[ben_w]

> I’m no special snowflake. I keep my resume updated, my network strong, skills in sync with the market, 9-12 months in savings in the bank.

This is extremely unusual in general, not at all typical.

Here, on Hacker News, we have an unusually high proportion of high earners, and I'd guess a lot of FIRE people like me (and I infer, you), but the median US person has $8k, about 3 months, of savings: https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-savings-account-...

I could not guess either the income nor the savings distribution of those 14k Amazon departures. Also, reports suggest most of these people will have a chance to find a different role within Amazon.

[JustExAWS]

As a former Amazon employee who lurked in the “anonymous” internal #pay-equity and the #pay-equity-discussion Slack channels, I can tell you that the typical return offer for an L4 who was a former intern was around $150K - $165K cash and stock and the average L5 was around $230K - $260K+ cash and stock per year (check my numbers on levels.fyi I might be off that was a couple of years ago).

But I have that amount in liquid cash because I’m an empty nest boomer with my wife who had a house built in 2016 in the burbs of Atlanta that I sold for twice the amount I paid for it in 2024 and downsized to a condo in Florida.

Before 2020, my only security was my ability to get a job fast.

But honestly anyone who expected loyalty from Amazon was like the old woman who took care of the snake. They should have been saving.

And I’m not at all FIRE, I’ll be realistically working until 65. Don’t cry for me. I work remotely and my wife and I travel all of the time including doing the digital nomad thing off an on where we are gone for months at a time.