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Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

• BreesusChrist 11y ago
  I hope this takes off. I always thought it was weird hiding how much you make -- this only helps employers, and not employees.
  • nickff 11y ago
    I am not sure whether keeping salaries confidential is good for the employer, employee, neither, or both, but you are stating what appears to be the most common belief. Different people have different preferences, and some managers probably have mistaken beliefs about what is good for them and their employees.
    • dsp1234 11y ago
      It seems to be simple economics and negotiation tactics to me. Backed up by the fact that it's such a taboo subject among coworkers, almost always for reasons of 'don't want to rock the boat' and 'don't want to get fired'. From a negotiation standpoint, the employer (generally) wants to hire, or give raises to, the employee at the lowest possible total cost. Whereas the employee (generally) want to be hired, or get a raise, at the highest possible total cost. Where the cost analysis may not be the same for each side. Now assume that that all other things being equal, and no information about salary rates are known, the employer's range for salary is $80-$100k, and the employee's range for salary is $70k-$90k. In this situation, the employer would love to hire at $70k, which they may be able to do if the employee doesn't know any better. Now, imagine that the employee had information about the employer's salary range, then the employee would smartly shift their salary range knowing that the employee was 'low'. The same applies to raises. If an employee has no information about other coworker's salaries, then the 'standard' raise of 3-4% might be acceptable. However, if another coworker has a significantly higher salary, with similar responsibilities, then the employee may ask for a higher raise. They may or may not get that raise, but it's at least a possibility. One which the employer is likely to not want to have the employee know about. The worst case scenario for the employee is to find out they are making significantly more money than their coworkers, in which case they have no further bargaining power. So really, the question of whether or not it's a good idea to share salary information to other current or future coworkers comes down to whether or not you're on the 'employer' side (where additional salary information can only move your costs upwards), or on the 'employee' side where having no transparency about salary can prevent you from getting the best salary possible. Since the difference between having salary transparency or not is so high, it behooves most employers to subtly discourage salary talks. So you end in a place where it is a possibly a violation of federal law (for the federal government), or possibly state law[0], to prevent people from talking about salaries, but at the same time people will almost always only post their salary information anonymously. [0] - http://www.dol.gov/wb/media/pay_secrecy.pdf http://www.dol.gov/wb/media/pay_secrecy.pdf
      • nickff 11y ago
        People value transparency, and it might be that they would prefer a lower salary at a more transparent workplace. In addition, providing wage transparency allows for further transparency in other business areas, such as gross margins, R&D costs, etc. which may be valuable in allowing employees to understand the business better and contribute in more meaningful ways. You are also only addressing the workers with below-average wages (who may be qualified for higher pay) when you say that secrecy helps employers. Half of all employees have above-median wages, so I would assume that transparency could be used to bargain them down, as the below-median workers were helped in bargaining-up; I am not sure what the net effect would be, and don't know why we should assume it goes one way or the other. I am not an advocate for wage transparency or opaqueness, because I don't know which way the effects go for anyone. I am also an advocate of deregulation, and abolition of most laws, simply because there are so many that nobody knows what is illegal; this seems to be yet another case of governmental over-reach.
  • lolidaisuki 11y ago
    It's not very common thing in Asia to hide your salary afaik. E: Why the downvotes?
  • neito 11y ago
    It's weird and possibly generational in America; my mom specifically warned me that people would be "highly jealous" of my salary and that I should keep it a secret when I first entered the workforce.
• amznnewgrad 11y ago
  This is for a new grad in 2014. * Area: Seattle, WA * Position: SDE * Base Pay: $90k * Signing Bonus: $20k immediately, then $17k paid in 12 monthly installments after you reach 1yr in employment. * Stock Units: $53k (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on) Note: this vesting schedule is AWFUL. Needless to say, I rejected this offer and did not work for them. Best decision I ever made.
  • therealdrag0 11y ago
    What did you take instead?
    • amznnewgrad 11y ago
      Revealing that would reveal my identity so I can't say the company name. I ended up going to a mid sized startup in SF (50-100 people) that was very very well funded and had a ton of potential along with one of the best teams I've seen. I'm still there and love every second of it and am being given amazing opportunities that I know I wouldn't have gotten at Amazon. Ironically I got paid more on every single vector (base pay, equity, relocation, sane vesting schedule) from this startup than from Amazon. Just goes to show...
      • arcticfox 11y ago
        To be fair, SF is significantly more expensive to live in than Seattle. MSFT gives something like a blanket ~10% higher offer to SV-area employees for this reason.
        • amznnewgrad 11y ago
          Fair point! Though even Microsoft in Seattle pays $100k (source: former roommate).
  • 8788mar3 11y ago
    I think the vesting schedule is back loaded because they give you a pretty large sign on bonus in the first two years. Your total comp in year one would have been 112.6k which seems about right. The stock price doubled last year, so you would have been looking at at least 125k in year two.
• boren_ave11 11y ago
  Apologies for the bad formatting, it wouldn't let me edit for some reason. Here is a more readable version of my compensation: Position: Developer (not classified as SDE, do not manage ppl) Tenure: 2 years Job Level: 5 Base Pay: $73,000 Signing Bonus: $25k Year 1, $21k Year 2 2016 Stock Vest: 104 shares LY Review Score: Exceeds LY Pay Increase: 4%, plus 35 shares of AMZN Most Recent Promotion Increase/Stock Grant: N/A - no promotions Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes
  • inmyunix 11y ago
    i've witnessed the same internal hire negotiation imbalance at another company. you're definitely right, external hires have more leverage.
• olympus 11y ago
  While this doesn't have as much information as you listed, Glass Door (https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/index.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/index.htm) has information on job title/salaries at many companies. It's a "share your info and we'll let you see ours" set of rules, so be prepared to make a profile.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    Funny that you mention this, because the character limit forced me to cut this out: Sites like Glassdoor are useful, but what they don't provide is company-specific detail. I can view Amazon's average SDE salary, but is that figure for a job level 4 or job level 5? (At Amazon, pay is based on job levels. Two people can hold the same position but have different job levels. For example, Area Managers who are promoted from hourly positions start at level 4, but new hire AMs come in at L5). Other things Glassdoor can't provide: -Pay increase percentages for internal promotions -Pay increases and stock award amounts for annual performance reviews based on performance grade -Compensation data broken down by race, national origin, native language, etc. -Differences in pay for positions based on team, department, geographic location, etc.
    • smeyer 11y ago
      While it doesn't help for all of that, looking at H1B data on a site like http://visadoor.com/ http://visadoor.com/ helps fill out some of the picture. You can see specific numbers instead of just ranges while also adding some context about national origin.
      • duaneb 11y ago
        Those are also deflated prices compared to americans with equivalent education and skills, though. Which is the entire point of the H1B.
  • amazoniananon 11y ago
    What I don't like about that is most of the entries will be old. I'd love if it had a way to show me only information from the past year.
• former_amazon 11y ago
  I created a throw away account to answer this but I will say that my teammates at Amazon and I discussed salary openly. We all were making far below market except for the 2 teammates who had been there 4+ years. I think for lasting that long, Amazon really pays off in equity compensation which they dole out willingly (with 4 year cliffs of course). I made 90k as an SDE I straight of college. 20k sign on bonus. Second year bonus of 15k. 150 shares of stock with the regular 5%, 15%, 20% cliffs. Biggest raise I got was 4k when I received an exceeds.
  • eitally 11y ago
    This is a key difference between Amazon & Google. At AMZN you have to be there 4 years before your comp levels off at acceptable levels. At GOOG they have a much nicer vesting schedule that starts your level comp after 12mo.
• heptathorp 11y ago
  After reading some of these comments... Holy shit, I am under paid.
  • nommm-nommm 11y ago
    Which is why companies treat salaries like state secrets. If you don't have a reliable baseline you can't use "I'm underpaid" to your advantage in negotiations. You may not even know you are underpaid! Information asymmetry.
  • stuxnet79 11y ago
    I know right ... Jesus.
  • fluxquanta 11y ago
    Right? I like the one from amznnewgrad: $90k base as a new grad and "needless to say" they declined the offer. Needless to say? I was hired after a year out of college in 2010 at aboyt $37k and it felt like I hit the lottery. Granted, where I live costs much less than Seattle, and I also make significantly more now, but still not $90k.
    • simonswords82 11y ago
      amznnewgrad is trolling for sure!
      • eropple 11y ago
        I'm not sure why you'd say that. TripAdvisor, my first FT gig, offered new hires $85K in Boston in 2010, plus a pretty significant stock package. Today, in 2016 (or even last year), $90K in a similar CoL, similar demand market is nothing to write home about.
      • chillacy 11y ago
        I can confirm that it sounds reasonable. My offer was over 100k at amazon a few years ago as a new college grad (though I declined). Glassdoor seems to confirm that this is the norm nowadays.
• voiceclonr 11y ago
  If I could upvote this more, I would. All companies hide the salaries do they can underpay. Glassdoor under estimates typical salaries and are not meaningful. OP - Please consider opening a simple google doc and let anyone fill in the detail.
• DennisP 11y ago
  Staying anonymous is probably best but fwiw, policies which prohibit sharing one's own compensation violate federal law. http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...
  • advisedwang 11y ago
    The law they cite only seems to cover employees sharing pay with each other (and anything else involved in collective bargaining), but I can't see that it clearly authorizes publicly sharing pay.
    • p4wnc6 11y ago
      It does protect publicly sharing pay. I can't find the specific case at the moment, but there was a case where workers who were striking had printed up a leaflet with a bunch of salary information and distributed it to other workers and general public. The company tried to terminate those employees for violating company policy and sharing "confidential" information with people in the public, but the court found this was a violation of their collective bargaining rights. It is a tricky issue though. I am sure that a powerful enough company that wanted to throw resources at it could make all sorts of arguments about whether certain parts of the information (e.g. bonuses, vesting schedules, options grants, stock price discounts, relocation provisions) are allowed to be classified as confidential even if basic salary is not. As a lowly employee, your only hope would be if some national labor union or pro bono legal institute took on your case, otherwise you'd never be able to afford the legal costs to defend your NLRB collective bargaining rights. With pay secrecy, it's unfortunately still mostly a "might makes right" situation, where rich companies can sort of make up their own rules and at the very least bankrupt you with legal nonsense even if they don't ultimately win. So few people have the fortitude to endure that kind of legal harassment that it implicitly still does censor our ability to talk about pay, even if it's illegal that this is so.
      • p4wnc6 11y ago
        Before this thread gets too stale, I did find a legal paper from Duke, 2006, talking about how certain kinds of blogging are likely protected by NLRA, "When is employee blogging protected by section 7 of the NLRA?" By Katherine Scott, < http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=dltr http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... >. It looks like one of the main criteria is that it has to be a part of a "concerted action" to benefit a collection of employees, and this had historically been broadly interpreted in support of employees with a very liberal understanding of what a concerted action is. This whole HN thread about it, for example, would almost surely qualify (I am not a lawyer, of course, so that's not a professional opinion and not a form of advice for anyone here), since it is explicitly focused on the whole class of Amazon employees and encourages employees to share for themselves. I wish I could find the older case about the leaflets. IIRC it was from the late 1970s.
• amz_throwaway 11y ago
  Position: Developer in Seattle Tenure: 4 years Job Level: 5 Base Pay: $143,000 2016 Stock Vest: about 140 shares Review Score: Exceeds Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes
  • throwaway9191 11y ago
    Even with a throwaway, isn't that enough info for Amazon to identify you and possibly take punitive action? I understand that Amazon is big, but without adding a certain fudge factor or range to all the numbers, then I would think it's possible to identify a person.
    • dominotw 11y ago
      how would that prove that it was actually her/her though? It could be easily be one of her higher ups who knows his salary details.
      • askafriend 11y ago
        Alternatively it could be completely made up numbers that happened to match a real person.
    • amz_throwaway 11y ago
      Punitive action for what? Revealing information that is already on sites like http://h1bdata.info/ http://h1bdata.info/
  • pw 11y ago
    What was your experience coming into this position?
    • amz_throwaway 11y ago
      3 years working at a small startup which eventually folded. I am in my late 20s.
• toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Would very much love to see frequent "Ask HN: How much are you making?" threads.
  • percept 11y ago
    Post one! (Maybe wait until Monday morning, or whenever prime time is on here, to maximize participation.)
• doseofreality 11y ago
  Stating which location you are in would be important for salary comparison purposes.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    Actually not in this case, as Amazon doesn't provide cost of living adjustments. Location isn't factored into pay amount.
    • dsp1234 11y ago
      It isn't, but it's hard for outsiders compare that pay to their local pay. Ex: if you are making that in SF, then that's different than making it in Billings, MT, or remote. So for example, that seems about right for Portland, OR. Additionally, you don't mention how many total years of experience you have which would also let people compare. Ex: 2 years of total experience (straight out of college) vs 2 years at amazon, and 10 years elsewhere.
    • bethling 11y ago
      That's not completely true. Amazon's offers/pay isn't tied to the cost of living of an area, but to the cost of labor in that area. When I had an engineer transfer from Seattle to San Francisco there was an adjustment.
    • delecti 11y ago
      Are you sure about that? I have at least three anecdotes that seem to directly contradict that claim, and while I realize the plural of anecdote isn't data, but it's still enough to make me skeptical of your claim.
      • boren_ave11 11y ago
        This is what I was told, but others ITT seem to have heard differently. In the examples that you know of, was the person relocating to Seattle or somewhere else, like SF? It may be that what I was told was correct, but they were referring only to Seattle and not places like SF where cost of living is very high.
• zyxley 11y ago
  What general region or city is this? Cost of living can be a major effect on pay, comparing, say, the insanity of the SF Bay area to anywhere else.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    I mentioned this below, but I don't think location matters because Amazon doesn't provide cost of living adjustments. Location obviously matters from the individual's perspective, but from the company perspective it isn't factored into compensation.
    • rgbrgb 11y ago
      Yeah they do. I was offered a job after a summer internship but told them I'd only work in California -- after first declining, they offered me a position in SF the next day. When I arrived in SF to start there was ~12% added to my salary for cost of living adjustment over Seattle.
      • boren_ave11 11y ago
        Perhaps they do for SF, given how high cost of living is there. I was told that cost of living increases are not offered, but maybe they were only referring to Seattle?
        • rgbrgb 11y ago
          Yeah, it was a pleasant surprise to me on my first day.
• AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
  I worked for Amazon (Audible.com) from 2011 to 2014. 1 - Full-time freelance audiobook editor. $30/hr 2 - Post-Production Associate - Level 6/4 $50,000/yr 35 shares of AMZN per year for three years 3 - ACX Production Coordinator - Level 7/5 $65,000/yr Additional 20 shares of AMZN per year for three years I am no longer ashamed to write these figures out to the public because I now make more than twice the salary that I was making before I left the company. I found that my salary at Amazon was always far too low given what I did, and my job titles were not at all representative of the job I actually did (for the 2nd and 3rd jobs they were almost entirely software engineering jobs.) NOTE: Audible and Amazon have different job levels - Audible's job levels are two points higher than the same Amazon job level.
  • Kopion 11y ago
    Full-time freelance audiobook editor? I didn't realize that was a position. What exactly does this entail and how did you get started with it?
    • AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
      I got my education in audio engineering at a leading music conservatory, so moving into audiobook editing was a pretty easy sell for me. An audiobook is made in four basic steps: 1. A voice actor records the narration for the book. 2. The editor takes the raw audio recordings and edits these files for pacing, flow, and aesthetic flavor. The editor also makes note of any errors in the narration which require a re-record. 3. After making all re-records and inserting the new audio, the audio is listened through one more time. They call this a "QC pass." 4. Finally, the QC'd audio is mastered and encoded for delivery. I was the owner of step two for all Audible Studios productions.
      • BHSPitMonkey 11y ago
        That's really interesting! And it also sounds really exhausting given the amount of material in a typical book. Thanks for sharing.
• JoshDoody 11y ago
  I'm not an Amazonian, but I wanted to chime in here to say I think this thread is a great idea and I would love to see more like it. I write about salary negotiation and coach people through it, and I think sharing salaries publicly will encourage more people to negotiate and get paid what they're worth. I recently coached a new Amazon employee, and he got a very good offer, which he increased by about 15% using VERY simple negotiation tactics that we discussed. If he hadn't negotiated, he would've still been paid well, but would have left 15% on the table before he was even in the door. I submitted this link yesterday—it's a Salary Negotiation workshop I did for developers in Orlando last week. It's definitely relevant to this conversation: EDIT: Here's a direct link to the Salary Negotiation workshop summary to save you a click: http://bit.ly/21zFG5q http://bit.ly/21zFG5q Here's the HN submission for posterity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305683 (Not sure why I originally linked to an HN submission linking to the workshop. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Nice job starting this thread!
  • p4wnc6 11y ago
    I'm interested in what your negotiation principles are. I've always heard that a candidate should never share salary information and require the company to provide the first concrete number in the form of their initial offer. However, I've repeatedly used all of the "business-professional" and "HR approved" sorts of conversational techniques to enact this advice, and the only result that has ever occurred is either (a) the company literally refuses to even conduct a single interview with me before knowing salary information, or (b) the company finally makes a job offer and it is extremely low, something around 50%, of what I have earned previously in similar roles. 95% of the time I say I am more focused on assessing cultural and technical fit for the position, making sure I would jell with the team, finding out more about the company, learning more about the trade-offs required for the role, etc., as reasons for not providing salary information as literally the first point of communication with HR, it results in an instantaneous rejection. I still believe candidates should not agree to unfair information asymmetry by revealing their salary or wage preferences first. The problem is it just seems that something like 95% of all hiring managers will outright immediately reject you, on principle, if you don't agree to bear that unfair information asymmetry. All the great techie blog posts on being a better negotiator, like this:< http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ > -- they sound great and give me a pumped up rah rah feeling, but in practice they basically never work. My interviewing experience with this has covered large multi-national companies, tech firms, small boutique quantitative finance firms, start-ups, consulting companies, and education technology. There certainly are industries I am missing, but it has seemed like a universal phenomenon to me.
• Kopion 11y ago
  I don't work at Amazon, but I have caught on to what, to me, seems to be an unsettling concept. This may or may not be new, but the concept I am getting it is often referred to as "internal equity" - considering what salaries are already in place for similar positions. This appears to be one of many variables HR uses for salary negotiations and I recognize that. I don't see why this necessarily matters for most work places. Shouldn't you just pay for what the candidate brings to the table (skills, experience, etc.) and not consider what, even someone with a similar background is currently making in the company. I suppose salary negotiations/the labor market isn't an efficient market where a price can be assigned given x, y, & z.
• tristor 11y ago
  Location might be useful information. I'm assuming most of the folks responding here are in Seattle. If so, all the salaries listed in this thread seem shockingly low to me.
  • hullo 11y ago
    I think you're not doing the math on the stock (which is currently over $550). e.g. $73k base + $21k bonus + $57k stock = $151k for an engineer in their second year (no info about previous experience). Absent a lot of other context it does sound fair to me, or at least not "shockingly low".
    • tristor 11y ago
      I value those things differently, because the bonus is only for the first two years, and the stock is a one-time grant. Just like there's 'no replacement for displacement' in engines, there's no replacement for base salary in compensation. What I'm seeing in that compensation package is no incentive whatsoever to stay after you finish your second year, and no real incentives to start in the first place. $150k in Seattle is not great in my mind anyway, that's roughly equivalent to $90k where I'm living right now, but the average base salary in this area is around $120k...
      • hullo 11y ago
        Not an Amazonian, but everything I've ever read about their comp culture has said that stock is heavily valued/weighted, so there's a selection bias there in that anyone who's seriously considered them should know it going in and be alright with it.
      • wde-sde 11y ago
        I think I negotiated poorly and only ended up with about $97k total compensation in my first year, and by my third year it was about $120k. The stock seemed like a mind-game to me, but it did work out to about 10% YoY increases in total compensation. It's also inaccurate to characterize the stock as a one-time grant. The initial grant vests over four years (weighted on the last two years) typically you receive more grants after performance reviews, which vest over two years (again weighted on the second year.) So in practice, you get a grant of 200 shares at signing, but by the end of year two only 50 have vested. At that point you have at least one performance grant, so you're probably getting shares vesting pretty regularly, at least four times a year.
• amzn_irl_taway 11y ago
  Ex amazonian here, but in Ireland, I left (thankfully) at the end of 2015. I was a systems engineer in Dublin and the only significant payraise I got was after I left the company for 4 months to then rejoin, my salary was bumped up 12k euros, for a total of 62k/yr, with 150 shares over 4 years (sorry I do not remember the vesting scheme). The HR department in AMZN has the tendency to screw internal employees upon promotion. The way it was unofficially explained to me by a low-level buddy in HR is that there are salary ranges for each corporate level, and during a promotion you get just over the lower bound of the salary range for your new corp level, that's the policy, that's what happens. New hires instead have negotiation margin and, while the hiring manager can't offer a salary higher than the approved salary range, more often than not the offer will end up in the upper bound of the range, to lure the candidate in. Furthermore, there are huge differences between salary ranges in job roles, a Systems Engineer will always be paid 15 to 30% less than a Software Development Engineer at the same level, despite the fact that the skills and duties are not that much different, why? Again unofficially "because Amazon values more people that write software". Except the fact that in my ex-team, we all wrote software and the expectations were all the same regardless the job title (there was however a difference between levels). So yeah, as internal promotion you have absolutely NO leverage regarding salary, if you want a salary increase and your organization is hungry for people but is having trouble in hiring (like it happens frequently in Dublin where the job market is quite competitive), I'd suggest you start looking around for a new job, accept the offer and then come back to your same team 4 months later. If you leave the company for less than 6 months and your position hasn't been filled in the meantime, the hiring manager is able to extend an offer without sending you through an interview loop, you'll get your old job back but with a nice pile of money on top.
  • amzn_irl_intern 11y ago
    In case any students are curious how much Amazon in Dublin offers (Undergraduate) students. I was offered: €25000.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • 11y ago
• lolidaisuki 11y ago
  You gave enough information that they could find you without using any links in your profile or your online handle. Another thing that could be interesting is your accent. My eyes were recently opened about the discrimination that happens based on that.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    Actually, I told my boss about the post before I submitted it. But I was only letting him know -- I didn't ask for permission. The decision was mine and mine alone, so any (unlikely) backlash won't be directed at him. We have a good relationship and see eye to eye almost all the time. He did say that he didn't think there was anything wrong with posting this. The reason for the throwaway is because I generally try to avoid "stirring the pot." Or at least, don't want a reputation as a pot stirrer. But if some higher up confronts me about it, I won't deny posting it.
    • lolidaisuki 11y ago
      Some pots should be stirred and I think this is one of those pots.
  • stuxnet79 11y ago
    Accent? Seriously? That's funny to me because as developers we are generally stereotyped as poor communicators, so I wonder why any employer would focus on filtering out persons with unappealing accents (unconsciously or not) when this has no bearing on their technical skills.
• amazonian_throw 11y ago
  Position: Senior SDE Tenure: 6 years Job Level: 6 Base Pay: $141,000 2016 Stock Vest: 162 shares Review Score: Exceeds Gender: F Native English Speaker: Yes
  • amzn_comp 11y ago
    Senior SDE. Tenure: 2.5 years level, 7.5 total Level: 6 Base pay: $127,000 2016 Stock Vest: 273 Review Score: Achieves (don't know this year's yet) Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes
    • serge2k 11y ago
      Wow that's stock heavy. How does that vesting work? 60some shares per quarter or each half year? I'm really not a fan of having so much comp be stock. It's a way to go I guess.
• pw_is_bagreefs 11y ago
  Position: SDE 2 Joined: Last year Base Pay: 145,000 Native English Speaker: Yes
• throwaway284879 11y ago
  Throwaway account. I don't work for Amazon but here is my salary information, for anyone who is interested Current position: 50-100 employee startup in Palo Alto, $170k and .1% equity vested over 4 years Previous position: Google, $130k base, 15-20% annual bonus, around 64 shares vested per year (so around $170k annual net comp) Previous position: Small startup, $90k base I live in the SF Bay Area. When I interviewed, most offers from startups were in the range of $140k-$170k.
• ghrifter 11y ago
  I make roughly $20 an hour (about 16 after taxes :( )at the moment as a junior full stack intern working part time (I live and work in US). Sometimes I wonder if I should move on to find some other job, even if its remote... On the other hand, my work is not that stressful, and I'm still going to school so my job is very flexible on time. Anyone else been in a position like me?
  • wrigby 11y ago
    I've been in an almost identical situation! I made $25/hr (without benefits), then got dropped to ~ $18ish / hr (with 401k matching and health insurance) at the part time job I worked while I was in school. I worked 20 hrs a week, completely remotely, and was responsible for some of the NMS systems and Linux admin work at a large satellite operator. It was a mix of sysadmin and software engineering, and I learned a ton. There were a few stressful moments, as I was on call, but my boss tried to shield me from it as much as he could because he wanted me to be able to focus on school. If you're a full time undergrad student, then my advice to you is to enjoy what you have right now, as long as it allows you to focus on your friends and education. Having practical, hands-on experience from work will greatly complement your coursework, and if you can get that experience without being in a high-pressure role, then it's a win-win situation for you. Consider asking for a pay bump if you think you're undervalued, but do research on what other paid SWE internships are at, and consider the fact that a bump in pay may cause your boss to have higher expectations of your output.
  • cableshaft 11y ago
    My first couple of programming jobs I was making about 60% of what you made, although I had no degree at the time. I was the only programmer for one company. You can relax, but you might not want to. My salary has been artificially lowered because every previous company likes to make an offer based on your previous salary, or I've made so little that I had no savings and had to take the first job offered to me every time. It wears on you after awhile, and I probably could have made a lot, lot more money if I made better choices earlier (although I also wouldn't have some of the wide range of job and life experiences also, so there's that). But every once in awhile it's nice to take a breather, sit back, recalibrate yourself, get your work/life balance back in check, work on some creative things in your spare time, etc. Easier, non-stressful jobs will allow that. So I guess it's wherever you need to be in life right now and how much you need to be compensated. But if you're not getting challenged at your work, you're probably not learning skills that are in demand and your next job hunt will probably be more difficult.
• throwaway2016a 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, what does this add that GlassDoor.com doesn't? Note: as of right now, GlassDoor is down for "Scheduled Maintenance" but the question stands.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    See this comment I wrote ITT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314076
• Amir6 11y ago
  I'm not working for Amazon or any other big ones but I think this is a very good idea. Transparency always helps and I wish something good comes out of other people sharing their financial details.
• seattle_googler 11y ago
  Seattle Googler here (throwaway account). Position: Senior Software Engineer (level 5) Tenure: 4 years, no prior experience Comp: $300K (160 salary, 40 bonus, 100 stock) Male, native English speaker P.S. We're hiring.
  • codeonfire 11y ago
    You get 100k per year or over 4 years?
    • seattle_googler 11y ago
      That's what's vesting this year. It can fluctuate a bit (so far only upwards for me). Upon hiring and usually each year thereafter we get grants that vest over the following 4 years, varying in sized based on budgets, level & performance scores.
  • gravypod 11y ago
    If you're hiring, do you take college students for interviews? I've never been clear about the google hiring process and I've always heard mixed things from people who went through it.
    • seattle_googler 11y ago
      Yes, we hire new grads, and we offer internships for those who are still studying. Successful interns get an easier path for converting to full-time than grads who apply cold. Getting somebody you know at Google to refer you is the best way to secure an interview, but you can also apply online. http://www.google.com/about/careers/students/ http://www.google.com/about/careers/students/
      • gravypod 11y ago
        Well that's too bad, I don't know any people at google. I guess I need to hang around more coffee shops.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• googsomeday 11y ago
  If you work at Google, you can continue the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314449
• blabla_blublu 11y ago
  I worked for Amazon (2013-2014), fresh out of college. Title : Software Development Engineer (SDE I) Base : 98,000 Sign on : 50,000 (2 year period) Relocation : 10,000 (2 year) Stocks : worth $70,000 (4 years)
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    Above someone mentioned being SDEIII, what's the meaning of these levels ?
    • oh_sigh 11y ago
      I is fresh grad, basically right out of school, II is mid level, III is basically senior engineer. at that point it goes onto principal and beyond.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• ffumarola 11y ago
  Blind https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blind./id737534965?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blind./id737534965?mt=8 & https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamblind.blind https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamblind.... talks about salary ad nauseam... so if you want to see salary discussions, get the app.
  • finnn 11y ago
    so this is like, some forum but you have to install some random app? And of course, it wants: * retrieve running apps * find accounts on the device * modify or delete the contents of your USB storage * read the contents of your USB storage some other more acceptable ones. Fuck that shit
• serge2k 11y ago
  Op (and others) adding your office would be informative if you are comfortable with that. Otherwise compensation is hard to compare. I quit but my pay was ( Lin Seattle, numbers rounded a bit) 90k base 53k initial grant, backloaded 5% after 1 year, 15 after 2, 20% every 6 months after that. 37k signing bonus, 20k lump sum, 17k spread over 2nd year. Raises were <1% at first review, 3.5% at second. So when I left after just over 2 years I was at 94k base. They did give me some more stock at my second review, but it was 2 years out iirc
• tdicola 11y ago
  IMHO you're being underpaid quite a bit with that base salary in the Seattle area. Time to start interviewing at Microsoft, Google, etc. Those companies usually start fresh out of college developers with a base pay a bit over $100k, then bonuses, stock awards, etc. on top.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    Are you taking stock into consideration? At current price, 104 shares of AMZN equals $57,408 which puts my total 2016 pay at $130,408.
    • tdicola 11y ago
      Yeah that helps, but then the question is do you really want to work somewhere that directly ties your compensation to the company's share price? If Amazon has a few bad quarters and you lose 20% of your yearly income that's a major deal. In Seattle you probably want to be making around $120-160k/yr to live a solid middle class life, afford a house, etc. I would still look around at MS, Google, etc. where they give you more in cash compensation and less with the stock lottery ticket. Find a place that gives you around that as base pay, then all the bonuses etc. are just savings for house, retirement, toys, college, etc.
      • sterl 11y ago
        I find tying my income to stock highly motivating :)
        • tdicola 11y ago
          If you're an executive pulling in over $500k, sure stock should absolutely be compensation and motivation. If you're rank and file and need $120k/yr to even afford to live, have kids, save for retirement, etc. in the area, then no stock should absolutely not be the primary means of compensation.
        • themodelplumber 11y ago
• wde-sde 11y ago
  I was hired as a "Web Development Engineer I" several years ago (level 4). My base compensation was virtually identical to yours, but my signing bonus and base pay were a little less than half. Stock grants were also very similar at hire. After a couple years my job role changed to SDE, I remained level 4 and was given a better than 10% raise. In my fourth year my total compensation was estimated to be around 120k. It's worth looking at the H1B data. I've got some limited anecdotal data, but the H1B data appears to clearly delineate the same salary ranges Amazon gives to US Citizens. (Maybe they will pay citizens 10% more, but the ranges actually look pretty similar to what I've heard.) http://h1bdata.info/ http://h1bdata.info/ (I am a US Citizen, English speaker, in Seattle.) Main moral of the story if you choose to stay at Amazon: don't worry about your level, focus on your job role. You can probably keep doing the work you're doing and become an SDE if you talk to your manager and frame the conversation right.
• amzthrow23424 11y ago
  SDE, Level 5, four years, started w/ bonus: $126k, ended: $117k New job: 175k + equity (fuck you amazon)
  • lexhaynes 11y ago
    Is it common for salaries at Amazon to decrease?
    • amzthrow23424 11y ago
      It is when your signing bonus/cash advances expire and raises are never higher than 2%. Also had 100 or so RSU's.
• josefdlange 11y ago
  While at Amazon, I worked in two different roles. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'll put ballparks in here: (1) Support Engineer * Base: $72,000; increased at 1yr to $74,000 * Bonus: $20,000; half in first check, other half over months 13-24 * Stock: I don't remember (2) Software Development Engineer * Base: $82,000 Gender: M Native English: Yes I honestly don't recall if I was L4 or L5 or both. Both of these were in Seattle. I do know for a fact that there were/are others who were hired and paid more than me.
  • udkl 11y ago
    What was your education and experience ?
    • josefdlange 11y ago
      B.Sc. in Computer Science, fresh out of undergrad. Applied conservatively for jobs to get into something I could excel at from the get-go and learn how to work in the corporate world before throwing myself at complex technical problems. I've moved on to greener pastures, and I think where I positioned myself from the start put me in a hungry mentality, and as such I've been able to grow rapidly.
• suyash 11y ago
  Base Pay is pretty low for either Seattle or SF Bay Area or NY
• tdicola 11y ago
  I'm genuinely curious, this post has over 208 points and is only 3 hours old.. why is it falling off the front page already?
  • tdicola 11y ago
    And now just suddenly it's back to near the top of the front page. What's going on HN mods?
    • duskwuff 11y ago
      Not a HN mod, but been around long enough to take a guess: HN penalizes entries (topics? articles? discussions? whatever) that gain a lot of comments really quickly. I think I've seen dang refer to this as the "flamewar penalty". The penalty was probably removed manually, because it was a false positive.
  • jrs235 11y ago
    From my understanding there is a formula that factors in the ratio between upvotes and number of comments.
• lamontcg 11y ago
  I was an System Engineer III at Amazon from 2001-2006. I got hired on at $70k and I think I was making roughly $90k when I left. When I was hired I had to tell them "No" and hang up the phone (in the middle of the 2001 recession) to a $63k job offer. They called back the next day and bumped the offer to $70k. I later learned that I had one of the only "strong hires" ever given out by the bar raiser and the HR rep was told to hire me at all costs. HR played (and probably still plays) insanely hard hardball in negotiating salary. Other SEIIIs hired at around the same time came on at $60-63k and were stuck there. Once the economy recovered in 2003/2004-ish we eventually started hiring SEIIIs at >$120k starting salary. Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes for myself and the other two or three employees I'm thinking of.
• throwaway75383 11y ago
  Position: SDE III Tenure: almost 1 year Job level: 6 Base Pay: $150000 Signing bonus $50k year 1, $40k year 2 Stock: 450 shares, spread over 4 years, 5%/15%/40%/40% No promotions or reviews yet Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes Location: Seattle
  • pw 11y ago
    Wow, nice. Is Level 6 pretty high? What was your experience coming into the job?
    • throwaway75383 11y ago
      Level 6 is a senior engineer. Roughly 90th percentile of engineers. We have principal engineers, but not a lot of them. I had 15+ years of experience before coming here.
      • pw 11y ago
        Good to know. Thanks!
      • throwawa998833 11y ago
        So, to put things in perspective, Google TechLevel-5, which is "Senior Software Engineer" which is basically 1 level above Amazon's "SDE III" position. Competitive pay offer: $180k /year $50k signing bonus 15% bonus per year 800 RSUs vested equally over 4 years (200/year) 600 RSUs vested in 100-chunks every quarter for the first 18 months. Counting up, in the first 12 months, pay is about $670,000. I gotta get seriously bumped at the end of 18 months to keep it up, otherwise my pay will slip to $350,000. And that is what a competitive offer from a company that values their employees looks like. I have friends who have totally gotten the $1m RSUs/year for 4 year offers from both Google, Facebook and others. These positions exist. It helps to change jobs a bunch :-)
        • vadym909 11y ago
          holy cow- and people still leave to do startups? They must be really crazy.
• snake_plissken 11y ago
  Ieee FML this has been a depressing read. Is anyone else realizing they are severely underpaid? Passes the virtual whiskey
  • ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Question is, do you work in the same geographic area? Pay ranges are extremely regionally-based, because cost of living varies wildly.
    • zaroth 11y ago
      I'd say it's not so-much the cost of living which really drives the pay ranges, it's more the level of local competition for talent. The actual cost of living difference between, e.g. metro-west Boston and Bay Area probably can explain less than half of the salary difference.
    • ionised 11y ago
      When US devs talk about their wage it always seems absurdly high to me as someone from the north-west of the UK, but I know you have to factor in health insurance and living costs (particularly if you live in the Valley or Bay areas). Even so, after factoring in living costs and all the other differences, they're probably still making two or three times what I am, with less experience.
  • SwellJoe 11y ago
    I'm reading it thinking, "Hmm, do I really hate working for other people that much?" I've run my own companies since I was in my early 20s, and have never taken on more than contract work for others. But, I've very rarely been able to pay myself as much as even modest developer or IT salaries at big companies in major cities. But, that may mean I just need to stop trying to make a living out of Open Source software. ~20 years of it might be a sign it's time to try some other approach.
    • justinclift 11y ago
      Maybe pick Open Source Software which people pay good money for skills in? :)
• chm 11y ago
  You're not getting "ripped off" by having a base salary of 125K USD (with benefits and equity) fresh out of college. Tell you what, with a Bachelor's in Chemistry (in my year 176 people started, only 42 finished the degree so it's not a free lunch) I can expect to make between 40K and 60K CAD out of college and pay higher taxes than in the US. With a master's that I'm working towards, I'd be on the upper end of that spectrum. So boo-hoo to those making only 125K with equity and benefits. :/
  • serge2k 11y ago
    And if you making 30k you would feel ripped off even though some guy who works at Walmart for 20k would feel jealous. That said, amazon pays new grads pretty okay, and if you get a promotion between 2 and 3 years your new salary should be pretty competitive.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    I assume your comment is directed at me, the OP, as it was not in reply to anyone. >> You're not getting "ripped off" by having a base salary of 125K USD (with benefits and equity) fresh out of college. Nowhere in the thread has anyone used the term "ripped off" so I'm not sure why you put it in quotes. Your assumption that I am fresh out of college is wrong. >> So boo-hoo to those making only 125K with equity and benefits. I think you are misunderstanding the point of the discussion. No one is seeking any sort of pity, as you seem to be suggesting. No one here is suggesting that $125K is nearing poverty. What we are doing is questioning the paradigm of employers enjoying a superior bargaining position in salary negotiations as a result of a social dynamic that we ourselves are furthering. Specifically, a reluctance to openly discuss compensation. >> Tell you what, with a Bachelor's in Chemistry (in my year 176 people started, only 42 finished the degree so it's not a free lunch) I can expect to make between 40K and 60K CAD out of college and pay higher taxes than in the US. With a master's that I'm working towards, I'd be on the upper end of that spectrum. If you are unhappy with your career choice, why don't you do something else?
    • chm 11y ago
      No, it wasn't directed at you. I should have mentioned that I was talking to others in the thread. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Some people felt entitled to more because they went to school. I actually thought the discussion you instigated was healthy. My bad!
• qaid 11y ago
  I work in Portland, have 5 years of experience, and I'm making about 90k after bonuses (no stock or sign-on bonus). I love Portland, my hours are very nice (~35hours), and I have a good amount of technical freedom. But boy....Maybe I should make the move up to Seattle. It'd be nice if people mentioned how many hours/week they work for me to get a good idea of what to expect. Especially since we're talking about Amazon.
  • vanrysss 11y ago
    There's plenty of money to be had in Portland. Drop Airbnb, Nike, or any of the myriad of startups in town a line.
    • selimthegrim 11y ago
      When did Nike start hiring competent people?
• torhorway 11y ago
  Facebook Offer: iOS Developer Base Salary: 140k Signon Bonus: 25k Stock / 4 yrs: 200k Annual Bonus: 10% The job I took this year: iOS/Android dev Base: 190k Stock / 4 yrs: 3% Bonuses: tied to company revenue Work History: 4 years over 4 different companies (startups and one big co) Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes
• quanticle 11y ago
  Ex Amazonian here. I worked as a SDE1 in the Downtown Seattle set of offices from about 2012 to 2014. My compensation was $95,000 base, and about 105,000 once you took into account stocks.
• r00fus 11y ago
  You need more context to make sense of pure dollar values - in which city/metro-area do you work?
• linkedin_dev 11y ago
  I'll add my $.02 for LinkedIn. Sr Software Eng at LinkedIn in CA. $165,000 Base $25,000 Hiring Bonus $300,000 Stock (25% 1st year, then quarterly for the remaining 75% over 3 years) ($300,000 at the time, now it's only about half that). 10% annual bonus. Male. Native English Speaker. I can also speak to a friend here all the stats are the same except he got a $35,000 moving stipend instead of a hiring bonus.
  • jv22222 11y ago
    Hey, that's a good deal! I can hear the clicking sound of all the devs sending their resume to linkedin right now ;)
• examz45678 11y ago
  I'm male, a native English speaker, and worked in Seattle around 2013-2015. I was already in Seattle, so I didn't need to move. I was an SDE1, though I came in with a bit of experience (~5 years). My base pay was right around $100k. I had a $20k signing bonus the first year, and something effectively similar for the second year (though less cash and some stock was thrown in).
  • serge2k 11y ago
    Sde I with 5 years experience?
    • maybeunderpaid 11y ago
      MSFT hired me at the lowest level (SDE I level 59) when I already had about 6 years experience. I know someone who was a had a senior role at one company and was a lead at another and was also hired as SDE I. I think it's a bad case of "doesn't matter what they did before, we're freaking MSFT, no one's good enough for us to be hired into a higher position."
• throwawaymazon 11y ago
  You're getting screwed, big time. Quit now. Source: I was hired at Amazon as an SDE1 in 2004 at a base salary of $85,000.
  • azinman2 11y ago
    Ya I agree. Sounds really low to me, depending on the job, skill level, and experience (that I don't know)
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    Are you taking stock into consideration? When stock is included, my total compensation for 2016 comes to $130K. Are you still at Amazon? If so, what is your current salary?
    • throwawaymazon 11y ago
      My signing bonus was $10k/$10k, so I can compare that. Stock wise, I think it was like 3000 shares, which at the time were going for $30-ish. Don't fully recall. Not still at Amazon. When I left, I thought I had it good, with total comp peaking just a hair over $200k. And then I went and got multiple job offers that put my BASE at $250k. So, yeah.
• oaktowner 11y ago
  If you really want to do this, start a Google spreadsheet.
  • duskwuff 11y ago
    A spreadsheet about Amazon salaries in Google Docs, or a spreadsheet about salaries at Google? (Or both?!)
    • oaktowner 11y ago
      I meant a spreadsheet about Amazon salaries in Google Docs...otherwise someone has to comb through this thread to pull out the data. And it allows people to build and share pretty charts. (as mentioned above, this has already happened at Google)
  • pixelkicker 11y ago
    Didn't a Google employee catch heat for doing this at Google a year or two ago?
    • dguaraglia 11y ago
      "Heat" maybe, but as far as I understand nobody was fired. The spreadsheet is still up and going strong.
• rifung 11y ago
  Ex Amazonian but I was an SDE1 ~1 year of experience before joining. I worked in Seattle Salary: $100k Bonus: $25k Stock: I forget but it was not much
• eganist 11y ago
  HR can find you based on the numbers you gave if you don't fuzz them a little bit.
• leetNightshade 11y ago
  A friend of mine when he graduated got a base developer salary of $90k in 2011, shares & benefits (whatever that works out to), and I think $10k bonus for every year he stayed with Amazon. He worked in the Seattle, WA, area.
• throwaway7798 11y ago
  I was working in one of the Indian offices and was recently offered a move to Seattle. I had 1 year experience(was still an SDE-1 but my manager was considering me for a SDE-2 promotion) - they offered 110K base pay with 25k signing bonus which vested over 4 years + around 86k worth of shares which again vested over four years. I chose to not take the offer but went to join a different company. I just want to say that if you're quitting for reasons other than compensation, then don't ever listen to competing offers from your current team/company. That way you save yourself a ton of regret if your new job doesn't go well. #lesson-learnt-for-me
  • therealdrag0 11y ago
    What'd you do/take instead? Company/Salary?
• cuca_de_chumbo 11y ago
  I work at a podunk Santa Clara, CA startup 20+ years experience. Working remote from southeast U.S.A. Tenure so far: 2.5 years Salary: $150K Stock: purportedly .75% of company 4 years 1-year cliff, with small follow-on grant later, don't know what recent dilution is, though I think more recent funding has been "debt" at low interest with preference Not a regular VC situation, company funded through other means. Outlook -- real uncertain, market has definite need, execution so far has been very mixed, company willing to re-do things the right way
• hiddencost 11y ago
  Research Scientist First full-time job 150k (I saw us make offers as high as 200k for fresh ph.d.'s)
• dguaraglia 11y ago
  On a related note, someone at Google started a spreadsheet about a year ago where people could post (anonymously or not) their salary and a few more interesting datapoints (gender, age, location, etc.) I'm not sure whether the spreadsheet did anything to highlight gender/ethnicity/visa-status disparities (the biggest disparities I remember seeing were based on location, but that's understandable) but it was a great tool to start a conversation about increased transparency in salaries. I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn't force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it's still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn't expect the reaction to be the same.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn't force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it's still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn't expect the reaction to be the same. Taking action against this would've been a violation of US labor law with steep penalties.
    • dguaraglia 11y ago
      Well you know how that goes. It's not like that has stopped companies from firing people in the past. This is an "at will" employment state, so if they really wanted to fire people they could've made any excuse up and fire them. Actually, they wouldn't even need to make anything up.
  • asdfologist 11y ago
    I wouldn't praise Google for that, considering they actively participated in suppressing tech workers' wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
    • 11y ago
• encoderer 11y ago
  I don't blame you for being nervous, but it's actually against the law to punish employees for sharing salary data. Companies try to hide it, but the NLRB would be interested to hear about it.
• unohoo 11y ago
  Check out the recently launched site Comparably https://comparably.com/ https://comparably.com/ It is so much better than Glassdoor at dissecting salary data.
  • caractacus 11y ago
    > It is so much better than Glassdoor at dissecting salary data. ... perhaps, if you fit in its narrow definitions, share your own salary data, and are happy to 'sign in with linkedin' or give them your email before seeing any results. I wasn't, so can't comment.
  • asdfologist 11y ago
    How do you have any confidence that any of their numbers are real? Unlike this thread or even Glassdoor, there's a clear incentive to submit fake data to Comparably because they require you to submit a salary before you can see any of their data (and encourage you to sign in with your LinkedIn account).
    • hudibras 11y ago
      Yikes. Anybody who gives both their salary and LinkedIn information to any company is either insane or stupid.
      • asdfologist 11y ago
        Right, so the salaries are probably biased towards the low end.
• jmathes 11y ago
  The most important thing you can do for your career is: * Accept a job somewhere * Get promoted (doesn't matter how) * let yourself get hired away from your current company Getting hired away from your current company is the only way to get a fair raise based on increased experience. Companies never give substantial raises to current employees.
  • maxaf 11y ago
    This simply isn't true. I received a >$30,000 raise at one of my previous employers after they realized that I was being grossly underpaid for the work I was doing. Granted, I had to bring my managers' attention to this, but they were understanding & did right by me.
    • nojvek 11y ago
      Mind sharing what company this is? I'm 100% sure if I leave to go somewhere else and come back, I'll still make a lot more than sticking around. This is the unfortunate reality.
      • maxaf 11y ago
        That was at MLB Advanced Media. Looking back I think MLBAM was the most solid employer I'd ever worked for.
    • philovivero 11y ago
      Your anecdote is the exception to the rule. I've been in the industry for 20 years and can affirm the rule: you don't get raises from your current employer. You get raises by changing employers.
      • meric 11y ago
        I second his anecdote. Have received large raises twice, but had to negotiate hard for it, with offers from outside in hand.
• aws_person 11y ago
  Position: developer, not an SDE though. No oncall. Experience: college hire (beginning of 2015) Level: 4 Base: $90,000 Signing bonus: $22,000 immediately, $18,000 monthly over 2nd year Stock: 200 shares of AMZN (5% at 1 year, 15% at 2 years, 20% every 6 months after) Location: Seattle, WA. Relocation was included over 2 year prorating.
• zobzu 11y ago
  thats great info, lets make more of these topics!
• amazonthrowaa 11y ago
  Seattle summer intern -> SDE1 Full Time offer $95k/yr $27k signing immediate $20k signing 2 year vesting $53k stock 2 year vesting Ended up turning it down because I didn't want to work at Amazon, so no negotiation.
• bezoslave 11y ago
  Salaries for Germany anyone?
  • DrJohnny 11y ago
    I work as and SDE2 in Germany: ~€70k base pay + ~€20k RSUs
  • hn_user23 11y ago
    It would be awesome to see such a thread for not only Germany but Europe. There is no way you can compare the salaries from the US with the salaries here. I can speak for SIEMENS where they publish the pay for open positions internally. However it is very hard to get into SIEMENS currently, given their savings plan.. I heard that the salaries for the open positions are fixed. I have no idea if this is true. I will refer to the IG Metall Entgeldtabelle for Bavaria: http://www.igmetall-bayern.de/metall-elektro/ http://www.igmetall-bayern.de/metall-elektro/ - Level: Entry level Software Developer, Bachelor or Master - Location: Germany, Nuremberg - Salary: EG9 ~49000€ - Level: Sysadmin, min 3 Years experience - Location: Germany, Munich - Salary: EG10 ~54600€ They cost of living in Munich are the highest in Germany. So in the end you will probably will have less money if you take the Sysadmin job in Munich. They don't differentiate between bachelors and masters. I will find out in the near future if you are able to negotiate a higher EG level based on that.. It would be interesting to see some salaries from other companies in Europe. But i'm possibly to late in this thread.
    • t3nary 11y ago
      > - Level: Entry level Software Developer, Bachelor or Master - Location: Germany, Nuremberg - Salary: EG9 ~49000€ Do they not differentiate between entry level + bachelor degree vs. entry level + master degree?
      • hn_user23 11y ago
        They don't differentiate in the position descriptions. They just want a degree.. but it is hard to match most of the requirements with just a bachelor. I talked to some colleagues about the hiring process and if that salary is fixed, regardless if you have a master or bachelor. They said yes, there is not much you can do. Furthermore is it difficult to talk about the salary with others because they think it is a taboo. I checked glassdoor but there is not enough comparable data for entry positions. However, compared to other companies the salary at SIEMENS is good.
• sea24_throwaway 11y ago
  Position: SDE II Organization: Kindle (Seattle based) Base pay: $101.500 Bonuses: $28.000 I've been at Amazon for about a year and a half. I always suspected I was quite overpaid. And I'm a non-US citizen on top of it.
• asdfologist 11y ago
  A reminder to everyone that the National Labor Relations Act prohibits companies from firing employees for discussing their salaries: http://www.govdocs.com/can-employees-discuss-pay-salaries/ http://www.govdocs.com/can-employees-discuss-pay-salaries/
  • python_cto 11y ago
    But not for divulging confidential information to the world, which is what the OP has done.
    • brashrat 11y ago
      are you suggesting that companies can get around labor regulations by declaring your compensation to be confidential? I'd check with a lawyer if I were you, that's some pretty thin ice you are skating on.
      • a3n 11y ago
        Tangential - I asked my manager where I am on the stack rank once. He said it's confidential information. I have access to VCS, bugbases, all the documents. We're a very metrics-oriented organization. And the one thing that defines where I stand with the company, I can't be trusted with. I think if I didn't get a check every two weeks with the number on it, they wouldn't tell me how much I'm paid.
    • tamana 11y ago
      I pity the company who has a CTO who puts wishful thinking over the reality of law.
  • simonebrunozzi 11y ago
    You are right, and you also don't know Amazon (as well as many other powerful corporations).
    • eistrati 11y ago
• amazoniananon 11y ago
  This is perfect timing as Google Seattle is hiring around 1000 devs and promotions are being revealed in April. I used a throwaway account, but I'm sure I'm identifiable by this information if my manager sees this. I'm not too concerned. I think it's in Amazon's and the employees' best interest for this stuff to be transparent. Besides that, while I like my work, I can easily get an offer from Google, Facebook or pretty much anywhere else. Position: SysDE 2 in AWS Tenure: 1.5 years Job Level: 5 Base: $120000 Stock: 140 RSU (granted at signing, almost none vested) Bonus: $20000 + relocation at signing, $15000 will come after 2 years Gender: M Native English: yes I was hired at L4 as SE 1, moved to SE 2/L5 after a year, and now SysDE 2. There was no raise for SE2->SysDE2.
  • nevir 11y ago
    > 140 RSU (granted at signing, almost none vested) Is it still the ridiculous 5-10% year 1, 5-10% year 2, and then the rest spread out over years 3-4?
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • amazoniananon 11y ago
      Yes, it's something like 5% at 1st anniversary, 15% at 2nd anniversary, then 20% every 6 months over the next two years.
    • guy_c 11y ago
      Why is it so ridiculous? Isn't it trying to serve as a retention incentive? Obviously it can back-fire on the company. If the share price drops a lot then people that were planning on staying till the 6 monthly vesting may quit.
      • yomly 11y ago
        From what I heard from people who worked at Amazon during the especially rocky years, their share compensation is tied to a monetary value - if the share value tanks significantly, they'll issue shares to compensate. If you're into gambling, this can be a -very- good thing considering Amazon has gone on to double in value over very short time periods historically. Otherwise, its a fair concession on Amazon's part
• throwawayAmzn57 11y ago
  I work for one of AMZN's subsidiaries down in SF. Its kinda hard to say exactly how much I earn since most of my compensation is in retention and acquisition bonuses. Roughly $130k a year base, $150k a year in retention and $100k (for one more year) in pre-acquisition stock. 6 years in the industry, no higher education. SDEII (I think?)
• python_cto 11y ago
  FYI, it is illegal in the USA to restrict employees discussing their salary amongst themselves. Unfortunately it is common for companies to declare this information confidential and covered under employee confidentiality agreements. http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...
• binaryanomaly 11y ago
  Why not just check here: http://data.jobsintech.io/ http://data.jobsintech.io/ real data from H-1Bs
• amznthrw123 11y ago
  * Area: Austin, TX * Position: Systems Engineer * Level: 5 * Base Pay: $98k * Signing Bonus: $18k immediately, 15k over months 12-24 * Stock Units: ~$120k, 5% first year, 15% second, 20% every 6 mo after. Additional (smaller) grants starting year 2.
• weaksauce 11y ago
  your pay is probably fairly unique since you listed it down to the stocks allocated and per year performance. I have to imagine that the list that includes all the attributes that you have is a fairly short list(probably just you). just a word of caution if you do fear retaliation at all. might want to fuzz the numbers a touch.
• boren_ave11 11y ago
  If your reaction to this thread is "wow I am really underpaid" then it's working. The playing field for your next salary negotiation is now a little more level.
  • ionised 11y ago
    I feel like every developer in the UK is underpaid when compared to US devs lol.
• msoad 11y ago
  Here is an offer for someone with 5 years of experience in San Francisco: Base 180k Sign on 80k over two years 189 RSU over four years with 5-15-40-50% vesting schedule.
  • kzhahou 11y ago
    Is that 189K RSU?
    • late2part 11y ago
      Almost certainly not. https://www.google.com/search?q=amzn&oq=amzn https://www.google.com/search?q=amzn&oq=amzn $552 $/share * 189 shares = $104,328 over 4 years = +$26,082 per year.
    • msoad 11y ago
      No, that would be too good! 189 shares
• imnicuhtine 11y ago
  This is super interesting. A lot of responses make me feel underpaid, but I'm not really sure because it's dirt cheap to live in Reno: You can get a 1 bedroom apartment for $500-$1000 a month. My wife and I bought an 1800 sq ft house on 9000 sq ft of property for $230k. I've been a software engineer at a small software company ~20 employees for 3 years now, but I've only been out of school for a year and I make $75k.
  • brobinson 11y ago
    Compared to an engineer at a startup in SF making $150,000/year and paying over $3,000/mo [1] for a one bedroom apartment + California income/gains taxes, you're not doing too poorly at all. Your quality of life is also likely better and you're less exposed to crime. [1] https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...
    • chetanahuja 11y ago
      "Quality of life" But Reno though!!
      • brobinson 11y ago
        Haha, better than stepping over homeless people/human feces!
      • imnicuhtine 11y ago
        Reno is actually a surprisingly great place to live. I think visitors see things differently because they mostly experience the casinos downtown.
    • imnicuhtine 11y ago
      That's true. It's hard to visualize all the costs involved with living in the bay when I've never lived there. The quality of life is pretty great here too. Thanks for the perspective!
  • 11y ago
• donretag 11y ago
  While traveling the world, I feel in love with Cape Town so much, that I decided to apply for a job at Amazon since their recruiters were constantly emailing me anyways. EC2 was started in Cape Town and that office does mainly AWS support tools, but not as much EC2 work any more. I do not remember the details too much, but it was something like $84K for my first year, after stock and all that nonsense. The salary is not much compared to the US, but very good for South Africa. However, the offer was in Rands, which has since collapsed. I would have lost about 30% of my salary when converting to dollars. I did not take the job for various reasons, with very few having to do with Amazon. The team itself was excellent and I regret not joining, but I am glad I did not partly because of collapse of the Rand. I still miss Cape Town. One day I will return for another visit. EDIT: I can provide more detailed numbers if people are interested. Would need to dig up the offer letter. Very few Americans must have applied like I did, so Amazon could very easily figure out who I am. Hey, I loved your team, it just was not meant to be!
  • aluskuiuc 11y ago
    Speaking as someone who just finished a 2-year rotation through Cape Town as an SDE - massive, core parts of EC2 are still there and aren't going anywhere. "not as much EC2 work" is definitely not accurate.
    • donretag 11y ago
      Perhaps what I meant to say is that "control" of EC2 went to Seattle, from what I understood.
• imnicuhtine 11y ago
  This is super interesting. A lot of responses make me feel underpaid, but I'm not really sure because it's dirt cheap to live in Reno: You can get a 1 bedroom apartment for $500-$1000 a month. For reference, my wife and I bought an 1800 sq ft house on 9000 sq ft of property for $230k. I've been a software engineer at a small software company ~20 employees for 3 years now, but I've only been out of school for a year and I make $75k.
• HR0000000 11y ago
  Amazon, and any other major company, has created a salary range for any role. As someone who has hired for many of these companies, I can tell you: Sharing your compensation is taboo, but do it anyway. So long as you do it honestly and completely. Talking about only salary in a company that rewards heavily in stock is not useful. There is negotiation room. However, playing the game of show me your hand first is just plain annoying. Why should a company pay you more than is standard in your role? Are you leaving bonus/stock money on the table to come there? Relocating? Losing money on a lease? Tuition? Costs covered by your current employer or another offer (ie housing, transportation, childcare, etc)? It's a myth that all companies are out to lowball you. The more successful a company is, the more likely it is that they've realized internal equity is at least as (if not more so) important than being competitive in the market. Go see twitter #talkpay. A lot of great data points were shared there.
• randommodnar 11y ago
  I'm in Montreal, full-stack developer at a small/medium-size company, four years experience, ~$80k. Feel like I messed up a bit and they would have gone for 90 or 100. But they give great benefits and a 35/hr work week.
• sauronlord 11y ago
  Amazon offered me 104k/year + 18k signing bonus for year 1 and a 14k signing bonus for year 2. Software Developer position. 35k in stock options that would vest over 4 years. That was March 10th, 2011.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• YetAnotherMSEng 11y ago
  Microsoft employee, not Amazon, but these sort of discussions absolutely need to happen and I'd like to do my part. Salary: $115k base, no regular bonus or stock, $50k offer in stock over 4 years if I remember correctly although I don't know offhand how many units that came out to. Level: SWE1 (60 internally) Tenure: 2 years internally, 7 in industry Yearly pay increase: Averaged ~6k/y thus far. Internal candidates have NO leverage. The only way to get a promo is to be in the right place at the right time, and have both high visibility and a manager who has proper political influence and will fight for you. If you want a salary boost, leave and come back a year or so later. "Performance" reviews, accomplishments, hours put in, is all moot unless you have the above, in which case it's a nice bit of ammo if your skip level has a lot of competition for his promo budget, but proper political clout can likely force through a promo without. (To add another tidbit that I've always wanted to clear up anonymously: Stack ranking absolutely still exists, if not in a formal process but as a necessity from how budgets are assigned and promos divvied up.)
  • maybeunderpaid 11y ago
    I'm SDE II an earn just a little more base than you ($117K). Judging by conversations with team members about which tax brackets we fall in and how much we save/invest per year, I'm fairly sure I'm underpaid for my level. There's a college hire PM in my team (not PM II, so he's either 59 or 60) who's single and in the 33% bracket. That means he's making at least $189K a year. Edit: I should add, my PM coworker could be wrong about his tax bracket. I can't fathom how they would offer him that much in base salary + stock. But he did mention being in the 33% bracket.
    • tsycho 11y ago
      What does 59/60 mean?
      • maybeunderpaid 11y ago
        Internal level. 59 and 60 are SDE I, SDET I and PM I.
    • 11y ago
• sinak 11y ago
  I wish I had time myself, but it would be really helpful if someone tabulated the results from this thread.
• msemployee 11y ago
  MS employee here, with a bit of anonymization Location: Seattle area Gender: Male Category [1]: White English native: no Age: 35-40 Years in MS: 5 Title [2]: Senior SDE Level [2]: 63 Hiring bonus: 0 Base salary: ~$140k Annual bonus: ~16k Annual stocks: ~17k (over 5 years) Annual benefits: ~$25k [1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/interactives/multiracial-timeline/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/interactives/multiracial-time... [2] http://geekologist.co/decoding-microsofts-sde-titles-and-levels/ http://geekologist.co/decoding-microsofts-sde-titles-and-lev...
• amazon_thr0way 11y ago
  I was an intern over the summer, just graduated and was offered 95,000 salary, 27,000 signing bonus with my first paycheck, and another 20,000 over months 13-24. In addition, I get 53,000 in RSU that are payed out: 5% after my first year, 15% after my second year, and 20% every 6 months after that until I've been there for 4 years. Finally, i got a 10,000 relocation lump sum. I have friends who interned the summer before and they were offered the exact same thing. This is for SDE 1 position.
  • throwawaygoogte 11y ago
    You're getting jacked around, interview at Facebook/Google and walk away with piles more cash and guess what no bullshit pagers to carry around either!
• b34r 11y ago
  25-35 white male 150k base + some equity I haven't paid attention to Senior software engineer (front-end) NYC
• rdl 11y ago
  There can't be an amazon policy against sharing your compensation (well, there can be, but it would be void). It's legally protected in the US, under the laws which support union/labor organizing. (I'm not a lawyer; I'm not your lawyer; this is not legal advice.)
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• amzn_thrway 11y ago
  I'm starting this summer in Amazon Seattle as an SDE II - 4 years of experience - Non-native English - They sponsored my H1B application - 145k base - 20k bonus yrs 1 and 2 - 100 RSUs - 15k relocation bonus, 10k extra for relocation expenses. And they give me a full container to move my stuff. - Male
• throwaway1549 11y ago
  Company: midsized South Bay startup (50-100 people) Position: Developer (not web) Age: 25-30 Tenure: 2 years Initial Salary: $105,000 Current Salary: $120,000 Signing Bonus: 20,000 shares, vesting over 4 years (Taking into account current valuation and strike price, assume stock is worth, to me, ~$0.50/share) Annual Bonus: None Additional stock since hiring: 25,000 shares, vesting over 4 years Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes
• amznslave 11y ago
  If you are good, just leave AMZN. I was underpaid there as SDE 2 and when I resigned, they threw $100k extra a year on the table to keep me but I still left anyway because I did not know what they would do to me if I stay. That $100k extra would put me close to $300k total a year.
  • mdip 11y ago
    they threw $100k extra a year on the table to keep me but I still left anyway That was a smart move, especially if your skill-set was unique in your company. I've given this advice more times than I can think and I've been ignored at least half of the time. I can think of only one case where it worked out well, but that friend was a CEO at a multi-national and the board of directors was the salary decider. The others were gone within a year. Be very suspicious if it's a huge increase in salary (or dwarfs your current offer), but generally any "counter offer" is not a good idea to take. When you get a large counter offer, you have to think one thing: Why? At first you may be inclined to think "It took me having a foot out the door before they finally valued me!" Unfortunately, what they've valued is the risk you represent. Within a few days, after your manager has discussed "contingency plans" for all of the things you did. You'll be spending the next few months making "the documentation a little more clear" and "cross-training" your colleagues. They may finally fill that position they've been promising to hire for to "give you some help". A few months of this will go on and someone in management will ask how your salary is justified (this will likely not be asked directly to you). Unfortunately, all you've been doing is documenting and training others, the real work that contributes to the bottom line has been ignored and you're now behind! How can they justify paying you so much if you're getting nothing done![1] I even had a colleague who thought the answer was to turn down the job, take the increase and find another. It might have worked were it not for 2008. He went 6 months unemployed and took a job for a lot less than he was making prior to the increase (specifics were not offered or asked). [1] It doesn't always (hopefully not even often) happen with such calculation or disregard, but a variation of this almost always plays out.
    • amznslave 11y ago
      I couldn't agree more with you. It was tempted but honestly ultimately it came down to 3 reasons: 1. I did not trust my manager(s) in that AMZN division 2. I did not like AMZN culture 3. Their counter offer was only 2% more and it was structured in a very weird way. I am really glad I did not stay, new job has been way more challenging.
• amzn-thread 11y ago
  Position: Developer Evangelist Tenure: 1.2 years Job Level: 5 Base Pay: $130,000 Signing Bonus: $25k Year 1, ~5k year 2 20XX Stock Vest: 10 shares LY Review Score: Exceeds LY Pay Increase: 1.1% Gender: M I really enjoyed my job and would go back. No counter offer when I left but that was at my request. Was up for L6 when I left.
• hmmdar 11y ago
  I've been at Amazon for a bit over 5 years with 12 years total. Joined with about 7 years of prior experience. From the other post I see I did a very poor job of negotiating when I first joined with my experience. I've always saved the stock and considered it more retirement savings than spending cash. Hired: 2011 - Level: SDE I (4) - Location: San Francisco - Salary: $96k base, $20k bonus, relocation, ~160 stock over 4 years. - Average yearly total comp: ~ $150k Promoted: 2013 - Level: SDE II (5) - Location: San Francisco - Salary: $110k base, 168 stock - Average yearly total comp: ~ $170k Relocated: 2015 - Level: SDE II (5) - Location: Seattle - Salary: $125 base, ~160 stock, relocation - Average yearly total comp: ~ $190k
  • brotherjerky 11y ago
    Wow, you got a bump in 2015 and went somewhere with lower cost of living (plus no state income tax). That's definitely a win-win.
  • eistrati 11y ago
    Indeed big increase in revenue compared with cost of living. I'm surprised that you've decided to move to Seattle instead of switching to another company in SF. Can you please share the reasons why?
• frandroid 11y ago
  It would be interesting if people also posted how many hours they work a week, to get a sense of the work/life balance.
  • epicureanideal 11y ago
    And also any unique educational background or special talents, like if they're working in a niche of machine learning or something like that.
• stray 11y ago
  > I'm not aware of any Amazon policy which prohibits sharing one's own compensation, but I still made a throwaway. IANAL but I'm pretty sure it's illegal as fsck for them to retaliate against you for discussing your compensation. According to the National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, private-sector employees have the right to engage in "concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." Again, I am not a lawyer. Just a bunch of pixels on the screen, really.
• throwawayman123 11y ago
  Non Amazonian(final interview with Amazon) but had to chime in: Based in AZ Base Pay: $80,000 Bonus: 12-15% holiday bonus My Experience: 2 years front end dev, self taught. Company: Won't name. But ~200 people in the company. 40ish engineers. Interviewed with Amazon for Web Dev I . Each time salary was discussed, base range was for 85-115k, sign on of $10-25k and I can't recall stock. Confirmed with friends who work there, all are SDEs making 6 figures. Throwaway account as well, just want those in my area anyways to be aware that earning potential is good.
• thrwawy1 11y ago
  (Non-AMZN). ~10y experience UI developer. $165k base 20% annual bonus 200k worth of stock vested over 4 years. I like the company so I did not negotiate showing the other counter offers I had at the time of joining.
• new2amzn123 11y ago
  * Area: Seattle, WA * Position: SysDE II * Base Pay: $120k * Signing Bonus: $75k over 2 years * Relocation: Fully paid + $2.5k * Stock Units: $115k [200 RSUs] (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on) * Gender: M * Native English Speaker: Yes I have ~2 years of experience.
  • amzn 11y ago
    This seems ridiculously good for a SysDE with that much experience. I had two years at a smaller company previously and was hired as a SysEng I for way less. Not in Seattle but still felt as though I got a raw deal underestimating myself.
    • new2amzn123 11y ago
      I think I understated my experience in my first comment, total I'd put it closer to 4-5 years. But yea, the amount they offered me was more than expected.
• examazonthrow 11y ago
  I am an ex Amazonian, worked for a year and a couple months from 2014-2015 for AWS. I was a straight-out-of-college hire. Base: 93k Stock: 177 options over 4 years. bonus: 30k signing bonus upfront + relocation to Seattle, additional 25k after 1 year tenure spread out in 12 payments, one per month Review: Exceeds, and Rolemodel for Amazon leadership principles. Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes More info: I was promised a promotion and raise, but the problem was they only do promotions once a year, in april. Once I said I was going to leave, I was offered $120, but I left anyways. Now I moved out of seattle and am making more, but in a lower Cost of living location. Also, I had to pay about 8k for "relocation" back to amazon because I left before 2 years.
  • discodave 11y ago
    Amazon does 2 promotion cycles per year.
• mouseketeer 11y ago
  Ex-Amazonian here. Started as an SE1 in 2012 @ $98k, $20k signing bonus ($18k second year), 160 RSUs, and relocation expenses.
• DrJohnny 11y ago
  I work as and SDE2 in Germany: ~€70k base pay + ~€20k RSUs
• eugene_ducker 11y ago
  I created a throwaway just to pretend my salary isn't public record. Location : Eugene, OR. Position: Assistant Professor of Mathematics Tenure: 3 years Base pay (9 month) $72,000 in 2013, increased to about $75,000 in 2016. (minus union dues). Will increase to $82,000 when I make tenure. Signing bonus: $0 Stock: $0 Pension : keeping my fingers crossed. Experience when hire. Ph.D plus 5 years post-doc (at Princeton.) Gender : M Native speaker: Yes.
  • iggiggigg 11y ago
    This is exactly the reason I decided not to stay in academia after I got my Ph.D. I could not rationalize working 10 to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, trying to teach, conduct research, scramble for funding, participate in department politics just to attain tenured position at an R1 school while making barely 75K starting. I now work in a development position at a large tech company for which I'm overqualified. I work about 7 hours a day plus a couple of meetings. I never work weekends, have plenty of free time to conduct research on the side and make well into 6 figures.
• salarytoss12343 11y ago
  SWE II at Twitter. Not in SF. Salary: $118.5k Bonus: $10k RSUs: 4500 over 4 years
• qxi 11y ago
  I work at Amazon too. Last year I wanted to collect compensation information about tech industry professionals (software engineering or PM) in Seattle. I created an anonymous Google Form and sent it out among my circle of friends. Here are the results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133LBigv7pOkgpTkA6bHHQQ8rJMrlcBbK8ulavbw2CSo/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133LBigv7pOkgpTkA6bHH...
• payMDgovt 11y ago
  Don't work at Amazon, but.. Social Security(Baltimore) Sr. UI/UX Dev Govt. contract at $75 an hour no benefits In this area you should strive to move your Dev career towards govt. work; govt contracting being the best in terms of hourly pay.
• throwaway_amzn 11y ago
  Still in first year. Position: SDE 1 Location: Seattle Base: 110,000 Signing: 25k over two years RSUs: 40k when stock was high in 300s
• jwatte 11y ago
  By federal law, an employer cannot discriminate or retaliate against employees for discussing compensation. One of the good things that unions made happen in the past before they made themselves their own worst enemies. Some companies treat this as "you can discuss internally but it's a company trade secret externally" which I don't know how the courts have actually treated it (if at all.)
• abcthrowaway 11y ago
  Position: SDE1 Tenure: <1 years Base Pay: $110k Signing Bonus: $20k Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes Beat my best bay area offer overall, so quite good with the low cost of living here. It does seem like you have to move companies every 2 years to keep climbing the salary ladder.
• aws_1918 11y ago
  4+ yrs, syseng II, ~107k salary and stock push my total comp to ~145k.
• Dr_tldr 11y ago
  The OP is being kind of cagey about what their role is. Nearly everyone at Amazon who does what we would generally be considered a primarily dev role is either an SDE (Software Development Engineer) or a WDE (Web Development Engineer). Are you a support engineer, by chance? As for salary negotiations, the best piece of advice I got was to never say a number. You really don't have to, you can just keep saying some variation of "industry standard", their median salary numbers on Glassdoor, etc. This is true for Amazon specifically: I never told them a number despite being asked by several different recruiters, and the offer I ended getting was slightly above their average. If you want more than that there may be some other technique involved, but if you're more concerned about being undercompensated, definitely don't get tied to any number.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    The OP is being kind of cagey about what their role is. You're right, I am.
• amznthrowaway01 11y ago
  I honestly don't know why I'm so worried to post from my main account since I don't work there any more, but I am, but here was my salary. I only worked there for 12 months as an SDEII, part of my package involved being relocated from a different continent. My compensation was as follows: Year 1: 122,000 + 28,000 bonus + Relocation + a lot of other benefits. After that, the base assumably would have went up, but the bonuses I was given were 250 AMZN rsu's 5% after one year anniversary, 15% on the second anniversary, 20% each 6 months after. Amazon does an amazing job of woo-ing people and making attractive offers, unfortunately they don't put the same effort into retaining their staff.
• throwawaygoogte 11y ago
  Google San Francisco Test Engineer III (level 4) ~130k base, 15% annual bonus target, w/ stock around ~200k annual total compensation *non-native speaker I do have a decade of industry experience. Also my 1 bedroom apartment rent is going to be 2900/month this year (annual lease was 2600/month last year, they raised it by 300 because fuck you where are you going to live, it's 2800/month across the street and do you really want to get roommates in your 30s?)
• darksim905 11y ago
  At my old company, I was a "Jr Sysadmin" in title, but really a mid level Syadmin. I started at $42k/yr, then moved up to around $49k/yr. I should be making $55-65k/yr given my certs, experience: 8 years as generalist IT, mostly Windows Sysadmin, some Linux. Familiar with ShoreTel, comfortable with security -- really REALLY want to make a lateral move to it. I'm also an SME & do reviews for a certain book publisher to see if I think it is worthwhile, accomplishes the goals set out by the author & is technically correct. I'm unfortunately currently unemployed, so things suck, but I have no qualms about sharing my salary, where I think I should be & why. Yes, I may not be using crazy automation stuff & yes, I need to learn something as ubiquitous as VMWare, but it's not hard. A monkey can do those things. What I want to get into is SCCM & serious Windows automation. It's just, the positions are few & far between :-(
• amzn_van_thrw22 11y ago
  Level: SDE II (5) Location: Van, BC Base: 99k (CAD currency) Stock vest in 2016: 60 RSU Tenure: 2 year
• technologia 11y ago
  I'm not an Amazonian (for some reason I laugh when I hear someone refer to themselves as this). I started out at about 64k which after 2 years on the job became roughly 90k, this year I'm on track to make a little under 100k. I think at the moment my role is the equivalent of an SE II or an SE III. Because of the place I work at, I don't get stock or profit sharing, etc. I think that software engineers across the board don't receive the right compensation until it becomes shockingly apparent to the company and they risk losing us. Honestly, my org didn't bump my pay up until I started putting out feelers to move on.
• anonymoose234 11y ago
  Mountain View Googler here: 1 year prior professional SWE experience at the time of hiring, CS undergrad degree from a state university Female, mixed ethnicity, American/native English speaker SWE II, L3 $110k base, ~$45k in stock, 15% target bonus ($172k total assuming stock price stays stable and I make said bonus) Worth noting that I tried not to give my then-current pay to the recruiter during the hiring process and was (very politely) told that they'd cancel my application if I didn't give them a number. Also tried to negotiate the base salary up (asked for $120k) and again, got very politely told to take it or leave it.
  • kelukelugames 11y ago
    Here's a link for you. Recruiter in the story works at a different company. https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2bu1id/my_recruiter_friend_just_pissed_me_off_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2bu1id/m... Also if it's an electronic form then I put 1 dollar. It's fun.
    • anonymoose234 11y ago
      Frustrating read. It wasn't in the form, she asked me over the phone after I passed the final interviewing step and they were going to extend an official offer. Good tip though, I've done that before and it's worked well. I was at a disadvantage in that a) I didn't have any other job offers for a comparable company and wasn't likely to get them anytime soon (see: state university degree, just 1 year experience) and b) wasn't really willing to walk. My company at the time couldn't compete with Google. There was no better offer for me out there, career making opportunity, etc. So when I got told to take it or walk I took it.
      • pmoriarty 11y ago
        Think about this. You've just gone through a lengthy and highly selective interviewing process. You've succeeded where many others have failed. The company has invested a lot of its employees' valuable time in interviewing you. They've decided you are a good fit and are skilled enough for the role. There are no red flags (like a criminal history, ineligability to work in the country, etc) that would prevent them from hiring you. Then they ask how much you made at your previous company and you refuse to tell them. Do you really think that after all that time and effort, after sifting through a mountain of undequalified candiates, they would now turn around and let a qualified, well-fitting candidate slip through their fingers over a bit of irrelevant trivia? Not on your life. Demanding you tell them your previous salary or they'd cancel your application was a bluff, pure and simple. Same with them pretending that you were in no position to negotiate once they'd chosen you and make you an offer. Companies always start low and expect to be negotiated up, at least a little. And once they choose you and made you an offer, the power is in your hands. "Take it or leave it" is a bluff.
• bfung 11y ago
  Honest question + comment + disclaimer question: why not add your info on glassdoor.com? (is there some evil behind glassdoor I don't know about?) comment: Probably worth noting general location of employment, like the metro region you're in. disclaimer: I've been researching salary myself in the bay area based on glassdoor data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BoMvtY_mICEYygy0jXVGwmGIJxFs2zsAXsQvM6K8BEk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BoMvtY_mICEYygy0jXVG...
• titusblair 11y ago
  Love this idea! Made a quick site to help everyone post and share easily, hope it helps! http://honestsalary.com/ http://honestsalary.com/
• baconbkk 11y ago
  I've always wondered how people can make a living doing Turking.
• martin-adams 11y ago
  I worked for IBM and we had a policy where you couldn't discuss salary with your peers. I had a long discussion with manager at the time where I asked the question: "How do I advance my financial career?". We concluded that being an external hire is the best way, and as such, pretty much meant if I wanted more money, get a job elsewhere. So in the end I did. It was the money that triggered it, but ultimately there were other factors, such as not being given the role I was promised, a miss communication about who would decide my promotion (my old or new department), and of course, being asked to accept a band promotion for no extra money. I also recall there being published market data you can get from HR which shows the average for your role, and I did notice I was way below average in compensation. I don't miss leaving one bit.
• yeureka 11y ago
  I knew the UK salaries can't compare, but I wasn't aware the difference was so high. It would be interesting to see the difference in pay in the same company between US and UK offices. Looking at these numbers makes me wish I had moved to the US when I was younger.
• rawnlq 11y ago
  If you're a new grad a good place to look at is your school's salary survey. For both MIT and CMU with just a BS the median starting salary is 105k (you have to be bottom half of the class to make less than that!) https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2015-gss-survey.pdf https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2015-gss-... Min: $70,000 Max: $185,000 Mean: $106,407 https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-survey/pdfs-one-pagers/scs-2015-post-grad-stats-12-17-15-kc.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-su... Min: $30,000 Max: $150,000 Mean: $103,608
• sandra_saltlake 11y ago
  This is really interesting and I am m glad that you shared. the company will typically move mountains to keep you if you are good.
• TheRealDunkirk 11y ago
  These discussions feel good, but are ultimately useless. This is just going to be a collection of anecdotes from people who self-select to report because they feel good about where they're at, or because they feel righteously justified in complaining about their situation. And, as they say, the multitude of anecdote does not data make. Unfortunately, salary "surveys," like the recently-reported Stack Overflow one, or the classic Computerworld one, are much the same. Self-selection ruins the data. The responses have to be random to be useful. And the silly thing is that most people who are involved in this business know this.
  • boren_ave11 11y ago
    I disagree, I think it is useful. You are correct that this is nothing close to scientific, but that is not the goal. The goal is to increase transparency around employee compensation in order to correct the imbalance of power in salary negotiations that results from not knowing what others in similar roles are being paid. For this, statistically valid data is not necessary. It can be enough to know of one or two individuals' compensation to shift power in a salary negotiation.
• brokebook 11y ago
  Germany, Lead Engineer at a company with a couple of hundred employees, my role involves architecture, full-stack coding, cloud stuff: ~$81k (some part of that variable bonuses, depending on companies targets). While the job market seems to be in favor of job seekers these days (it seems to be practically impossible to recruit developers for small/medium shops, you get pinged by recruiters all the time) the salary does not really reflect this. it's rising but pretty moderately. you get offered $100k jobs once a while, mostly in finance. Also the air gets pretty thin in germany when you actually want to do technically interesting and challenging things. Most jobs on the market are quite dull and involve enterprisey and/or legacy things. Most developers I worked with, however, do not seem to mind the backwardsness, are happily married to their languages and tools, and tend not to be overly passionate about their work (which might just be the right attitude).
  • deleted 11y ago
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• sna1l 11y ago
  Some facebook internal compensation numbers -- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E1Jz00naFjdfP5RVC3AYDeDXHdkw8PfWZNhYV0e59oM/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E1Jz00naFjdfP5RVC3AY...
• athrowaway45677 11y ago
  I own a small software consultancy based in NYC. I should make roughly 500K this year.
• chicagothrow 11y ago
  Chicago Software Engineer. experience: ~3 years. salary: 87k. bonus: ~3k. stocks: none. vacation: 4 weeks. yearly raises: ~3%
• ee_tossout 11y ago
  This thread is depressing, but I'll post my information: Company: small, non-startup software company in DFW Position: Senior Research Software Engineer Tenure: 4 years Experience: 14 years (4 EE, 2 non-IT SysE, 8 SwE) Salary: $92,500 (started at $78,000) Signing bonus: $0 Yearly bonus: $0 Stock: 0 Many of the comments here make me feel like I ab seriously underpaid. However, over the past several years in my interactions with prospective new companies (ranging from startups to subsidiaries of huge defense contractors) I get the impression that my salary is slightly above average.
  • junkilo 11y ago
    Yeah that is low compared to the major tech hubs but sounds calibrated to the area you are living in. It only takes one person to set a price provided they honestly believe in they value... and that person can be you.
  • g8gggu89 11y ago
    Of course they all want you to feel like you're paid above average. :| How much are houses in your area, within a 20 min commute?
• trevorg75 11y ago
  Tried the transparency bit. In larger companies like Amazon it might work because there's still a bit of anonymity. But for most companies large and small here's what happens: Bob gets hired as a developer in 2012. He's been with the company for 4 years. Bob is a decent developer who gets his work done but makes the occasional mistake. Bob's title is application developer. When Bob got hired he took the job because the pay was as good if not better than his last job and the market was tough back then and he was happy to have the opportunity. Bob makes 50k a year and lives in Florida where the home office of the company is. Bob's title is software developer. Fast forward to today: The company is really taken off and they need to hire some top talent and have opened the doors to remote workers. John joined the team back in 2014 at 55k per year. John lives in Florida and is a mediocre developer. Sure he gets work done but it's often late or buggy. He tries hard and has shown much improvement and continues to every day. His title is software developer. There's a new IT manager and his job is to hire in some top talent to work with the current talent to get things moving. Prior to the hiring push the new IT manager sees the salaries currently and decides to bring salaries more in sync with what the market currently is at. As a result of this Bob, between his cost of living increases and this new pay bump is at 65k and John is at 60k. As he can now look at remote workers he has feelers out around the country. An ace developer applies for a position and has some skills the company desperately needs. She is based in New York and demands a higher salary than the company traditionally pays because the cost of living is higher. The company approves her demands at 90k per year and she starts with the company, also with the title of software developer. Her name is Sally. A month later the company decides to have transparency across the board with salaries and publishes everyone's salary. John is immediately offended because in his mind (and by his title) he's doing the same job as Bob and Sally yet is making considerably less. Bob is upset because Sally just got hired and is making an extremely high amount more. Each of them are considering their titles / positions. None of them are considering the individual situations that have led to the people making what they make. So how should salary negotiations go. If the company is open and transparent, they should explain to John that basically he's not as good as the other developers so therefore he hasn't gotten the same cost of living increases etc. What he has been getting is an education and the opportunity to improve his craft. Bob would need to know that he started low and it's just the nature of salaries to creep up the way they have. They'd have to discuss Sally's situation which frankly is none of Bob's business. While all of them are valued employees, if they all made the same exact amount either it wouldn't be enough or the company would go broke quick. So they can either suck it up and deal with it or find a job elsewhere. They'll be disgruntled either way. Remember your salary is your salary. Negotiate for what you think is fair. If you want a raise, ask for one. if you feel you should be brought up to current market rates, say so. Ultimately if you are not being treated fairly after giving the company ample opportunity to make it right and communicating with them, then find a new position. Finding out someone has something that is worth more than what you have will always make you want what they have, that's just human nature. Not disclosing salaries is more to keep harmony amongst the workers and people happy in their jobs and focused on THEIR OWN needs as opposed to just trying to get the same thing as someone else for whatever reason. Are there companies who leverage this for nefarious purposes? Sure but you really shouldn't be working for those companies now should you? The key here is communicate with your company. If you are valued they will try to accommodate you or at least give you a good reason, if you are met with resistance or reprecussions then maybe reexamine your relationship with them.
• g8gggu89 11y ago
  Started at 110k + 15 sign on bonus my first year. I got at least 90k over 3 years in stock after the prices went up so high.
• anonsalarylol 11y ago
  This is a web application for anonymously sharing salary information among a pool of participants. Each pool is identified by a UUID. A user cannot view the results of the pool unless they first share their information; the pool must also meet a minimum number of contributors set at pool creation time. https://gist.github.com/anonymous/894b151cc981f783e3af https://gist.github.com/anonymous/894b151cc981f783e3af
• jorgecurio 11y ago
  I started out at $35,000 USD / year in Vancouver then I stopped working 9am ~ 9pm including weekends and just started my own SaaS which made less than 10% of that.
• hyperlz 11y ago
  There's also Green Card PERM Salary data available on sites like http://visadoor.com http://visadoor.com. H1B's typically have less years of experience compared to Green Card applications, even through both their titles might say Senior Software Engineer for example. If you are researching salaries, I would definitely look into PERM Salaries as well. Glassdoor groups all the salaries reported for a title over the years in one bucket. Hence, I find the PERM and Labor data very helpful because you can see how salaries have changed over years. Eg. http://visadoor.com/companies/facebook-inc http://visadoor.com/companies/facebook-inc http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=Facebook%2C+Inc.&year=2016&submit=Search http://visadoor.com/h1b/index?company=Facebook%2C+Inc.&year=... http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Facebook%2C+Inc.&year=2016&submit=Search http://visadoor.com/greencards/index?company=Facebook%2C+Inc...
• darbybung 11y ago
  This is yet another millennial trying to skirt earning their keep.
• diyseguy 11y ago
  I was there from 2009 - 2011 as a contractor and made $35.00 an hour as an SDE II
• ionised 11y ago
  I'm starting to think I need to move out of the UK to somewhere that actually pays developers a decent salary.
• stepny 11y ago
  We went through the comp data on this thread and another one on Google comp (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11314449), and we added it all to this Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z14Uov92EgIGjjLjh4lrmTnyk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z1... Feel free to share/add to this doc. We'll post this in the Google comp thread too. Here are the median comps by level for Amazon and Google, just based on the postings collected in the Google doc as of 3/22. --Amazon -- New grad: $141K SDE1: $146K SDE2: $173K SDE3: $250K TPM3: $220K --Google-- Level 3: $170K Level 4: $200K Level 5: $312K Level 6: $575K T7: $640K Tech Level 5: $660K Just a few notes - Total comp includes bonus, signing bonus, relocation bonus, and stock. Bonuses and stock were all annualized straight-line. (I know this is not how Amazon stock comp is done, but we assumed this in our calcs.) Since we took postings from 2 different threads, it's possible that one person could have posted once in each thread, in which case that would show up twice in the Google doc. Also, there's a lot of variance particularly with bonuses which are lumped in, and some of the higher levels only have one data point, but you can look at the data in the Google doc if you want to dig in. If it helps with comparison between Amazon and Google, here's how Amazon levels map to Google's (from Quora: https://www.quora.com/How-do-Amazons-engineering-levels-map-to-Googles https://www.quora.com/How-do-Amazons-engineering-levels-map-...) Amazon SDE 1 - roughly a Google T3 ("I") or T4 ("II"). Amazon SDE 2 - roughly a Google T4 ("III") Amazon SDE 3 - roughly a Google T5 ("Senior") or T6 ("Staff") Amazon Principal - roughly a Google T6 or T7 ("Senior Staff") Amazon Sr. Principal - roughly a Google T8 ("Principal") or T9 ("Distinguished"). Full disclosure - we're Step (http://www.step.com http://www.step.com), and we're building a platform to help engineers and product managers anonymously crowdsource personalized salary and level estimates from decision makers and hiring experts at tech companies. This thread is especially interesting to us, because it shows the need/demand for more transparency around compensation and company feedback. Right now, we're working with ~10 NYC startups that will assign personalized salary/level estimates and other feedback to anonymous profiles, but our bigger vision is that as soon as someone signs up, they'll see how each and every company values them without having to interview/talk to recruiters.