If a person gets an offer of say 200k TC at Amazon, his TC will remain the same until he switches job or gets promotion. Is that right? No pay jump within band, no bonus? How will they keep someone motivated/rewarded for good performance? What is this target comp? Is it like if the stocks fall and comp falls to 195, is the target comp 200 or is there any other target comp?
It’s pretty simple, target is attempted to be hit each year
You will get minimal base increase of 2-3% and may be some shares depending on stock value at time of review
How hard u can cry
Motivation is null if you come in high. Zero raise/ stock bump last year and expect the same this year. Holding out for my year 2 RSU’s to leave. It is quite de-motivating getting zero raises when output is solid.
I agree. Amazon is a terrible place for non-SDEs. Lousy cash comp, insulting raises.
The key is to get picked up by Google and Facebook for higher comp after 1-2 years. Those here when stock was super low are pretty solid right now.
It means if stock goes up and your total is above your target then you get minimal raise and low rsu refresh.
It's Bezos's genius method of having the stock market paying his employees instead of amazon paying them. Given the short tenure of people, a lot of the rsus don't see the light of day (I just left voluntarily, short of my two year mark, so leaving all that on the table)
When comp is decided (new hire numbers, new stocks granted at yearly review, promo stocks), the stocks best over the following 2 years, not the current year. Based on the expected stock growth (it almost always increases way more than expected), you will have a target comp (base+stock+bonus) for those 2 years. That target comp should be more each year as it’s basically the raise you’ll get each year since base comp barely increases. So let’s say it was the 2017 review and your manager is looking to update the number of stocks you’re getting. To stay in your salary band and not get a decrease in pay YoY you would need 25 more stocks in 2018 and 100 more in 2019 (2018 has stocks vesting from previous years already but 2019 doesn’t have any yet). So your manager awards you 125 shares. Those in theory should be split appropriately across those two years. If it worked out so that you got the same number of shares in 2018 as 2019 it’s basically saying that your expected raise between those two years is whatever the stock is expected to increase by. Your actual raise between those years is how much the Stock really does increase by. Things can look kinda screwy in some circumstances though. If you are still within that first 4 years and the stick has grown way more than the expected growth, you will likely not start seeing more stocks awards until they start getting awarded for years past the 4 year original sign on grants. This often times puts people past their own salary band and like midway through the next which also means less if any increase if you get promoted at that time. The reality of it is though that you’ve been getting raises and you’re already getting paid as a level more senior than you. At the end of that 4 years as well it can look like a cliff. The stick has risen so damned much for the 4 years you were there that the stocks you’re getting for year 5+ drip off because they’re awarding based on your current level. At 4 years though many people have been promoted and target comp should be in that next band.
So for ultra high performers you get the same TC as under performers of the same level if stock grows. You also have to be exposed to the risk of the stock tanking and Amazon saying SOL. Lose lose for high performers. Amazon seems like a bad place for high performing seniors. Much better get 2x refreshers and the FB stock growth compounding that.
I don't know why target is supposed to be a secret. You know it the day you are hired (it's your tc in the first year including base plus bonus) and later when you get stock grants it's easy to calculate (the first time you get a grant for year x it's your base plus the grant in that year). It's only tough to figure out in years where you only get a grant on top of existing shares but that happens in at most one year. The rest of the time you have at least one year that is getting a first grant so you can almost always calculate it. So I see no point in keeping it secret, it's hardly a secret. I show my employees how to calculate it.
How exactly do you calculate it? Even if you're getting awards for future years which don't have any RSUs in the year yet, because stock growth is already baked into the numbers, you also have to know their assumption on the stock growth in order to determine the target comp. I think it's a pretty strange system where everyone gets an automatic raise based on stock, but then there's a cliff after year 4; I guess it automatically lowers the salary of the rest-and-vest folk who don't wanna work for a promotion? Given that promotions are often rather scarce and L5 SDE-II is considered to be the terminal level, I guess you gotta either move elsewhere or accept an effective demotion in TC after year 4. (Unless the stock continues growing at a much higher rate for you to keep exceeding your target comp, because awards are given for subsequent two years, effectively up to three years in advance?)
I’m pretty sure in one training or another I was told this info is confidential :/
If tc means target comp, target comp always goes up y/y and with promotions. The confusion comes when you think of total comp. If a person's total comp is 230k one year but their target comp is 200k, that can create some uncomfortable situations on promo or annual review.
So Target comp != Total comp. Who decides this target comp? Is it published somewhere?
Your management decides your tc. As an IC you're not supposed to know it. There used to be a formula you could use but I'm not sure it still holds. The other side of the coin is that they usually won't let your salary drop y/y regardless of the rules if they value you, at least in my team.