> i thought including the stock amazon pays well these days
Stock is not pay. As the old saying goes, "A bird in the hand is worth N in the bush, where N is a value that people whose profession is to guess the value of N cannot guess the value of."
It's not, but it'd also be foolish to ignore that RSU's can be fairly easily exercised and translate into real money. It's probably more accurate to say that the stock isn't worth the face value, but RSU's certainly does have value at public companies.
Amazon stock is pay. It has a monetary value that it is easily convertible into. If your point is that RSUs have vesting schedules, annual salary does too, in the form of paychecks.