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Comment by torbTurret | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how things are at Amazon with the recent base salary changes.

I imagine if most technical people don’t see a decent salary bump there will be a mass exodus, which is ironic given the increase seems to be in response to attrition.

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I don't know for the US but in Europe inflation rise mostly driven by energy costs will call for a substantial adoption of wages anyhow. Inflation adjusted wages will not yet mean increased disposable income, I know.

If energy price increases are dominating your budget as a developer you should probably ask for a raise anyway or consider adjusting your energy consumption.

If anything the constant growth of real-estate pricing (now driven by low interest rates and inflation fears) should impact developers much more.

He's not saying energy dominates his budget. He's saying European CPI increases are mostly due to energy prices.

What I'm saying is that if you're upper middle class income you are probably more concerned about the cost of housing than the cost of energy/food/etc.

CPI increases started way before Russia and the energy price instability - the things energy will immediately reflect in will not be a big % of your income so increases aren't that dramatic. If my heating bill goes up 300% that's still going to be less than 2% of my household monthly income and that's during winter when we keep the heating on the entire time.

> but in Europe inflation rise mostly driven by energy costs

For now, yes, if you happen own your own place. If you don't already own it, your rent or planned house purchase will go up as well from the increased demand from the 2.5 million of refugees already here and millions more on the way as the war goes on.

Whatever is left of the EU middle class who aren't real estate owners will be obliterated.

Even if your place is mortgaged - most people in the UK for e.g. are on short fixed interest rate deals, usually 2 to 5 years. If you're on a shorter term deal and your interest rate increases at the end, you're going to struggle to pay your mortgage.

The European energy crisis is mainly one of supply - most of Europe chose to be dependent on Russia for their gas supply despite US warnings that Russia would use that to try and get away with invading neighbouring countries, and now they have there isn't enough gas available and it will take years to build and switch to new sources. (The market was already pretty tight due to a higher-than-expected surge in demand after all the lockdowns.) So quality of living and real-terms wages after inflation have to go down for most people because there isn't the energy to support their old quality of life. It's possible that developers and other Big Tech employees will manage to dodge this, but there's no guarantee of that.

My wife joined Amazon in Jan. She says that in her department (does not work in engineering), they are yet to see a change in comp and they are trying to figure out if it is real or just a PR stunt.

I think it's not really that ironic, if you consider that the mass exodus was anyways likely to happen, if Amazon had done nothing. So really the only thing that changed, is Amazon trying to make an attempt to stave off the default exodus (which was already being observed/starting); in that sense, by analogy: is pumping water on a fire ironic? The fire is a given, it's already happening, so the water is just a genuine attempt at firefighting (might work, might not).

The irony analogy I envision is pouring a bottle on a small fire, expecting it to be water, and having it turn out to be gasoline.

That is, in an effort to solve problem A, you introduce solution B, but solution B only makes A worse than it was.

Anecdotally, Amazon recruiters have far more slack to work with these days when recruiting. No idea how this affects compensation internally, of course.

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