L6 SDE 11 YOE, 10 at AMZN TC this year is 630k due to stock growth. Next year 460k. YOYOYOY "TT" (top perf rating) Net worth 1.3MM (1MM invested, 300k in home equity + cash). Age: Early 30s Married, no kids Mortage: $1700/mo I live in a MCOL city with an Amazon office, but no other major tech firms. Other companies in my city top out at ~$180k/year for a senior engineer. I work "remotely" for a team based in Seattle, but now I have to work from the office due to RTO policies. The product I have worked on at Amazon for the past 10 years has reached maturity and we haven't made any meaningful progress on it in the last few years. It's mostly in KTLO mode. There isn't really any vision from leadership (or myself) for where we should go from here. I can continue resting and vesting if I want to, but I don't want my skills to stagnate. The quality of my management chain has also significantly deteriorated and politics are currently out of control in my org an its making my day-to-day life miserable. I haven't done any meaningful technical work in a year now. This job dissatisfaction plus RTO got me looking for new opportunities. I like to work out a lot and it's too hard to maintain my routine while commuting. I hadn't interviewed in a long, long time and failed some phone screens at Netflix and Block. Then I interviewed for remote E6 at Meta and got downleveled to E5 which meant relocation required ☹️. I was browsing tier-1 VC portfolios (think Sequioah, A16Z, YCombinator, etc) and found an extremely interesting AI infrastructure start up. I applied and finally landed an offer with them. Being from Amazon, my background is in large scale back-end Java services. I have no experience in ML so I view this is as an opportunity to up-skill and keep myself relevant for the next 10 years of my career. The team seems super smart, and I deeply believe in the vision the founders have for the company. I also am attracted to the idea of working on a small, highly-aligned team with less politics. My heart wants to accept this offer, but my brain is telling me it would be insane to walk away from so many AMZN RSUs. The opportunity cost is just so large with these sky high comps these days. I also am leery of insane start-up workload, even coming from the AMZN meat grinder. I tend to become obsessed with work when I am interested in it, and it has caused problems in my marriage in the past. I am pretty much stuck at Amazon. My only internal transfer options in this climate would be to local teams, which I really have no interest in. I also have zero desire to relocate to a major tech-hub. I love my lifestyle and my city. I grew up here and moved back after a few years on the west coast. Long term remote work is super important to me, which is another reason I am considering making the move to start-ups. I wanted to reach out to the sage folks of Blind and get some perspectives. Should I accept the offer, stay at Amazon and grind for PE, or keep looking for a remote role at a more mature, publicly traded company? The start up is offering $280k base salary, and 1.1MM in equity over 4 years. It's 0.2% equity in the company. The company is currently Series A and valued at well under 1BN so there is significant upside potential if it is successful. Series A 30 Employees 5 years of runway Huge market, but the product is still >1 year from being launched. So no customers yet. Halp me find the courage to leave my golden shackles or convince me to stay and grind for my financial security.
Do something better of life than Amazon
Join the startup but leave on good terms with your manager. Like offer to give them 3 to 4 weeks notice instead of standard 2. That way you can come back easily if you want to. So now you have a fallback safe option of Amazon while you try the startup.
You can always go back if it doesn't pan out.
Wow. Your clarity of thought is impressive. How do you get this good at being an l6 sde?
Been doing it for almost 6 years now.
make sure to do a reference check on the founders!
Get laid more.
Reading this, you clearly have career in full control including a great option for next adventure. Kudos. Now what I do read between lines is you could use better health in relationship and invest meaningful time there. If I were you I'd also consider that aspect in both making this decision and in your 10 year goal. Do you want to be settled and have kids or do you see yourself grinding and traveling the world etc. My only word of advice is TC will only give you so much satisfaction and at some point you will look for happiness elsewhere. Good luck friend. You got this!
My wife is actually my high school sweet heart and I love her dearly. She doesn’t want kids for at least 3 years. I’m ready when she is. The only issue we have ever had is that she doesn’t work and I work way too much. It works out cuz she can take care of me and the house, but sometimes I can be an ass to her when I feel overwhelmed and she is needing attention from me. I definitely need to get better at prioritizing her.
Bro you were not downlevel at meta . Amazon e6 = Meta e5
I get that. I would have taken a remote E5 offer. The issue is they don’t make remote E5 offers anymore. I am pretty close to L7 at amazon so it made sense to try for E6. Relocation was the deal breaker, not the level.
Ok with that profile, you tell me what should I do bruh. 12YOE (7 at Amazon). L5 SDE
Leetcode and GTFO. The new comp model sucks even worse than the old one.
What's the new comp model? Before Goog, I was in AWS for a few years.