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Thanks for the overview, I do find it interesting to see how other people manage things. Like you say though, you're making a calculated risk assessment and all

Thanks for the overview, I do find it interesting to see how other people manage things. Like you say though, you're making a calculated risk assessment and allocating money ahead-of-time accordingly, and you also have a base salary and stability such that it makes sense to do so. I think if I were offered a new job, even at one of the big 5 (that isn't really in the cards fwiw), I wouldn't consider the same bet until I could all but guarantee that I'd have the job after that period of time. Particularly with a lot of people moving jobs in the last year, and with economic volatility, I think that's an appropriately conservative move to make for a lot of people. Would you disagree? Did you set out to do what you described as soon as you got the job and simply assumed that you'd have it 6 months, 1 year etc.. later? I personally hedge against having work 6 months out, but tend to account for that bias if I'm talking in generalities and be a little more optimistic. (high cost of living area, extreme income volatility, extremely unstable career, no savings, not a big spender etc..)

scarface74 5y ago
Being at one of the Big 5 was never on my radar. I never practiced for an interview as an SWE. I only slid in through Enterprise dev+cloud experience in the consulting department. So, I was trying to speak about what I will be doing because it is much more generally applicable to most places than what I am doing. Amazon is weird in how your initial four year offer works. Year 1: base + prorated signing bonus every pay period + 5% of your four year RSU vest. Year 2: base + prorated signing bonus (a smaller amount) + 15% of your four year vest Year 3 and 4: base + 40% of your four year vest. Then after that you get more stock to keep you about even. So out of the initial signing bonus - which if your total compensation is $200K, expect year one to be $50K distributed throughout the year and year two to be about $35K. I am using the first two years to pay off debt (to reduce my monthly expenses) and to build up savings so I could meet all of our monthly needs out of my base after year 2. I said earlier I “retired my wife”. It wouldn’t have been possible to live just on my base without getting rid of debt. I am completing year 2 the middle of this year. As far as riskiness. My wife is keeping her CDLs up to date so she can go back into the school system if needed. Not for the money, for the benefits. I can always do independent consulting if necessary. With my being able to say “I worked in Professional Services at AWS” gives me an amount of credibility I wouldn’t have had before.

scarface74 5y ago

Being at one of the Big 5 was never on my radar. I never practiced for an interview as an SWE. I only slid in through Enterprise dev+cloud experience in the consulting department. So, I was trying to speak about what I will be doing because it is much more generally applicable to most places than what I am doing. Amazon is weird in how your initial four year offer works. Year 1: base + prorated signing bonus every pay period + 5% of your four year RSU vest. Year 2: base + prorated signing bonus (a smaller amount) + 15% of your four year vest Year 3 and 4: base + 40% of your four year vest. Then after that you get more stock to keep you about even. So out of the initial signing bonus - which if your total compensation is $200K, expect year one to be $50K distributed throughout the year and year two to be about $35K. I am using the first two years to pay off debt (to reduce my monthly expenses) and to build up savings so I could meet all of our monthly needs out of my base after year 2. I said earlier I “retired my wife”. It wouldn’t have been possible to live just on my base without getting rid of debt. I am completing year 2 the middle of this year. As far as riskiness. My wife is keeping her CDLs up to date so she can go back into the school system if needed. Not for the money, for the benefits. I can always do independent consulting if necessary. With my being able to say “I worked in Professional Services at AWS” gives me an amount of credibility I wouldn’t have had before.