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So here's a quick summary of Amazon key benefits: - Other FAANG companies vest 25% of your initial grant every year. Amazon works on a 5/15/40/40% vesting sche
by cletus 6y ago
So here's a quick summary of Amazon key benefits:
- Other FAANG companies vest 25% of your initial grant every year. Amazon works on a 5/15/40/40% vesting schedule. Actually it's unclear if this is now 10/20/30/40. Either way, it's weighted towards the end;
- Amazon will argue you get a starting bonus to cover you. Other companies give you a starting bonus and typically pay you in a lump sum, not over 2 years;
- Other FAANG companies use a fairly simple formula of Initial Grant Value / Initial Share Price [1]. Amazon's grants are valued assuming the share price goes up at a certain rate.
- FB and Google at least--possibly others--have no cliff. Up until a few years ago, you'd typically get no stock vest in the first year. Not so now. I can't find a definitive answer on this but I fully expect you'll be waiting the full year for your 5% (or is it 10%?)
- Amazon has a 50% match on 401k contributions... capped to 4% of eligible earnings, which I assume is salary + bonus [2]. So at $150,000 eligible compensation, you'll only get the first $6,000 matched at 50% (so up to $3,000). Google has no cap. Facebook has a cap of 7%.
- Amazon 401k matches are unvested for 2-3 years. Each year you work 1,000 hours or more counts as 1 year so join mid-year and it might only be 2 years. This means if you leave Amazon before those 2-3 years are up, Amazon will take back your match. Neither FB nor Google does this.
- Amazon PTO for US salaried employees starts at 6 paid holidays and 10 days of PTO [3] with 2 weeks (IIRC) of paid sick leave. In year 2 this goes to 15 days. In year 6, it's 20. Google and FB have 10-12 company holidays a year with pretty much unlimited sick paid leave. Google starts at 15 days vacation going to 20 in the third year and 25 in the fifth. FB has 21 days.
To this list we can no add 18 month noncompetes. If you're capable of getting a software engineering job at Amazon, you're capable of getting much, much better benefits elsewhere.
Side note: attempting to put long form content in a series of Tweets is a trend that needs to die. It's so awful to consume. Just post it somewhere and link to it.
[1]: Different companies use a different formula for this but it's typically approximately the closing price at or before the time of joining.
[2]: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us
[3]: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/pto-overview-us https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/pto-overview-us
- lowiqengineer 6y agoI’m currently an Amazon engineer - it was my first job out of college. I worked really damn hard to get this job, and now everyone (including you, a Facebook/Google employee) seem to think I’m stupid and inferior because I didn’t pass my Google/Facebook onsites. I’ve studied for hundreds of hours but the best company I’ve cracked is a hedge fund. It’s comments like these that make me wonder if I should just end it all.
- cletus 6y agoSo i said: > If you're capable of getting a software engineering job at Amazon, you're capable of getting much, much better benefits elsewhere. which I think says the opposite of what you're implying. I'm saying you're capable of getting a much better benefit package as evidenced by the fact that you got a job at Amazon. Amazon is (IMHO) short-changing you. Don't sell yourself short. If that was the best offer you had out of college, believe me I get it. And if you're happy there now then I'm happy for you. But pointing out how Amazon falls short of competitors with a roughly equivalent hiring bar is not intended an attack on you or your choices.
- lowiqengineer 6y agoI get what you're saying, but the evidence in my experience seems to prove otherwise if I can't get into Google or Facebook after trying nearly a dozen times between them. I make around ~$150k a year right now. If I get promoted this year, I'll make $180k. Google engineers start at around $200k. By nature of the free market of labor it seems like I'm only worth about 75% of a Google engineer at maximum to work on identical things. Folks have told me to "just go to Google" don't understand the anguish of being worth 75% of a human at best, and not having the intelligence to pass an interview loop anywhere consistently.
- iaw 6y agoYour username and the tone of your message feel a lot like imposter syndrome to me. You passed the interview, you kept the job, and are doing the exact same work. You are not "worth less" than anyone else based on Amazon's miserly compensation, it's that other FAANG weren't smart enough to grab you when they had the chance. I believe both FB and Google are actively hiring experienced engineers right now, apply every time you can until you get the job. I know getting rejected sucks and it feels like a statement about personal value but in the end it's a screening process that tries to guesstimate your potential for success, it's not an indictment of your abilities.
- BeetleB 6y ago> Amazon will argue you get a starting bonus to cover you. Other companies give you a starting bonus and typically pay you in a lump sum, not over 2 years; I'm not sure this is true. My friend had no trouble getting one (good amount in cash), and the rationale was precisely due to their vesting schedule "Since not much of your stocks will vest in the next 2-3 years, here's a cash amount to compensate for that." You did forget to point out one other key difference between Amazon and the others: Although the interview process is still demanding, it is somewhat easier than Google/Facebook.
- amznthrowaway5 6y agoThe "signing bonus" from Amazon isn't really a signing bonus, it's just to make up for the fact that they are not giving you much stock for the first couple of years.
- jorblumesea 6y agoSummarized, Amazon isn't frugal, it's cheap. One thing to note is that Amazon is the easiest of the FAANGs, so I don't think the idea that "if you can get into Amazon you can get in anywhere" is true.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- amznthrowaway5 6y agoJack Welch style stack ranking and forced attrition of bottom 5-10+% yearly is also one of the "benefits".
- peferron 6y ago> Other FAANG companies... Quick correction: Netflix works completely differently.