[duaneb]

You get stock annually? Otherwise, you have to vest that over several years, severely reducing your annual. AND you're locked in for years just to cash out at maximum value.

Unless you get that kind of equity yearly—which is crazy, and brings up dilution questions—you're better off taking a higher salary and investing as much as possible.

But—adding X market value for equity vesting over Y years with 40% capital gains tax for the first 12 months of holding it leads to a 2016 pay of.... just your salary.

Oh, and you get equity every else in addition to that nice pay, and they don't strap your pager to your face.

[jonhohle]

Amazon's compensation model leans heavily on stock and tops out in the mid 100Ks for all job levels. It's not uncommon for senior roles to get more compensation from stock than salary, and at higher levels the majority of the compensation is in stock. For the majority of employees, once compensation RSUs kick in, vesting occurs on May 15th and November 15th. For L7 (IIRC) and higher, vesting occurs quarterly.

The annual and midyear review process takes this into account and attempts equalize total compensation depending on the value of the stock (basically, you want the stock to be down when the price is used to calculate your total comp at the end of January).

When I was there, it was somewhat difficult to recruit some higher level roles because they might only be offered $120-$150K salary and then 200 or so RSUs over the course of the first year. That doesn't always look as enticing to someone as $250K salary.

[boren_ave11]

>>You get stock annually?

At my annual review last year I received more stock along with a pay increase. So, thus far, yes.

>>But—adding X market value for equity vesting over Y years with 40% capital gains tax for the first 12 months of holding it leads to a 2016 pay of.... just your salary.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not following.

>>Oh, and you get equity every else in addition to that nice pay, and they don't strap your pager to your face.

What do you suggest I do?

[duaneb]

> Can you elaborate on this? I'm not following.

Well, if you do get more stock it complicates things—but you have to distribute out the pay out over the vesting period. In other words, collecting the entire value of the equity into one pay period implies you'll get the same amount of money the next pay period—which is only true if you get that amount of equity annually. It sounds like this may be a possibility

Furthermore, it assumes you'll be at the company for the entire vesting period. Which you might not want to do.

Additionally, you can't cash out the equity you DO get in 2016 unless you want the government to take a sweet 40% off the top.

> What do you suggest I do?

Don't wait for the equity to vest fully, work hard for some good recommendations, and get out of that sweat shop. Amazon rewards ambitious workaholics. Everyone I've talked to who USED to work there (key point being these people left) has issues balancing work, pay, and a life.

To be clear—I'm not arguing anything but that other companies will use you a little more compassionately, and you might make a little more cash in the meantime. You're still doing very well for yourself, Amazon is far from the worst place to work, and you might be very happy there.

[nevir]

> At my annual review last year I received more stock along with a pay increase. So, thus far, yes.

Unless you do spectacularly poorly, you can expect that to continue