[tidepod12]

AFAIK there's an exception for some geos like the Bay Area (and maybe NYC?) where salary can go as high as $180k (or maybe $185k.. I don't know the exact number). That might be why levels.fyi reports higher than $160k (or it could just be lies) but the general gist is correct. Amazon has a hard cap on their salaries. Any pay over ~$180k (or whatever the number is) is given out as either cash bonus or as stock.

[Zaheer]

Ex-Amazon here. This is right - Bay Area cap is $185k.

[bmcfeeley]

Sure, no arguments here about the existence of a top end — that’s moving the goalposts though. There is not a hard cap at 160K.

As an aside, is this materially different than any other FAANG? All the offers I’ve seen when browsing tools like levels.fyi scale much faster in stock/bonus compensation than in salary.

[tidepod12]

It isn't "moving the goalposts". GP was correct about there being a hard cap at 160k (including the geo we are discussing in this thread). You found an exception to that cap, likely due to it including geos other than the one being discussed here, and I explained to you why that might be.

The point of the entire thread is that "Glassdoor says this person makes 170k" is misleading because Amazon is unique with these salary caps. Even executives do not make higher than 160k (or 185k in SF) salary, so looking at that number on Glassdoor or levels.fyi doesn't tell you much. If you are trying to determine an Amazonian's compensation (as this thread was trying to do) you need to be aware that the salary number alone is not an indicator of total compensation.

It is materially different from other FAANGs, because AFAIK other FAANGs may give high proportions of their pay in stock, but they do not have a hard cap for salary. At Google, when promoted to VP level you may still get a 10% salary bump along with your 50% stock increase. But at Amazon, after you reach $160k you will never get a salary bump again. This leads to confusion for people that aren't familiar with the stock grants because if they are comparing Google vs Amazon pay, they may go to Glassdoor see that a Senior Developer at Google makes $300k salary while an Amazon Senior Dev makes $160k, and not understand why there is such disparity.

[m0zg]

Senior developer at Google does not make $300K. That's salary+stock. Salary alone is almost certainly below $200K in this case.

[tidepod12]

It was just an example, not referring to an actual position. There isn't even an actual title called "Senior Developer" at neither Google nor Amazon. If you want a real job title to go look at, look at the pay for an L7 SDE at both G and Amazon. At Google: $270k salary, at Amazon: $160k salary (according to levels.fyi)

I swear half the comments on this site are just nitpicking "nuh uh you are wrong about this tiny one word in your comment" while ignoring the actual point of the discussion.

[m0zg]

There's Senior SWE title. I assumed that was what you meant. They comprise the bulk of Google's engineering, and their base is about $180K. Everything else depends on performance or lack thereof.

[tidepod12]

That's fair. I meant it more of an abstract "a developer who is in a more senior position at the company" rather than explicitly someone with the title "Senior [Developer/SWE]", but I can see why my comment was confusing.

[joshuamorton]

In general yes. This cap goes up to the VP+ level at amazon. At G/FB you can get base salaries in excess of 300K at that level. At Netflix, salaries can break 500K since stock is handled differently.

And yes, there is a hard cap at 160K. The hard cap apparently changes based on geographic region, but that doesn't really matter for the people in Seattle (the majority of Amazon's employees) who are under a 160K salary cap.

Just as a point of comparison, an L4 at Google could have a 160K salary.