Yeah that helps, but then the question is do you really want to work somewhere that directly ties your compensation to the company's share price? If Amazon has a few bad quarters and you lose 20% of your yearly income that's a major deal. In Seattle you probably want to be making around $120-160k/yr to live a solid middle class life, afford a house, etc. I would still look around at MS, Google, etc. where they give you more in cash compensation and less with the stock lottery ticket. Find a place that gives you around that as base pay, then all the bonuses etc. are just savings for house, retirement, toys, college, etc.
Maybe in a small company, where your efforts can have a direct, meaningful impact on the company's net worth. For a company as large as Amazon, though... there's so much going on, and so much of it completely unrelated to your personal work, that I feel like it'd be kind of meaningless unless you were in a really high-level management position.
I'll have to disagree with your exception as well. Data has shown that CEOs at giant corps have no impact on how things go down. It comes back to your statement of how much is going on. If all the goings on in the corp mesh perfectly with the goings on outside, success happens. A single human CEO can neither be credited for success nor blamed for failure in these cases.
I agree with your premise, but don't give too much credit to "the high level management". Most of them are groping in the dark.
If you're an executive pulling in over $500k, sure stock should absolutely be compensation and motivation. If you're rank and file and need $120k/yr to even afford to live, have kids, save for retirement, etc. in the area, then no stock should absolutely not be the primary means of compensation.
The best argument I've heard on this front is about diversifying risk. If your company tanks and you're rank and file, you're getting laid off and your stock holdings are tanking. Best to not be doubly exposed to the company's risk profile.
I don't see why it would be more motivating than just getting the current cash value of the stock, in a situation like Amazon's where you _maybe do, maybe don't_ really influence the stock price. Are you saying you write such influential code that you think you will manage to tip things in your favor on such a grand scale?
You get stock annually? Otherwise, you have to vest that over several years, severely reducing your annual. AND you're locked in for years just to cash out at maximum value.
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.
Amazon's compensation model leans heavily on stock and tops out in the mid 100Ks for all job levels. It's not uncommon for senior roles to get more compensation from stock than salary, and at higher levels the majority of the compensation is in stock. For the majority of employees, once compensation RSUs kick in, vesting occurs on May 15th and November 15th. For L7 (IIRC) and higher, vesting occurs quarterly.
The annual and midyear review process takes this into account and attempts equalize total compensation depending on the value of the stock (basically, you want the stock to be down when the price is used to calculate your total comp at the end of January).
When I was there, it was somewhat difficult to recruit some higher level roles because they might only be offered $120-$150K salary and then 200 or so RSUs over the course of the first year. That doesn't always look as enticing to someone as $250K salary.
At my annual review last year I received more stock along with a pay increase. So, thus far, yes.
>>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.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm not following.
>>Oh, and you get equity every else in addition to that nice pay, and they don't strap your pager to your face.
Well, if you do get more stock it complicates things—but you have to distribute out the pay out over the vesting period. In other words, collecting the entire value of the equity into one pay period implies you'll get the same amount of money the next pay period—which is only true if you get that amount of equity annually. It sounds like this may be a possibility
Furthermore, it assumes you'll be at the company for the entire vesting period. Which you might not want to do.
Additionally, you can't cash out the equity you DO get in 2016 unless you want the government to take a sweet 40% off the top.
> What do you suggest I do?
Don't wait for the equity to vest fully, work hard for some good recommendations, and get out of that sweat shop. Amazon rewards ambitious workaholics. Everyone I've talked to who USED to work there (key point being these people left) has issues balancing work, pay, and a life.
To be clear—I'm not arguing anything but that other companies will use you a little more compassionately, and you might make a little more cash in the meantime. You're still doing very well for yourself, Amazon is far from the worst place to work, and you might be very happy there.
It's pretty interesting that so much of your compensation is in stock. After 2 years at MSFT and becoming a PM II, I was making ~$145k annually but $115k of that was in salary and $30k in stock. I think that's why everyone is surprised when they see the $70k.
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!
The stock is initially granted in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). RSUs vest according to a schedule. It looks roughly like this:
5% the first year
15% the second year
20% every six months thereafter
Compensation at Amazon typically is a combination of a base salary, a signing bonus (distributed over time), and a stock grant. The package is structured in such a way that the employee's total pay stays consistent over time, even though the pay comes in different forms. New hires will have their signing bonus structured over the first two years, and then it ends. At that point, the more significant stock vests begin to occur at six month intervals, so the total pay amount stays relatively the same after the bonus ends.
25% on year 1
2.08 & 1/3rd every month thereafter (75% vested equally over the next 36 months)
Furthermore, there are other grants that vest quarterly for the first 18 months of employment (in addition to the normal 4 year).
Look, I used to work at Amazon. They are the worst paying big company out there. Complete with totally shitty vesting plans. My first vesting with Amazon was over 5 years. Yup, they really took advantage of us new grads.
He is saying that Amazon's RSU vest schedule sucks compared to the standard used by Google and others. His income level has nothing to do with anything about that.
Microsoft annual bonuses used to be a lot more stock and less cash, but in 2011 they shifted towards the current model of cash++, because the stock was low and nobody wanted it. (At the same time they did an across-the-board 10% raise - from memory, both these moves were made because Amazon Google Facebook were becoming much more serious competitors for Seattle employees. http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2011/04/microsofts-new-review-a...)
Doesn't matter, my friend who got an offer from Amazon fresh out of school back in 2008 was offered 80k a year. These days total comp for senior software engineers at Amazon is > 200k a year total.
Yes, back when I graduated (with a prior internship at a big tech company) my amazon offer was over 100k, similar sign-on bonus, 150k stock.
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)
Apple, Google, and Amazon will all make similar offers.
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.
Unless you say otherwise, Morgan Stanley will deduct it for you, and IIRC, the don't take your exemptions into account - just 30% off the top. You get to decide if you want to take the tax liability or get the refund (assuming you're effective tax rate is not actually 30%).
