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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

#431

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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 giv…

Almost nothing special, actually - although the average developer in FAANG/etc. in my experience is considerably better than an average developer outside, that is in part because "the outside" is much larger.

I think the best analogy here is sports... there's a sharp pay cut when you go from playing in an NFL team, to not playing in an NFL team. NFL teams have N slots and they want the best players. That means that the N-th best football player modulo measurement noise is going to be paid much more than the N+1-th.

FAANG/etc. job count is not fixed and measurement noise is probably much higher (i.e. we can't actually determine which developers are best with that much confidence, and so I think a lot of developers could make it into a FAANG and do fine work there), but the same principle applies.

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

#432

As a low-ish level MSFT employee I laughed at this line: > The move promises to bring Amazon’s base pay more in line with other big tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. As a ~62/63 (almost senior or senior) at Microsoft my peers at Facebook, Google, and Amazon can easily make literally twice as much compensation a year in salary, stock, and cash bonuses. Microsoft isn't even in the ballpar…

64 here. I do occasionally dream about going elsewhere for beaucoup bucks (not that I'm complaining about my TC), but also, I do really love what I do, who I work with/for, etc. So I acknowledge the trade-off I'm making -- good W/L balance, very low stress, but not as much money as as my principal engineer friend @ Amazon makes.

Not really sure 65 = L7. Probably something closer to 66/67 is a better match for Amazon L7/PE. Apples to oranges comparison of compensation.

Source: Done both AWS L8 and MSFT Partner roles. Have hired and led teams with Principal+ in both places.

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

#433

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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

If you move that slider even just a few months to March 2020 you capture a doubling of the stock price, 1.5 years seems incredibly arbitrary as a cutoff point

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

#434

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>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

401k contributions are still savings, deduct that (at a max contribution rate that’s like 1.5k) and you’re at 10.5k a month. The bit about stock grants is meaningless, if it’s a public company that is straight cash.

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

#435
post #224

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So, if the recruiter says $500k in RSU, and the stock stays flat for 4 years, the grant is actually only for $425k (or less with compounding)? Or, are you saying, they justify small grants by telling you the stock will grow?

Let's say you're applying for a position where usual FAANG TC is 300k. Then Amazon recruiter wants to "match" that, so 300 * 4=1200k over 4 years. Base pay is maxed at 160 (until today's announcement), so 1200k-(160 * 4) = 560k to come up with with stocks and cash bonus. Let's say Amazon 30 day moving average share price during negotiation is $1200 a share So now recruiter must make math such that: - TC stays relativ…

Thanks for the example.

I went back to look at the AWS offer I turned down. There was no mention of a 15% assumption anywhere, but it did spell out total RSU, base salary, and first two year bonuses, which ends up making year 1 about 8% more than year 4 for the same stock price.

This seems at odds with what you've presented.

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

#436
post #50

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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…

Never been, but imagined it to be like SF where everyone complains about 3 hours of daily commute driving the car.

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

#437
post #62

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.

Sorry I can't picture this - had he taken it off it's hinges and put it on a couple of stools?

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/how-a-door-became...

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

#438
post #335

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It’s easy and comforting to imagine that someone getting paid more than you must also suffer more than you – certainly well paid doctors and lawyers and investment bankers seem to suffer terrible working conditions – but it isn’t really true. A software developer earning an ordinary good salary (say $80k-$120k to pick some reference point) isn’t going to be working ‘harder’ than someone with a more manual job[1] earn…

It’s easy and comforting to imagine that someone getting paid more than you must also suffer more than you However in the case of Amazon this isn't based on "imagining" but extremely widespread reports across multiple sources.

Well all the examples I gave were from America. It’s true that at some jobs higher pay comes with worse conditions (eg hazard pay or working a night shift) but generally for programming (and many other professional jobs) higher pay comes with better conditions.

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

#439
post #364
post #255

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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.

Why run home behind a bus when you can run home behind a taxi?

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

#440
post #40

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

I work at Amazon. Less than 2 yoe but is comp is solid, even compared to Goog and Meta, perhaps cause I'm currently top of band. Wlb is amazing. Did 5-6 hour days on last team. Coworkers were chill. Now I work more (6-7 hour days) cause I'm on a systems team, but I get to learn a lot about how EC2 servers are run. My manager cares about my learning and I get basically an hour a week with the tech lead where I can ask…

I would kill to not have deadlines... I also work here heh
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