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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

#391

Post by malfist »

cheeze wrote: post #372
stephenboyd wrote: post #55

Now let’s see if they can give more than 10 PTO days

Uh, what? At least when I worked there in Seattle, I got 48 hours of personal time, a few days of sick time, and a month of PTO every year. Granted, my managers never cared about what I used (personal==sick==pto, use whatever) and I rarely actually recorded vacation.

That's not their official policy IIRC. It's 10 vacation days for your first year, 15 after that. And 6 days of sick time.

There's lots of leeway for your manager not to enforce it though.

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

#392

Post by kyawzazaw »

internetting3 wrote: post #375

More stocks are actually favorable over cash to avoid Medicare and SS taxes which are approximately 15%. To me, this seems like a strategy to counter the volatility in the stock market and it gives Amazon a way to exit equity based employee retention.

Aren’t RSU taxed as income tax anyways?

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

#393

Post by kyawzazaw »

amotinga wrote: post #248

2 things why I dont bother interviewing: 1. very difficult long interview that I most likely won't pass 2. I only want to work remotely. driving every day few hours back and forth is very expensive in many ways. When something changes about those I will think about it.

Amazon has remote roles

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

#394

Post by wdb »

inoop wrote: post #173
wdb wrote: post #130

Why don't they raise the salaries of the Amazon delivery and order pickers instead?

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

Pretty weak raise compared to what the these people getting with base pay of $350k

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

#395

Post by gnaman »

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…

>Also, why is Amazon still part of the FANG abbreviation when they have this culture across many of their organisations?

Because the term had nothing to do with work culture. The term was coined by Jim Cramer, the television host of CNBC's Mad Money, in 2013, who praised these companies for being “totally dominant in their markets”. The original definition still holds true.

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

#396

Post by imwillofficial »

optimiz3 wrote: post #273
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…

People are paid based on value created and responsibility. All else being equal, better to work for companies where you create more value.

“People are paid based on value created and responsibility.”

Oh you sweet, sweet child.

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

#397

Post by tfehring »

internetting3 wrote: post #375

More stocks are actually favorable over cash to avoid Medicare and SS taxes which are approximately 15%. To me, this seems like a strategy to counter the volatility in the stock market and it gives Amazon a way to exit equity based employee retention.

RSUs are still subject to FICA taxes, see e.g. [0] and [1]. Also, most tech workers are above the income limit for Social Security taxes, so their marginal payroll tax rate is only 2.9%.

[0] https://www.foley.com/en/insights/publications/2020/08/restr...

[1] https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/perspectives-events/blogs/2020...

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

#398

Post by deltaonefour »

belval wrote: post #386
deltaonefour wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about during review season where someone on your team MUST get pipped? I know that there are teams that are doing well. But if one person or more on your team gets pipped every year something is wrong...

I actually had a talk with my manager about that, as I was curious about how it actually worked (yes you can ask your manager it's not illegal). There IS an expectation of managers being able to identify the bottom performers in their team, but for the PIP part it's up to the manager. They absolutely can push back and say that no-one in their team deserves to get PIP'ed. They would have to write a reason (i.e. "No on…

I think your viewing it from a microcosm and that the rest of the internet actually probably has a more accurate view given that you had to ask your manager about this.

What I'm hearing from others is this... there are good teams at amazon... amazon is huge but the overall culture is not what you describe. I guess I'm looking for a more overall picture rather then someone viewing it from the perspective of a good team.

>They absolutely can push back and say that no-one in their team deserves to get PIP'ed

You realize that a pip is not normal? Even one person getting PIP'ed on a team is is an event and abnormal. The fact that a manager has to "push back" for not pip-ing somone raises a red flag for me.

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

#399

Post by joshuamorton »

kccqzy wrote: post #325
tdhoot wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's official stance is they target 75 percentile pay, not > 95. So not too far off from MS. My guess is they use different peer companies.

Hmm I can't find the source but I thought Google targets the 85th percentile not 75 or 95. But then again the market data that Google uses isn't public (and certainly isn't levels.fyi) so there could be discrepancies.

Well at least the confusion about what Google's target market percentile is isn't just limited to Google (all three of these comments are incorrect, the first one is the most correct, and 3-4 years ago it was more correct than it is now w.r.t. Google, and its correct in that FB targets a higher range than Google does).

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

#400

Post by belval »

deltaonefour wrote: post #398
belval wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a talk with my manager about that, as I was curious about how it actually worked (yes you can ask your manager it's not illegal). There IS an expectation of managers being able to identify the bottom performers in their team, but for the PIP part it's up to the manager. They absolutely can push back and say that no-one in their team deserves to get PIP'ed. They would have to write a reason (i.e. "No on…

I think your viewing it from a microcosm and that the rest of the internet actually probably has a more accurate view given that you had to ask your manager about this. What I'm hearing from others is this... there are good teams at amazon... amazon is huge but the overall culture is not what you describe. I guess I'm looking for a more overall picture rather then someone viewing it from the perspective of a good tea…

> At least in my team...

> Not saying that it's the same for every SDE...

I think my initial comment had enough disclaimer to make it clear that I don't think this is applicable to every team at Amazon.

> You realize that a pip is not normal? Even one person getting PIP'ed on a team is is an event and abnormal. The fact that a manager has to "push back" for not pip-ing somone raises a red flag for me.

Every company I worked at had some form of "performance improvement plan" that essentially meant "pick up the pace or we will have to discuss options". The idea that on a team of 20 people, during the span of a year, not a single employee (expected rate is ~5%) is underperforming is worthy of writing a justification.

EDIT: Re-reading your comment I think I understand why you think this is so weird.

> The fact that a manager has to "push back" for not pip-ing somone raises a red flag for me.

You don't have to push-back not pip-ing a specific employee, but you will have to justify why no-one on your 20+ people team got PIP'ed during the year. Is that clearer?

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