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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile Amazon recruiters keep spamming me to join their cult.

No one *wants* to work for you anymore. You don't need to recruit. If someone is desperate enough they'll let you know.

> No one wants to work for you anymore.

You're in quite the bubble. Lots of folks I know would work at Amazon. Friends have joined the computing groups (Lambda, ECS, EKS) to work on observability, scale, security. It's important work with broad impact.

Some of that impact is making the CIA more effective at the things the CIA does, as Amazon runs a special datacenter for them on-prem at Langley.

It is quite sad how many in our industry are either sufficiently clueless or sufficiently indifferent that they would eagerly go work at the CIA's sysadmins, especially under the guise of "important" or "impact" (quite literally in the case I mentioned).

I would be proud to go work directly for the CIA, but I’m too selfish to do so, because the pay would be worse than what I’m doing now.

Not all Americans loath their country and the institutions that help maintain it - imperfect though they may be.

I'm going to assume ignorance here, versus malice.

A lot of people use "CIA" to mean "everything bad about the government". I've seen people claiming the CIA started the Iraq War, which they were actually opposed to and the admin had to ignore them to get it going.

They could just mean "the CIA's record, specifically". There's plenty there.

Claiming that things are their historical record leads to fighting the last war and not the next one.

Oh, for christ's sake, it's been like 75 years if you include the OSS.

They're the department with an image of white-collar intelligence collection and a huge sideline in dirty fighting to maintain American hegemony. That's who they are, have been and who they will be.

No, I just mean the people orchestrating extrajudicial assassinations of US citizens (and others) and operating torture prisons.

I agree, I know tons of people that work for and would love to work from them, and I do not live in WA.

Yeah my big takeaway from the recent press is that they didn't even think I was good enough to be a patsy to fire. Definitely an ego hit

Have you applied to Amazon? Talking with recruiters who've left it sounded like Amazon incentives were different than other places. So internal recruiters spend more time contacting people already in their system. Sometimes not even doing a basic fit check.

Yeah, I made it to the last round but wasn't given an offer.

You’d be surprised. Do they pay well? Do they have cool products?

“I’ve done a lot more for a lot less” - The Office.

I think a common approach is “I know this job is garbage but if I can last 18 months, my resume will look much better”.....or.....”maybe my manager will be alright and the bad stories will be less relevant”

Another factor might be that there are many companies just as bad, but without the prestige of Amazon. At least the Amazon name will pad your resume. The names of many other bad companies won't (or not to the degree of Amazon).

It's amazing because I've told multiple Amazon recruiters "I don't want to work at Amazon, please make a note so that other Amazon recruiters don't contact me" and it never works. They have a central secret list of employees not to rehire, but when it comes to sourcing they can't get their shit together.

Accept a job, and get paid to be fired and never reached out to again?

You vastly overestimate their competence. I routinely get recruiter calls from companies that have embargoed me for a year due to not succeeding in their interview. They contact me, get a conversation started, then in the middle they apologize and say they didn't realize I'm on the embargo list.

Last time I responded with a polite message that once they treat their non-tech employees better I would consider. Never heard from them again.

For 500k? Yeah I’d do it even for a year, working on the most dullard shit then have 3 years off.

Other Big-N companies have comparable pay with way less stress.

What I see being touted is F & N > G > A & A for TC?

Obviously there are many factors in play so that might not always be the case.

Also per my other comment on this thread, sounds like Netflix really blows away all others because there is no shenanigans around RSUs, cliffs, unexpected appreciation, etc.? Correct me if I'm wrong since I am definitely no expert at this game.

This is probably true, but socially Apple seems like it gets a better reception/superior people. Folks at Amazon are pretty normal.

Disclaimer - I’m very average and work at Amazon

Yes Im probably average and I’d go with whoever takes me, but as I’m outside of the US it’s all hypothetical

Not sure if this is the reason, but I've heard Apple (and also Netflix) give individual teams much more autonomy on how they select, interview, and hire candidates, so maybe the fit between each person and their team is better? i.e. you may even not get leetcoded depending on the team and hiring manager.

Versus Facebook, Amazon, and Google having a more one-size-fits-all approach to hiring.

Amazon, until recently, also hired most SDE2 and up with a team specific approach, with the SDE1's effectively interviewed by an algorithm (via coding interview etc).

doesnt Amazon cap base salary around $180k and only 5% of RSUs vest the first year? my understanding is that, barring a massive RSU package, you cant get to $500k in the first year.

This isn’t the complete picture. It’s true that the vesting schedule gives you only 5% of RSUs in your first year, but employees’ cash signing bonus is increased to offset that. So if the total compensation target for a role is generally $500k (say, a principal engineer or a director, maybe?) and your salary is capped at $160k, you’d be given a signing bonus of $500k-$160k-(total stock vest x 5%) in cash. It’s not as though you’re paid significantly less when you start, it’s just that how you are paid is different.

I keep hearing all the letters of FAANG have more or less similarly competitive total compensation if you factor in RSUs, appreciation, etc. But then I hear things about "cliffs" and how extremely high TCs are possible only because of stock appreciation.

In that sense, is Netflix basically untouchable in terms of compensation, if F/A/A/G (and other companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Microsoft, etc.) can only be competitive via unexpected or non-guaranteed stock appreciation?

Plus if you reach a "cliff", you end up with just your base salary - which seems like it's not too much better than a non-tech Fortune500 company?

Is my understanding wrong?

I wouldn’t want to work at a place like Netflix that doesn’t comp with equity, especially after a year like 2020. A 500k TC could easily be 800k+ now, if that’s cash it’s still 500k and worth less due to inflation.

If the stock significantly depreciates there will be layoffs anyway.

Beauty of cash is that you can do whatever you want with it. For example, buy Netflix shares. Or buy Alphabet shares. Maybe Apple. That way you can both benefit from upside and somewhat protect from downside of your own employer's shares tanking all the while you're getting laid off (as you're suggesting).

The funny thing about cash is that you can use it to buy equity. Who knows, maybe you’ll even learn to diversify by investing in areas uncorrelated to your line of work

It’s equivalent if the cash bonus is paid up front or at the beginning of 2020 when the employee starts. So 200k base and 300k signing bonus.

I _thought_ Netflix comps with a cash salary and if that’s the case it’s worth less than equity. The salary depreciated over the course of 2020 while an equity grant would have appreciated from the start.

Read my above comment.

Thanks for clarifying

We can’t base everything on 2020 though. My stock portfolio absolutely skyrocketed in 2020 beyond imagination. But it has remained mostly stagnant in 2021.

Would cash+equity comp still be preferable to an all cash Netflix comp in that case?

I guess the gist of my question is:

Non-Netflix FAANG level company salary + stock without appreciation >= Netflix all-cash salary?

To be absolutely clear, comp is not based on stock appreciation. You get your grant (aka no. of stocks/RSUs) that vest at some cadence. By the time you vest a tranche and share price has increased is an added bonus (though generally people in tech think 4x in 4 years is their birth right.)

As for Netflix, they do give you option of choosing to split your salary every year i.e all cash, all options, some cash and some options as you see fit.

Is the added bonus of increased share price required for the comp to be similar to an all-cash Netflix comp though?

Or is it still competitive without taking such appreciation into account?

I think still competitive without the appreciation. Amazon is the only employer which takes appreciation into account. Most others don't.

Please correct me if I am wrong here.

> To be absolutely clear, comp is not based on stock appreciation. You get your grant (aka no. of stocks/RSUs) that vest at some cadence. By the time you vest a tranche and share price has increased is an added bonus (though generally people in tech think 4x in 4 years is their birth right.)

This depends on the company. My understanding is that Amazon does keep stock price in mind when doing vesting of stock. If your personal projected comp is above the "intended" level (due to a large share price increase), your stock award in a given year will be smaller.

So your stock vest in year 3 might be smaller because growth was high (or your initial offer was above-market). Google and Facebook don't do this. Each year is modeled independently. Microsoft also models years independently afaik, but their stock vests slightly differently.

When you negotiate with amazon they do try to bring stock appreciation into it. It went like this:

I asked for X comp, say 100K total for 4 years, including stock. The recruiter calls me back, says she got the total I wanted, I write down the numbers and it totals to 90K. I ask her why the math does not check out and the answer was that the 'missing' 10K is the projected stock growth.

Haven't seen anything like that in other negotiations.

This is particular to amazon and is a dick move any way you put it.

I think the idea is that you'd only reach a cliff if someone decided to cut off the periodic RSU grants, and at that point you should probably have been interviewing elsewhere because they probably want you gone?

Cash bonus is taxed at a much higher rate, isn't it?

No it’s just income on your w2 same as rsus and salary. You’re thinking of long term cap gains which is entirely different matter

Bonus fits into the category of "supplemental wages" which Google suggests has a special 22% tax rate. However that rate also apparently applies to RSUs most of the time.

> Bonus fits into the category of "supplemental wages" which Google suggests has a special 22% tax rate. However that rate also apparently applies to RSUs most of the time.

This 22% tax rate is the default rate applied by your RSU brokerage which often leaves you owing taxes to the IRS. IRS treats RSU at vesting as regular income. For the tax purposes it is same as if you received their equivalent in cash and then used it to purchase the same number company shares [0].

[0] https://www.cordantwealth.com/rsus-tax-saving-and-hedging/

This is a “withholding rate” (how much tax your employer will deduct from your paycheck) not an actual tax rate that you will owe

Nope. When your RSUs vest, their value at the time of vesting is added to your W-2 income, and gets taxed at regular income.

they give you a signing bonus, paid out over time, to make up for the difference in total comp in the first two years

If you leave in less than a year, don't you have to return the signing bonus as well?

There are plenty of other employers that pay that and more and aren’t Amazon. Amazon typically lowballs.

If anything you only benefit from being in Washington and not paying half of that 500k in income tax:

HN isn’t the world. Amazon recruiters get tons of positive responses to their reachouts.

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