That article was misleading (at best) when it was first written, and hasn't aged especially well, given Amazon's recent pay band adjustments, which seem to have increased the ceiling at L5 and L6 by at least 100k. Even taking into account the fact that Amazon doesn't have equity refreshers (by default, like a lot of tech firms; they do still give them out to a small % of top performers on a discretionary basis), top-of-band L5 and L6 Amazon offers are now extremely competitive on an annualized basis when compared to other top-paying firms. L5 can stretch up to 400k, which is more than Snap pays its mid-levels (though admittedly Snaps L4 band is much narrower, so the average Snap offer is still probably much better than the average Amazon offer at that level). I've seen L6 offers over 600k, and 500k seems to be totally unremarkable (nearly 50% of the new offers at this level posted on levels.fyi in the last 3 months have hit this number).
Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's impossible to do better, but nowadays I'd be more surprised to see Google beat an Amazon offer anywhere above entry-level rather than the reverse.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's impossible to do better, but nowadays I'd be more surprised to see Google beat an Amazon offer anywhere above entry-level rather than the reverse.