuition money and healthcare costs and all the other shit americans have to put up with.

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

#353

Post by spywaregorilla »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #229
nebula8804 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 giv…

If you look at it as FANNG's employing people to keep them from working for others it makes a bit more sense.

That makes no sense

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

#354

Post by belval »

I think this is a good move. The compensation structure of Amazon (max $160k, rest is RSUs) made sense when the company delivered stock value growth each year. It felt startup-esque. The issue is that the stock performance has been unimpressive for several years now, which means that a lot of higher-ups and older employees were seeing their compensation become significantly below market-rate and would, as one expect, leave.

To give people here an idea, my RSUs lost ~4% in value since I've been at Amazon (more than a year). This is perfectly fine if there's an expectation that the RSUs are a "bonus", it's not fine if you need it to go up 10-15% for your TC to match Microsoft.

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

#355

Post by ericd »

karmasimida wrote: post #338
ramesh31 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>350k is ... not that much in high cost area like Bay/NYC/Seattle Yeah it really still is. Living in the bay area as a single 20 something making that kind of money you are approaching 1% status. Rent is a little higher sure, but what really is the difference between $2k/month and $4k/month when you're bringing home $20k+/month? And everything else in California besides housing is the same as anywhere else really in…

For the record. You don't bring 20k+ per months, more like 9k+ after tax/401k contribution. And stock grants are liquid assets, but they are not cash, and most people I know won't exercise them right away, so they are still numbers in certain DB table

Eh for those liquidating them, most are turning most into equity in other companies/funds - ie a number in the same sort of DB table, albeit with a different ticker attached.

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

#356

Post by giantg2 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

We 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…

"but there are a lot of people out there who are getting into FAANG companies (especially Amazon) at lower compensations with the hopes of moving up to those higher levels."

And there are a lot of us who don't even get into FAANG and can't even dream of $160k, let alone $360k.

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

#357

Post by ericd »

ramesh31 wrote: post #331
throwawayboise wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, no amount of money is worth it. I can hardly imagine earning $350k a year. I've never earned a third of that anually. What I can imagine is a job that places such a demand on my time and attention that I don't have time for a life outside of it.

>At some point, no amount of money is worth it. Speak for yourself, I guess. I would strap myself into the torture machine from Clockwork Orange for 8 hours a day if you paid me $350k to do it.

What if you’d been an engineer at one of these sorts of companies for a while and already banked a mill? Two? Five?

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

#358

Post by imwillofficial »

ramesh31 wrote: post #331
throwawayboise wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, no amount of money is worth it. I can hardly imagine earning $350k a year. I've never earned a third of that anually. What I can imagine is a job that places such a demand on my time and attention that I don't have time for a life outside of it.

>At some point, no amount of money is worth it. Speak for yourself, I guess. I would strap myself into the torture machine from Clockwork Orange for 8 hours a day if you paid me $350k to do it.

Have you ever made $350k?

The magic wears off fast and it doesn’t go as far as you imagine.

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

#359

Post by StillBored »

rhines wrote: post #219
goodpoint wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

That is a general problem in most of the US too. The desirable ~25% of town is mostly unobtainable for people who aren't in the top couple percent of the income structure because so few properties come up for sale in those areas that their inflation rate outpaces wage growth in the area. In growing towns and areas that are generally desirable enough that outsiders move there its probably more than 50% of the city is out of reach for say ~80% of the population for the same reason as above, combined with the fact that people moving from high cost of living areas eat up another few percent. You see this in town after town in the US. The younger local population is forced to live an hour drive+ outside of town because the older generation is sitting on properties that are outside of their price range.

The theory says that once those older folks start to die off their children will inherit the windfall, but I'm not really that sure. Its definitely not true for my parents which for various reasons didn't manage to benefit from the real estate/stock market booms over the past ~50-60 years. I know a couple people like this (they have middle class jobs and live in apartments while their parents have tens of millions), while others are like me because their parents burned up imense amounts of money in their later years with travel/health care/etc.

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

#360

Post by imwillofficial »

ghettoimp wrote: post #350
allthecybers wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are on target. IMO it is an attempt at employee retention as well as attracting new talent. Purely anecdotal on my part, but I've seen post after post on LinkedIn of senior/tenured Amazonians moving on to other roles after five, ten, and even fifteen years. The stock performance has been pretty flat for the last few years, so the TC growth is lagging behind the gains you could get from being a new hire. A…

Is AMZN stock really flat? Looks close to 4x its price from 5 years ago.

It’s been flat for about a year and a half
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