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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

#361

Post by belval »

etempleton wrote: post #272
abletonlive wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not only skilled vs unskilled labor. but an engineer can produce a system which generates millions of revenue a day. a warehouse worker, cannot scale this way.

This is very true, but at some point you need to value people at a base level. Warehouse work is grueling and you can easily get hurt. 16 /hr, which is the base of an Amazon warehouse worker, is below a livable wage w/o kids in much of the country. There is what you can get away with and what is right. At some point you just have to do what is right.

Not commenting on the substance of your comment, but seems like they hiked it to 18$/hr?

https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-amazon-hikes-star...

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

#362

Post by cheeze »

gregdoesit wrote: post #169

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 t…

> Amazon employees all agree that AWS is a much better place to work in tech than Amazon retail

Nut sure where you're getting this from, but IMO this is not true at all.

More 'hardcore engineering' is going on, on average, over Amazon Retail/CDO. But I would not say _at all_ that AWS is a better place to work.

From the datapoints I've gathered, it's the opposite. Oncall for an AWS product generally sucks balls, and the re:invent death march is a real thing.

But this is just like, my opinion, man.

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

#363

Post by giantg2 »

yanslookup wrote: post #15
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…

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…

My God. How long do you have to stay for the sign-on to payout? I'd do that job for a year just for the sign-on bonus. $325k is like 2. Decades of saving up.

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

#364

Post by ant6n »

vanusa wrote: post #255
CyanLite2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You work there 3 years and you'll earn a million bucks. Plenty of life to live after that and a lot of money to do whatever it is you want. Many people are willing to make that tradeoff, perhaps not you though.

Plenty of life to live after that and a lot of money to do whatever it is you want. If your children hate you or you lose the love of your life -- or you ruin your health -- then what's the point of all that money and free time?

> If your children hate you or you lose the love of your life -- or you ruin your health -- then what's the point of all that money and free time?

You can ruin all that on a 70K job.

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

#365

Post by koboll »

throwhauser wrote: post #34
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.

I don't think improvised desks are inappropriate for early-stage startups, especially in the 1990s. Apple started in Steve Jobs parents garage.

Right, but Amazon isn't an early-stage startup. It's a tech giant that wants all the employee-squeezing benefits of being an early-stage startup: sacrifice your life and comfort for the sake of the company. It's Day One, after all.

The problem is that what makes that sacrifice potentially worth it at an early-stage startup is the potential for equity before hypergrowth. Amazon has virtually no chance of startup-like hypergrowth anymore; recently its stock has even started declining. So employees are being asked to provide outsized sacrifice for declining returns. Predictably, massive resignation and retention problems are the result.

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

#366

Post by deltaonefour »

DesiLurker wrote: post #332
deltaonefour wrote: post #311

Ok. amazon has a high attrition rate because of it's culture. Making the pay higher won't necessarily fix that. Does ANYONE in amazon see culture changes occurring at all? I'm willing to respond to the 5 recruiters contacting me BUT only if there is a huge drive to change culture as well.

plus that high pay looks just like a bait to me. you still have to survive brutal (& I mean Brutal) annual reviews for entire duration and also not get PIPed in the process. getting piped for a bullshit reason really sucks, I have never been but have closely seen it happen. to answer the original question, nope, I have not seen any evidence of culture change, source: a close friend joined & left in a year.

Well, this uptick I've seen only in the last couple months so I'm wondering is there a culture change or impetus for culture change that occurred within the last month or couple months or so?

I think it's unlikely and that you're probably most likely right, but I want to fish out some comments from people in amazon who know what's going on.

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

#367

Post by belval »

deltaonefour wrote: post #311

Ok. amazon has a high attrition rate because of it's culture. Making the pay higher won't necessarily fix that. Does ANYONE in amazon see culture changes occurring at all? I'm willing to respond to the 5 recruiters contacting me BUT only if there is a huge drive to change culture as well.

Disclaimer: I work at AWS.

I see comments about the culture a lot and I feel the need to chime in and say that it's not actually bad? At least in my team, the work life balance is fine, my manager is great and the projects are interesting.

Not saying that it's the same for every SDE, but some of the stories you read online make it seem like they shackle you to your desk and PIP you into submission.

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

#368

Post by davidrupp »

aantix wrote: post #40
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #20

I'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…

Agree. Looking at HN, Blind, Glassdoor, very rarely do I remember seeing an engineer that would openly state that they love working there.

I'm a senior SDE (L6) @ AMZN (currently IMDb) with seven years tenure -- opinions my own, obvs. I've had some negative experiences with individuals / organizations over that time, but on balance I can honestly say I love working here. It is quite possible to get maneuvered into a bad situation such that you end up having to leave through no real fault of your own, but it's also possible to find a good fit and do exactly what the motto says: "Work hard, have fun, make history".

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

#369

Post by cheeze »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #352

Seems like it would be a lot better to realize you have a problem with management if your base (developers in this case) can't be retained or evidently bribed. Something is clearly broken in their organization, I mean holy shit 350k???

In my opinion, not really. Amazon management is far from great, that being said it's more that a developer that can "get into" Amazon can go elsewhere and make way more. FB is paying like, double of many of my friends at Amz right now and moving there is pretty easy. Goog is a bit less but still the same magnitude/ballpark.

You can call raising pay a bribe, but isn't that what work is? I mean shit, I wouldn't do my job if I didn't get paid for it. I have way more interesting hobbies than that... In that sense, is everything a bribe? I feel like those words don't really mean anything.

The increase isn't "we're paying all of our devs 350k tomorrow", it's "we can raise your salary up to 350, whereas before it was limited to 160"

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

#370

Post by goostavos »

yurishimo wrote: post #305
1024core wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Recruiting is indeed a disaster. I got approached by an Amazon recruiter, and instead of just ignoring him, I decided to see "what's out there". I'm a staff SWE level at a decent company, so not exactly desperate to leave. He proposed a hard time for a phone call later that week. I replied saying that I have conflicts at that time, how about we do it next week? Didn't hear back from him for a couple of days, a…

Nah, they just want to find the people who are enthusiastically looking to join their organization. They want the mindless drone who will do what they're told and when asked to jump, reply with "how high?" You didn't meet that criteria otherwise you would have bent over backwards to adjust your schedule to make the proposed time, so "obviously" you don't really want this job enough.

No, no. Trust me, it's just pure incompetence.

I've been at Amazon for like 4-5 years now. Recruiting quality and practices are widely bemoaned. It sucks on both sides of the fence. We'll sit through brutal interviews because recruiting just throws everything at the wall in hopes something will stick. It's demoralizing for everyone involved.

Even the little things drive me insane. I get emails from lazy, zero-effort recruiters asking if I'd like to join Amazon because "they saw my profile on Linkedin and it looked like a great fit!" Like, holy shit, can you not put in even a little bit of effort? You're just shotgunning canned emails all over the place making us all look like spammy dopes?

Sigh...

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