It's a truly horrible place to work and I would never ask my worst enemy to go work there. Engenders the worst in humanity (people review, anyone?), terrible technical architecture, many systems based solely on tribal knowledge that leaves the door every day, comp structure that is nearly outright lying... I could go on.
Some people say that it was just the group I worked in but I worked in retail (1 year), new businesses (1 year) and AWS (1.5 years). There's virtually no difference. I still have PTSD (or at least what feels like PTSD) about by 3.5 years there, and I'd give anything to get that time back.
BTW, I'm now at another 20k+ person company which is doing very well, and making 30% more than my total comp when I was there.
> I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10413966
Just to clarify, did you work at Amazon for 1 year or 3.5 years? It seems like these messages are contradictory, but perhaps I've misunderstood. In the message I'm replying to now, you wrote:
> I worked in retail (1 year), new businesses (1 year) and AWS (1.5 years)
When I started, I expected that I'd be there a couple years then move on to Google, but I'm not even excited about talking to Google, Facebook, Uber, or the others at this point.
P.S. We're hiring on DynamoDB. We need for software developers and SRE-type folks. My e-mail is in my profile if you're interested in finding out more.
"Amazon's vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, and 40% over the 4 years"
This is a significant deviation from the industry standard, which is to have a one year cliff, and have stock vest month-to-month afterwards. What happens if you leave in the middle of year 3?
If you leave in year 3, you lose 80% of your signing grants.
and there's also refreshes that vest at (probably) a different time of half-year.
SDE3 is a quite senior role at Amazon. I don't know very many of them, and almost all of the ones I know are extremely bright. Seems like they're getting ripped off.
Additionally, last time I interviewed there they did not have remote work in any form. If you get a 2am page, you have to drive in to the office. (And you have to commute.)
That said, one of them is the kind of person that I would expect to do really well in an Amazonian environment, and the other now works at Nintendo.
Example I witnessed during people review (obviously anonymized):
A: I think X is one of the best members of the team, he took a bunch of customer requirements and put out something super fast that addressed some customer needs. (Invent and Simplify, Bias for Action)
B: I disagree. His product didn't think about scenarios a, b and c [ed: these would be things that caused the product to slip a year, and would leave customers in pain during that time] and he did not investigate g, h and i [which would have taken 3 months to figure out, still with customers in pain]. I think he needs to be put on a PIP. (Dive Deep; Insist on the highest standards)
Yes, I'm highly biased here - this person was on my team, and I endorsed his plan, as did person B, until we got into People Review. One of the most brutal and subtle things about the entire process is the fact that you're consistently asked for negative feedback about EVERYONE... even if you don't have it.
I moved from that group (AWS) to new businesses shortly thereafter.
Why would that be? I suspect that's more because the pool of people I know is biased than because the pool that posted is biased -- some orgs in Microsoft will match offers from other companies even though average compensation is relatively low, so if you're new and you know a lot other people who are new, the sample of people you know is probably biased high.
To be clear, I think that's bad both for Microsoft and for Microsoft employees. I'm just trying to figure why the Microsoft data is anomalous relative to the numbers people have personally told me. The reason it's bad for employees is obvious. The reason it's bad for the company is that it's pretty common for people who have been here a long time to shop around, find out that they can make much more elsewhere, and then get a matching offer from MS. Once word gets around that the best way to get a fair raise is to interview elsewhere, people start interviewing elsewhere, and some of the people who interview are going to leave, even if that wasn't their original intent.
Isn't that true pretty much everywhere?
IMO sharing salary data is the perfect first step for some sort of software engineers association/guild/professional body.
I had been working remotely for a long time for a small company, and making what I considered to be good money, considering that I lived in a fly-over state. When I was hired at Google, it more than doubled my salary after a while, when stock grants began to vest.
I now work for Netflix, and I am making even more than I was at Google. To this day, I cannot believe I am paid so much.
You could also try comparing with visadoor.com or another source of H1B data for the same companies to try to see where they fit in. There may be a systematic difference between H1B salaries and the larger employee base at these companies, but at least you're not limited by self-reporting.
eg Software Engineer from Atlantis earns 100 000 USD but pays 55% of tax so takes home only 45000 Software Engineer from Middle-Earth earns 60 000 USD but pays 10% tax and takes home 54000
etc
Just want to point out that there is a good reason for the higher taxes.
We may pay more tax, but I'm glad we have the backup system that keeps you going when you're sick or unemployed.
I mean iphone costs about the same anywhere in the world ( okay it's sometimes more usually not less (Brazil?)) so there's that...
It _is_ important to note that the average retention at Amazon (even for excellent people) is ~50% for 1 year, and ~20% or lower for the 2nd year.
Therefore, these comparisons should really take that into account. Amazon MAY look higher than Microsoft (for example) but because you only see 20% of your total vest the first two years, and everyone in the company makes a max of $160k with anything else bringing you up to market rate being a yearly "bonus", you likely won't see the majority of your earnings. </Former Amazon>
Your comment on "retention" is factually incorrect. I'll presume your comments are in relation to "tech roles" such as SDE SDM TPM etc.
First the number of Amazon hires in "tech roles" increases by ~50% per year. i.e., in year 1 there are 1,000 SDEs hired, year 2 is 1,500, year 3 is 2,250, year 4 is 3,375 and so on.
"Attrition" represents the number of individuals who leave for any reason. This may be because the employee terminates employment or the company terminates employment. Attrition levels are comparable to the rest of the tech industry, ~15% of the current population per year.
"Tenure" is the length of employment. Because hiring greatly exceeds attrition you should expect a relatively low average and median retention. As I recall Amazon is approximately 12 months median tenure. This is comparable to Google at ~13 months, for example.
Lastly the employees current tenure does not have a substantial impact on the probability of their attrition. Indeed the average tenure at exit is somewhere around 3 years. Which, again, is roughly in line industry standards.
In short, the average tenure at Amazon is low because they hire a lot. And while retention is not "good" it is a far cry from what you've represented.
Edit: The gross growth rate is actually above 50%. I've attempted to simplify the values where it does not make a material difference to the refutation.
I disagree.
> First the number of Amazon hires in "tech roles" increases by ~50% per year. i.e., in year 1 there are 1,000 SDEs hired, year 2 is 1,500, year 3 is 2,250, year 4 is 3,375 and so on.
This could not possibly be true. If it was, they would be hiring ~1.5M technical people a year (since they've been in business since 1997). Perhaps you meant since 2005, but that would still represent 58k people per year hired. According to this article (http://www.geekwire.com/2015/huge-growth-amazon-reaches-2224...), they only have 24k in the state of Washington, where the vast number of people are. So nothing about this statement is true.
> "Attrition" represents the number of individuals who leave for any reason. This may be because the employee terminates employment or the company terminates employment. Attrition levels are comparable to the rest of the tech industry, ~15% of the current population per year.
Can you show me that data? about 15% per year? I've seen vastly different numbers internally, but would prefer not be sued in sharing them.
> "Tenure" is the length of employment. Because hiring greatly exceeds attrition you should expect a relatively low average and median retention. As I recall Amazon is approximately 12 months median tenure. This is comparable to Google at ~13 months, for example.
Correct, but these numbers are heavily obfuscated due to part time hires and vendors.
> Lastly the employees current tenure does not have a substantial impact on the probability of their attrition. Indeed the average tenure at exit is somewhere around 3 years.
Again, show me the data. I've seen the internal stuff. If you'd like not to believe me, feel free; I know I don't believe you.
Day 1: 1000 employees Day 365: 500 employees Day 730: 200 employees.
It's almost impossible to throw a dart at this list and not hit at least 5-10 - http://www.geekwire.com/geekwire-200/
No, $172,000 is the median for year 1. Even $200k+ total comp at year 1 is typical for Google in the bay.
The significant increases in bonus pay for higher levels reflect stock vesting for year 2/3/4/5 employees.
Edit: "Google" in the bay
I'm going to say that's a huge stretch.
It's harder to see who will be amongst the best engineers early on in someone's career. Each person develops their abilities at different speeds & times in their lives.
EDIT:
After writing this, I was curious how the BLS calculates wages. Here is the answer from their FAQ: http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview
The following are excluded from the collection of OES wage data:
Attendance bonuses
Back pay
Clothing allowances
Discount
Draw
Holiday bonus
Holiday premium pay
Jury duty pay
Meal and lodging payments
Merchandise discounts
Non-production bonuses
On-call pay
Overtime pay
Perquisites
Profit-sharing payments
Relocation allowances
Severance pay
Shift differentials
Stock bonuses
Tool/equipment allowances
Tuition repayment
Uniform allowance
Weekend premium pay
Year-end bonuses
I would argue that RSUs are rarely something the employee wants, compared to equivalent cash. At a big public company, you aren't likely to be able to affect the stock price with your personal performance, so it's not an incentive. You also likely can't predict whether the stock is likely to go up or down -- if you can, you're in the wrong job.
I would speculate that the appeal of RSUs to Google is as a hedge -- if Google's stock price goes way down, at least they'll get a break in employee compensation. Otherwise I honestly don't know what the point is. Just give people cash.
Startup equity is a completely different beast. You're getting a grant that is (in theory) worth $0, but you may actually be in a position to predict whether that startup is going to succeed, and even to influence the outcome. Maybe. That said, if the company doesn't tell you what percentage of the company you're getting, then it's a scam and you should treat it as $0.
(I'm a former Google employee and current startup founder.)
I'd also like to see a breakdown by market, as I have been led to believe that my salary is only slightly below market for Dallas, but the median compensation numbers posted in this article for my experience level are three times what I make now, and it's depressing.
For example, if you knew four years ago that you would receive 30 GOOG stock in 2016, you would assume in 2012 that would mean a $10k bonus. But now the stock has gone from $325 to $754, the bonus is actually $22k.
If you work for a company with an increasing stock price, then stock based compensation can also create the illusion that your "salary" is increasing each year, even if you get no promotion.
For anecdote, approximately 66% of my total compensation is in base salary. When I first started working 5 years ago, it was 92%.
These numbers are probably skewed somewhat by Bayarea salaries, which have to compensate a little for the high cost of living (compare for example Facebook/Google to Microsoft/Amazon, which are primarily Seattle-area employers). In general, I've found the Bayarea salary bump doesn't overcome the Bayarea cost-of-living bump. So these salaries are only higher on paper.
In NYC and SF, there's high demand for and short supply of developers, which drives up compensation. Companies in these cities will recruit from across the country to get talent. Cities like Dallas though also have a much lower cost of living, so that should be taken into account. There was a Hacker News thread about this at one point.
We don't yet have enough data on each market, but we plan on breaking out the analysis by city once we get that data.
In reality, Google's hiring process selects for people who can follow instructions and are happy trading self-sufficiency and independence for the social validation that comes with working for such an "elite" company. Google engineers are some of the most sheep-like creatures on the planet.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535180 and marked it off-topic.
With that said, Google did have this odd thing where you could do an in-plan Roth conversion, and put post-tax dollars into your 401K. I did this in 2013 or 2014, and I think Google was one of the few companies to offer this at the time.
One interesting area of differentiation is health care. When I left Google in 2015, they were cutting health benefits to avoid Cadillac plan taxes. Lots of people were saying that Facebook had better plans.
Frugal FTW
Even for a married couple earning 500k in high-income-tax California, effective tax rate (as opposed to marginal tax rate) is only 30-35%, and that includes the employee portion of Medicare/social security (the latter of which cuts out around 110k).
The exact effective tax rate will vary mostly with your mortgage interest deduction.
I don't think ego is really the only thing that drives pay distinction. I think that many people consider that different individuals contribute differently and that those who contribute more value should get more pay. Isn't that realization independent of ego?