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My Amazon offer from last year was one of my highest ($500K first year TC for senior SWE in Seattle). Amazon has trouble retaining talent but I doubt compensati

by asd88 5y ago

My Amazon offer from last year was one of my highest ($500K first year TC for senior SWE in Seattle). Amazon has trouble retaining talent but I doubt compensation is the real cause (at least for recent hires).

hemloc_io 5y ago
Yep if you go on levels.fyi you can see that recent promos to SDE 2-3 make 100-200k less than external hires. They probably were testing new paybands to see what stuck. The bleeding has to be pretty bad for them to make an announcement like this though, otherwise they'd quietly bump up pay/bonuses for their top performers.
aaronblohowiak 5y ago
they are starting to do better, but from folks i know who have gotten offers from Amazon/Netflix/Google/Apple/FB, Amazon is consistently 10-20% less than the top (usually FB after several rounds of negotiation..)
- asd88 5y ago
  I believe Amazon significantly increased their offers last year. FB was one of my other offers and they couldn’t match my top offers after negotiation, so I just declined. That being said, it is possible that a combination of my location (Seattle) and career stage (upper side of Senior level) are at play here.
sschueller 5y ago
At 500k are you actually working 40 hours or expected to be always working? Also what is considered a senior engineer? Someone specifically specialized in a field or management type role?
- asd88 5y ago
  Senior SWE in the tech industry is typically someone with > 5 YOE who has led at least one big project and is considered a leader in their immediate team. It is not a management role. Yeah, I’d probably work more than 40 hours a week at Amazon, which is why I didn’t take the offer (I accepted another offer with similar comp and my WLB is pretty good).
_trackno5 5y ago
500K is a good improvement but I doubt you were the norm. Before last year they were seriously lagging behind in terms of comp. Even in EMEA I hear they couldn't hire due to low comp compared to other companies. Even non-FAANG were beating them easily. What I hear from friends at Amazon (joined prior to 2020) is that their comp is well below market rates.

by asd88 5y ago

hemloc_io 5y ago

Yep if you go on levels.fyi you can see that recent promos to SDE 2-3 make 100-200k less than external hires. They probably were testing new paybands to see what stuck. The bleeding has to be pretty bad for them to make an announcement like this though, otherwise they'd quietly bump up pay/bonuses for their top performers.

aaronblohowiak 5y ago

they are starting to do better, but from folks i know who have gotten offers from Amazon/Netflix/Google/Apple/FB, Amazon is consistently 10-20% less than the top (usually FB after several rounds of negotiation..)

asd88 5y ago
I believe Amazon significantly increased their offers last year. FB was one of my other offers and they couldn’t match my top offers after negotiation, so I just declined. That being said, it is possible that a combination of my location (Seattle) and career stage (upper side of Senior level) are at play here.

sschueller 5y ago

At 500k are you actually working 40 hours or expected to be always working? Also what is considered a senior engineer? Someone specifically specialized in a field or management type role?

asd88 5y ago
Senior SWE in the tech industry is typically someone with > 5 YOE who has led at least one big project and is considered a leader in their immediate team. It is not a management role. Yeah, I’d probably work more than 40 hours a week at Amazon, which is why I didn’t take the offer (I accepted another offer with similar comp and my WLB is pretty good).

_trackno5 5y ago

500K is a good improvement but I doubt you were the norm. Before last year they were seriously lagging behind in terms of comp. Even in EMEA I hear they couldn't hire due to low comp compared to other companies. Even non-FAANG were beating them easily. What I hear from friends at Amazon (joined prior to 2020) is that their comp is well below market rates.