Unless you get that kind of equity yearly—which is crazy, and brings up dilution questions—you're better off taking a higher salary and investing as much as possible.
But—adding X market value for equity vesting over Y years with 40% capital gains tax for the first 12 months of holding it leads to a 2016 pay of.... just your salary.
Oh, and you get equity every else in addition to that nice pay, and they don't strap your pager to your face.
Do they give you the stock as a bonus at the end of the year, or are you promised it at the beginning and it gets doled out during the year? If it's the former, be careful that they don't decide retroactively that you had a bad year and decide to cut your total compensation almost in half!
I ended up not accepting that offer because another company gave me a more interesting role. Also their stock vesting schedule is horrible (most of the money comes in year 4), and many people find amazon to be soul-sucking. You're likely to leave at the 2 year mark, thus losing out on most of the stock anyways. 4 years is a long time to be at Amazon (though if you're the right mix of "in-it-to-win-it" and "workaholic" you might thrive there)
My initial offer from Google was $150k base, ~15% holiday bonus, and came with >$100k in stock vesting over four years, and they give another four-year stock grant each year. I have 7 years of industry experience and I interview well.
