After 5 years and 6 months, goodbye to the company which doesn't appreciate talent. Oct 2015 - Alexa team as L4. Built things from scratch and handled oncall like a senior engineer. March 2016 - HV1 (Manager said he fought for TT) March 2017 - TT and Got promoted to L5. March 2018 - TT, March 2019 - TT (comp was close to base, 157K) June 2019 - I decided to move to AWS, because I wanted to work on challenging areas. My old team became too easy for me. Skip said by Q1 2020 he sees me as L6 but I was not willing to wait. (Maybe bad choice butwork not challenging) Dec 2019 - I had delivered on 6 months for reinvent. Mgr said in on track for Q2 2020. March 2020 - TT (base 160K) Tech Approval on track. Q2 2020, Q3 2020- Everything changed. Org reshape; a new leadership and my skip had a dozen managers under him. My manager started side tracking. Tech approval happened. Q4 2020 - Reject because of not enough data points to support influence. Because of Q2 reshape, reinvent was empty. Q1 2020 - Promo didn't go through because the new project is going live only in April. (Mgr says TT again 😂, but 🥜 because even bezos makes only 160K duh) Honestly, neither the promo process nor compensation model appreciates talent here. I have friends who actually work in boring teams and have become L6. All they had to pleasantly flatter. I don't care about others, how can a company not appreciate consistent talent blame the individual for reshape. TC: 160 + 46 rsus = 314K. ----------------------- Gave interviews only to GCP and Stripe. GCP offer: 384K Stripe offer: 402K (Going here) #engineering #software
Most of the terms are only known to Amazon folks, I supposed
160k? Can anyone from Amazon confirm that?
Yes 160 base is max for Seattle. ... More for SF
Is Seattle a low cost of living space? NYC's cap is 180K at the most for SDE1.
That is correct for all market except NYC and sfo. But that is base rest is rsu
Were there for 5+ years, they win
5 years will vest your entire initial grant and maybe a little more. OP probably realized they’re not getting any more big equity grants
Why not go to Google for just 15K difference in Comp? Is it because they offer L5 and it will take a while to get to L6?
The comp was not a factor. Have a friend who works at stripe who has nothing but good feedback about it. Plus GCP has bad reviews
I see, I would take Google just because of more diversity in the portfolio
Google l5?
Yes L5.
Good achievement, especially with 6 years of exp!!
Congrats. The day I don't have visa issues the day I start interviweing. Specially now with Bezos leaving.
Good luck, luckily I do not have visa issues. A coworker is from India and he is stuck here because of this, really unfortunate. I would miss working with such talented folks.
Thank you. I am in a similar situation as you were, top performing then re-org, new director and senior management don't care about my team. It sucks to build a life here and have golden handcuffs due visa, otherwise I would move back. Hopefully I will also be able to get nice offers once my time here is done :)
congrats! for performance ratings, did you have to ask your managers explicitly or they would just let you know during performance review conversations?
My first manager explicitly told me the ratings and then I started asking the second one every year.
Wait, aren't you told your ratings if you don't ask?
Damn dude congrats. Did you take a lot of time to prepare for interviews or did your salt fuel you to do well? Personally I took about 6 months of studying + applying before getting an offer from Amazon coincidentally. Also, I don't understand your compensation. The base never went up? You never got promoted? It sounds like you did enough to warrant promotion.
Thanks to covid, I had enough time to prep as I stopped going in the weekends. Started in December. Amazon has a policy where you can get only 160K or 185K(CA, NY). Rest is through RSU, biggest problem is they do not give refreshers which means after the base your hike is for next year and not for current year. I never hated the work I did in Amazon, it's just the company has no principles but emphasizes on “Leadership pronciples” and it has no bar but hires using the “fake bar”.
Damn no way. I accepted an offer with Amazon and my dumb ass thought the $180K cap was for SDE1. Still a gigantic pay increase for me, but I don't care about the RSUs. The policy around it seems long winded and not as nice as a definitive salary increase. Thanks for the info, I can understand your frustration.
What is TT
Highly valued, least effective, top tier probably
😭?