Ask HN: How much do you make at Amazon? Here is how much I make at Amazon

I work at Amazon too. Last year I wanted to collect compensation information about tech industry professionals (software engineering or PM) in Seattle. I created an anonymous Google Form and sent it out among my circle of friends.<p>Here are the results: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;133LBigv7pOkgpTkA6bHHQQ8rJMrlcBbK8ulavbw2CSo&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;133LBigv7pOkgpTkA6bHH...</a>

I was an System Engineer III at Amazon from 2001-2006. I got hired on at $70k and I think I was making roughly $90k when I left.<p>When I was hired I had to tell them &quot;No&quot; and hang up the phone (in the middle of the 2001 recession) to a $63k job offer. They called back the next day and bumped the offer to $70k. I later learned that I had one of the only &quot;strong hires&quot; ever given out by the bar raiser and the HR rep was told to hire me at all costs. HR played (and probably still plays) insanely hard hardball in negotiating salary.<p>Other SEIIIs hired at around the same time came on at $60-63k and were stuck there. Once the economy recovered in 2003&#x2F;2004-ish we eventually started hiring SEIIIs at &gt;$120k starting salary.<p>Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes for myself and the other two or three employees I&#x27;m thinking of.

Staying anonymous is probably best but fwiw, policies which prohibit sharing one&#x27;s own compensation violate federal law.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;301989789&#x2F;pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;301989789&#x2F;pay-secrecy-policies...</a>

I worked for Amazon (Audible.com) from 2011 to 2014.<p>1 - Full-time freelance audiobook editor.<p>$30&#x2F;hr<p>2 - Post-Production Associate - Level 6&#x2F;4<p>$50,000&#x2F;yr<p>35 shares of AMZN per year for three years<p>3 - ACX Production Coordinator - Level 7&#x2F;5<p>$65,000&#x2F;yr<p>Additional 20 shares of AMZN per year for three years<p>I am no longer ashamed to write these figures out to the public because I now make more than twice the salary that I was making before I left the company. I found that my salary at Amazon was always far too low given what I did, and my job titles were not at all representative of the job I actually did (for the 2nd and 3rd jobs they were almost entirely software engineering jobs.)<p>NOTE: Audible and Amazon have different job levels - Audible&#x27;s job levels are two points higher than the same Amazon job level.

Microsoft employee, not Amazon, but these sort of discussions absolutely need to happen and I&#x27;d like to do my part.<p>Salary: $115k base, no regular bonus or stock, $50k offer in stock over 4 years if I remember correctly although I don&#x27;t know offhand how many units that came out to.<p>Level: SWE1 (60 internally)<p>Tenure: 2 years internally, 7 in industry<p>Yearly pay increase: Averaged ~6k&#x2F;y thus far.<p>Internal candidates have NO leverage. The only way to get a promo is to be in the right place at the right time, and have both high visibility and a manager who has proper political influence and will fight for you. If you want a salary boost, leave and come back a year or so later. &quot;Performance&quot; reviews, accomplishments, hours put in, is all moot unless you have the above, in which case it&#x27;s a nice bit of ammo if your skip level has a lot of competition for his promo budget, but proper political clout can likely force through a promo without. (To add another tidbit that I&#x27;ve always wanted to clear up anonymously: Stack ranking absolutely still exists, if not in a formal process but as a necessity from how budgets are assigned and promos divvied up.)

The most important thing you can do for your career is:<p>* Accept a job somewhere<p>* Get promoted (doesn&#x27;t matter how)<p>* let yourself get hired away from your current company<p>Getting hired away from your current company is the only way to get a fair raise based on increased experience. Companies never give substantial raises to current employees.

I&#x27;ve been at Amazon for a bit over 5 years with 12 years total. Joined with about 7 years of prior experience. From the other post I see I did a very poor job of negotiating when I first joined with my experience. I&#x27;ve always saved the stock and considered it more retirement savings than spending cash.<p>Hired: 2011<p>- Level: SDE I (4)<p>- Location: San Francisco<p>- Salary: $96k base, $20k bonus, relocation, ~160 stock over 4 years.<p>- Average yearly total comp: ~ $150k<p>Promoted: 2013<p>- Level: SDE II (5)<p>- Location: San Francisco<p>- Salary: $110k base, 168 stock<p>- Average yearly total comp: ~ $170k<p>Relocated: 2015<p>- Level: SDE II (5)<p>- Location: Seattle<p>- Salary: $125 base, ~160 stock, relocation<p>- Average yearly total comp: ~ $190k

This is perfect timing as Google Seattle is hiring around 1000 devs and promotions are being revealed in April.<p>I used a throwaway account, but I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m identifiable by this information if my manager sees this. I&#x27;m not too concerned. I think it&#x27;s in Amazon&#x27;s and the employees&#x27; best interest for this stuff to be transparent. Besides that, while I like my work, I can easily get an offer from Google, Facebook or pretty much anywhere else.<p>Position: SysDE 2 in AWS Tenure: 1.5 years Job Level: 5 Base: $120000 Stock: 140 RSU (granted at signing, almost none vested) Bonus: $20000 + relocation at signing, $15000 will come after 2 years Gender: M Native English: yes<p>I was hired at L4 as SE 1, moved to SE 2&#x2F;L5 after a year, and now SysDE 2. There was no raise for SE2-&gt;SysDE2.

Ex amazonian here, but in Ireland, I left (thankfully) at the end of 2015.<p>I was a systems engineer in Dublin and the only significant payraise I got was after I left the company for 4 months to then rejoin, my salary was bumped up 12k euros, for a total of 62k&#x2F;yr, with 150 shares over 4 years (sorry I do not remember the vesting scheme).<p>The HR department in AMZN has the tendency to screw internal employees upon promotion. The way it was unofficially explained to me by a low-level buddy in HR is that there are salary ranges for each corporate level, and during a promotion you get just over the lower bound of the salary range for your new corp level, that&#x27;s the policy, that&#x27;s what happens.<p>New hires instead have negotiation margin and, while the hiring manager can&#x27;t offer a salary higher than the approved salary range, more often than not the offer will end up in the upper bound of the range, to lure the candidate in.<p>Furthermore, there are huge differences between salary ranges in job roles, a Systems Engineer will always be paid 15 to 30% less than a Software Development Engineer at the same level, despite the fact that the skills and duties are not that much different, why? Again unofficially &quot;because Amazon values more people that write software&quot;. Except the fact that in my ex-team, we all wrote software and the expectations were all the same regardless the job title (there was however a difference between levels).<p>So yeah, as internal promotion you have absolutely NO leverage regarding salary, if you want a salary increase and your organization is hungry for people but is having trouble in hiring (like it happens frequently in Dublin where the job market is quite competitive), I&#x27;d suggest you start looking around for a new job, accept the offer and then come back to your same team 4 months later. If you leave the company for less than 6 months and your position hasn&#x27;t been filled in the meantime, the hiring manager is able to extend an offer without sending you through an interview loop, you&#x27;ll get your old job back but with a nice pile of money on top.

IMHO you&#x27;re being underpaid quite a bit with that base salary in the Seattle area. Time to start interviewing at Microsoft, Google, etc. Those companies usually start fresh out of college developers with a base pay a bit over $100k, then bonuses, stock awards, etc. on top.

On a related note, someone at Google started a spreadsheet about a year ago where people could post (anonymously or not) their salary and a few more interesting datapoints (gender, age, location, etc.) I&#x27;m not sure whether the spreadsheet did anything to highlight gender&#x2F;ethnicity&#x2F;visa-status disparities (the biggest disparities I remember seeing were based on location, but that&#x27;s understandable) but it was a great tool to start a conversation about increased transparency in salaries.<p>I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn&#x27;t force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it&#x27;s still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn&#x27;t expect the reaction to be the same.

This is for a new grad in 2014.<p>* Area: Seattle, WA<p>* Position: SDE<p>* Base Pay: $90k<p>* Signing Bonus: $20k immediately, then $17k paid in 12 monthly installments after you reach 1yr in employment.<p>* Stock Units: $53k (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on) Note: this vesting schedule is AWFUL.<p>Needless to say, I rejected this offer and did not work for them. Best decision I ever made.

While this doesn&#x27;t have as much information as you listed, Glass Door (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glassdoor.com&#x2F;Salaries&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glassdoor.com&#x2F;Salaries&#x2F;index.htm</a>) has information on job title&#x2F;salaries at many companies. It&#x27;s a &quot;share your info and we&#x27;ll let you see ours&quot; set of rules, so be prepared to make a profile.

I created a throwaway just to pretend my salary isn&#x27;t public record.<p>Location : Eugene, OR.<p>Position: Assistant Professor of Mathematics Tenure: 3 years Base pay (9 month) $72,000 in 2013, increased to about $75,000 in 2016. (minus union dues). Will increase to $82,000 when I make tenure.<p>Signing bonus: $0<p>Stock: $0<p>Pension : keeping my fingers crossed.<p>Experience when hire. Ph.D plus 5 years post-doc (at Princeton.)<p>Gender : M Native speaker: Yes.

Seattle Googler here (throwaway account).<p>Position: Senior Software Engineer (level 5)<p>Tenure: 4 years, no prior experience<p>Comp: $300K (160 salary, 40 bonus, 100 stock)<p>Male, native English speaker<p>P.S. We&#x27;re hiring.

Position: SDE III Tenure: almost 1 year Job level: 6 Base Pay: $150000 Signing bonus $50k year 1, $40k year 2 Stock: 450 shares, spread over 4 years, 5%&#x2F;15%&#x2F;40%&#x2F;40% No promotions or reviews yet Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes Location: Seattle

While traveling the world, I feel in love with Cape Town so much, that I decided to apply for a job at Amazon since their recruiters were constantly emailing me anyways. EC2 was started in Cape Town and that office does mainly AWS support tools, but not as much EC2 work any more.<p>I do not remember the details too much, but it was something like $84K for my first year, after stock and all that nonsense. The salary is not much compared to the US, but very good for South Africa. However, the offer was in Rands, which has since collapsed. I would have lost about 30% of my salary when converting to dollars.<p>I did not take the job for various reasons, with very few having to do with Amazon. The team itself was excellent and I regret not joining, but I am glad I did not partly because of collapse of the Rand.<p>I still miss Cape Town. One day I will return for another visit.<p>EDIT: I can provide more detailed numbers if people are interested. Would need to dig up the offer letter. Very few Americans must have applied like I did, so Amazon could very easily figure out who I am. Hey, I loved your team, it just was not meant to be!

Germany, Lead Engineer at a company with a couple of hundred employees, my role involves architecture, full-stack coding, cloud stuff: ~$81k (some part of that variable bonuses, depending on companies targets).<p>While the job market seems to be in favor of job seekers these days (it seems to be practically impossible to recruit developers for small&#x2F;medium shops, you get pinged by recruiters all the time) the salary does not really reflect this. it&#x27;s rising but pretty moderately. you get offered $100k jobs once a while, mostly in finance.<p>Also the air gets pretty thin in germany when you actually want to do technically interesting and challenging things. Most jobs on the market are quite dull and involve enterprisey and&#x2F;or legacy things. Most developers I worked with, however, do not seem to mind the backwardsness, are happily married to their languages and tools, and tend not to be overly passionate about their work (which might just be the right attitude).

I worked for Amazon (2013-2014), fresh out of college.<p>Title : Software Development Engineer (SDE I)<p>Base : 98,000<p>Sign on : 50,000 (2 year period)<p>Relocation : 10,000 (2 year)<p>Stocks : worth $70,000 (4 years)

Ieee FML this has been a depressing read. Is anyone else realizing they are severely underpaid?<p><i>Passes the virtual whiskey</i>

Apologies for the bad formatting, it wouldn&#x27;t let me edit for some reason. Here is a more readable version of my compensation:<p>Position: Developer (not classified as SDE, do not manage ppl)<p>Tenure: 2 years<p>Job Level: 5<p>Base Pay: $73,000<p>Signing Bonus: $25k Year 1, $21k Year 2<p>2016 Stock Vest: 104 shares<p>LY Review Score: Exceeds<p>LY Pay Increase: 4%, plus 35 shares of AMZN<p>Most Recent Promotion Increase&#x2F;Stock Grant: N&#x2F;A - no promotions<p>Gender: M<p>Native English Speaker: Yes

Would very much love to see frequent &quot;Ask HN: How much are you making?&quot; threads.

I was working in one of the Indian offices and was recently offered a move to Seattle. I had 1 year experience(was still an SDE-1 but my manager was considering me for a SDE-2 promotion) - they offered 110K base pay with 25k signing bonus which vested over 4 years + around 86k worth of shares which again vested over four years.<p>I chose to not take the offer but went to join a different company.<p>I just want to say that if you&#x27;re quitting for reasons other than compensation, then don&#x27;t ever listen to competing offers from your current team&#x2F;company. That way you save yourself a ton of regret if your new job doesn&#x27;t go well. #lesson-learnt-for-me

Position: Senior SDE Tenure: 6 years Job Level: 6 Base Pay: $141,000 2016 Stock Vest: 162 shares Review Score: Exceeds Gender: F Native English Speaker: Yes

I hope this takes off. I always thought it was weird hiding how much you make -- this only helps employers, and not employees.

I&#x27;m male, a native English speaker, and worked in Seattle around 2013-2015. I was already in Seattle, so I didn&#x27;t need to move. I was an SDE1, though I came in with a bit of experience (~5 years).<p>My base pay was right around $100k. I had a $20k signing bonus the first year, and something effectively similar for the second year (though less cash and some stock was thrown in).

I&#x27;ll add my $.02 for LinkedIn.<p>Sr Software Eng at LinkedIn in CA.<p>$165,000 Base<p>$25,000 Hiring Bonus<p>$300,000 Stock (25% 1st year, then quarterly for the remaining 75% over 3 years) ($300,000 at the time, now it&#x27;s only about half that).<p>10% annual bonus.<p>Male. Native English Speaker.<p>I can also speak to a friend here all the stats are the same except he got a $35,000 moving stipend instead of a hiring bonus.

I am an ex Amazonian, worked for a year and a couple months from 2014-2015 for AWS. I was a straight-out-of-college hire. Base: 93k Stock: 177 options over 4 years. bonus: 30k signing bonus upfront + relocation to Seattle, additional 25k after 1 year tenure spread out in 12 payments, one per month Review: Exceeds, and Rolemodel for Amazon leadership principles. Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes<p>More info: I was promised a promotion and raise, but the problem was they only do promotions once a year, in april. Once I said I was going to leave, I was offered $120, but I left anyways. Now I moved out of seattle and am making more, but in a lower Cost of living location. Also, I had to pay about 8k for &quot;relocation&quot; back to amazon because I left before 2 years.

I don&#x27;t work at Amazon, but I have caught on to what, to me, seems to be an unsettling concept. This may or may not be new, but the concept I am getting it is often referred to as &quot;internal equity&quot; - considering what salaries are already in place for similar positions.<p>This appears to be one of many variables HR uses for salary negotiations and I recognize that. I don&#x27;t see why this necessarily matters for most work places. Shouldn&#x27;t you just pay for what the candidate brings to the table (skills, experience, etc.) and not consider what, even someone with a similar background is currently making in the company. I suppose salary negotiations&#x2F;the labor market isn&#x27;t an efficient market where a price can be assigned given x, y, &amp; z.

After reading some of these comments...<p>Holy shit, I am under paid.

If your reaction to this thread is &quot;wow I am really underpaid&quot; then it&#x27;s working. The playing field for your next salary negotiation is now a little more level.

Google San Francisco Test Engineer III (level 4) ~130k base, 15% annual bonus target, w&#x2F; stock around ~200k annual total compensation *non-native speaker<p>I do have a decade of industry experience. Also my 1 bedroom apartment rent is going to be 2900&#x2F;month this year (annual lease was 2600&#x2F;month last year, they raised it by 300 because fuck you where are you going to live, it&#x27;s 2800&#x2F;month across the street and do you really want to get roommates in your 30s?)

Throwaway account.<p>I don&#x27;t work for Amazon but here is my salary information, for anyone who is interested<p>Current position: 50-100 employee startup in Palo Alto, $170k and .1% equity vested over 4 years<p>Previous position: Google, $130k base, 15-20% annual bonus, around 64 shares vested per year (so around $170k annual net comp) Previous position: Small startup, $90k base<p>I live in the SF Bay Area. When I interviewed, most offers from startups were in the range of $140k-$170k.

Amazon, and any other major company, has created a salary range for any role. As someone who has hired for many of these companies, I can tell you: Sharing your compensation is taboo, but do it anyway. So long as you do it honestly and completely. Talking about only salary in a company that rewards heavily in stock is not useful.<p>There is negotiation room. However, playing the game of show me your hand first is just plain annoying. Why should a company pay you more than is standard in your role? Are you leaving bonus&#x2F;stock money on the table to come there? Relocating? Losing money on a lease? Tuition? Costs covered by your current employer or another offer (ie housing, transportation, childcare, etc)?<p>It&#x27;s a myth that all companies are out to lowball you. The more successful a company is, the more likely it is that they&#x27;ve realized internal equity is at least as (if not more so) important than being competitive in the market.<p>Go see twitter #talkpay. A lot of great data points were shared there.

The OP is being kind of cagey about what their role is. Nearly everyone at Amazon who does what we would generally be considered a primarily dev role is either an SDE (Software Development Engineer) or a WDE (Web Development Engineer). Are you a support engineer, by chance?<p>As for salary negotiations, the best piece of advice I got was to never say a number. You really don&#x27;t have to, you can just keep saying some variation of &quot;industry standard&quot;, their median salary numbers on Glassdoor, etc.<p>This is true for Amazon specifically: I never told them a number despite being asked by several different recruiters, and the offer I ended getting was slightly above their average. If you want more than that there may be some other technique involved, but if you&#x27;re more concerned about being undercompensated, definitely don&#x27;t get tied to any number.

Some facebook internal compensation numbers -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1E1Jz00naFjdfP5RVC3AYDeDXHdkw8PfWZNhYV0e59oM&#x2F;edit#gid=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1E1Jz00naFjdfP5RVC3AY...</a>

If you are good, just leave AMZN. I was underpaid there as SDE 2 and when I resigned, they threw $100k extra a year on the table to keep me but I still left anyway because I did not know what they would do to me if I stay. That $100k extra would put me close to $300k total a year.

Position: Developer in Seattle<p>Tenure: 4 years<p>Job Level: 5<p>Base Pay: $143,000<p>2016 Stock Vest: about 140 shares<p>Review Score: Exceeds<p>Gender: M<p>Native English Speaker: Yes

I honestly don&#x27;t know why I&#x27;m so worried to post from my main account since I don&#x27;t work there any more, but I am, but here was my salary. I only worked there for 12 months as an SDEII, part of my package involved being relocated from a different continent.<p>My compensation was as follows: Year 1: 122,000 + 28,000 bonus + Relocation + a lot of other benefits. After that, the base assumably would have went up, but the bonuses I was given were 250 AMZN rsu&#x27;s 5% after one year anniversary, 15% on the second anniversary, 20% each 6 months after.<p>Amazon does an amazing job of woo-ing people and making attractive offers, unfortunately they don&#x27;t put the same effort into retaining their staff.

Location might be useful information. I&#x27;m assuming most of the folks responding here are in Seattle. If so, all the salaries listed in this thread seem shockingly low to me.

I created a throw away account to answer this but I will say that my teammates at Amazon and I discussed salary openly. We all were making far below market except for the 2 teammates who had been there 4+ years.<p>I think for lasting that long, Amazon really pays off in equity compensation which they dole out willingly (with 4 year cliffs of course).<p>I made 90k as an SDE I straight of college. 20k sign on bonus. Second year bonus of 15k. 150 shares of stock with the regular 5%, 15%, 20% cliffs. Biggest raise I got was 4k when I received an exceeds.

I was an intern over the summer, just graduated and was offered 95,000 salary, 27,000 signing bonus with my first paycheck, and another 20,000 over months 13-24. In addition, I get 53,000 in RSU that are payed out: 5% after my first year, 15% after my second year, and 20% every 6 months after that until I&#x27;ve been there for 4 years. Finally, i got a 10,000 relocation lump sum.<p>I have friends who interned the summer before and they were offered the exact same thing. This is for SDE 1 position.

If I could upvote this more, I would. All companies hide the salaries do they can underpay. Glassdoor under estimates typical salaries and are not meaningful. OP - Please consider opening a simple google doc and let anyone fill in the detail.

I was hired as a &quot;Web Development Engineer I&quot; several years ago (level 4). My base compensation was virtually identical to yours, but my signing bonus and base pay were a little less than half. Stock grants were also very similar at hire. After a couple years my job role changed to SDE, I remained level 4 and was given a better than 10% raise.<p>In my fourth year my total compensation was estimated to be around 120k.<p>It&#x27;s worth looking at the H1B data. I&#x27;ve got some limited anecdotal data, but the H1B data appears to clearly delineate the same salary ranges Amazon gives to US Citizens. (Maybe they will pay citizens 10% more, but the ranges actually look pretty similar to what I&#x27;ve heard.)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bdata.info&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bdata.info&#x2F;</a><p>(I am a US Citizen, English speaker, in Seattle.)<p>Main moral of the story if you choose to stay at Amazon: don&#x27;t worry about your level, focus on your job role. You can probably keep doing the work you&#x27;re doing and become an SDE if you talk to your manager and frame the conversation right.

If you really want to do this, start a Google spreadsheet.

I work for one of AMZN&#x27;s subsidiaries down in SF. Its kinda hard to say exactly how much I earn since most of my compensation is in retention and acquisition bonuses.<p>Roughly $130k a year base, $150k a year in retention and $100k (for one more year) in pre-acquisition stock.<p>6 years in the industry, no higher education. SDEII (I think?)

I&#x27;m starting this summer in Amazon Seattle as an SDE II<p>- 4 years of experience - Non-native English - They sponsored my H1B application - 145k base - 20k bonus yrs 1 and 2 - 100 RSUs - 15k relocation bonus, 10k extra for relocation expenses. And they give me a full container to move my stuff. - Male

What general region or city is this? Cost of living can be a major effect on pay, comparing, say, the insanity of the SF Bay area to anywhere else.

Seattle summer intern -&gt; SDE1 Full Time offer<p>$95k&#x2F;yr<p>$27k signing immediate<p>$20k signing 2 year vesting<p>$53k stock 2 year vesting<p>Ended up turning it down because I didn&#x27;t want to work at Amazon, so no negotiation.

Research Scientist First full-time job 150k<p>(I saw us make offers as high as 200k for fresh ph.d.&#x27;s)

Position: developer, not an SDE though. No oncall.<p>Experience: college hire (beginning of 2015)<p>Level: 4<p>Base: $90,000<p>Signing bonus: $22,000 immediately, $18,000 monthly over 2nd year<p>Stock: 200 shares of AMZN (5% at 1 year, 15% at 2 years, 20% every 6 months after)<p>Location: Seattle, WA. Relocation was included over 2 year prorating.

Position: SDE II Organization: Kindle (Seattle based) Base pay: $101.500 Bonuses: $28.000<p>I&#x27;ve been at Amazon for about a year and a half. I always suspected I was quite overpaid. And I&#x27;m a non-US citizen on top of it.

You&#x27;re not getting &quot;ripped off&quot; by having a base salary of 125K USD (with benefits and equity) fresh out of college.<p>Tell you what, with a Bachelor&#x27;s in Chemistry (in my year 176 people started, only 42 finished the degree so it&#x27;s not a free lunch) I can expect to make between 40K and 60K CAD out of college <i>and</i> pay higher taxes than in the US. With a master&#x27;s that I&#x27;m working towards, I&#x27;d be on the upper end of that spectrum. So <i>boo-hoo</i> to those making only 125K with equity and benefits.<p>:&#x2F;

&gt; I&#x27;m not aware of any Amazon policy which prohibits sharing one&#x27;s own compensation, but I still made a throwaway.<p>IANAL but I&#x27;m pretty sure it&#x27;s illegal as fsck for them to retaliate against you for discussing your compensation.<p>According to the National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, private-sector employees have the right to engage in &quot;concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.&quot;<p>Again, I am not a lawyer. Just a bunch of pixels on the screen, really.

FYI, it is illegal in the USA to restrict employees discussing their salary amongst themselves. Unfortunately it is common for companies to declare this information confidential and covered under employee confidentiality agreements.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;301989789&#x2F;pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;301989789&#x2F;pay-secrecy-policies...</a>

While at Amazon, I worked in two different roles. I don&#x27;t have the exact numbers, but I&#x27;ll put ballparks in here:<p>(1) Support Engineer * Base: $72,000; increased at 1yr to $74,000 * Bonus: $20,000; half in first check, other half over months 13-24 * Stock: I don&#x27;t remember<p>(2) Software Development Engineer * Base: $82,000<p>Gender: M Native English: Yes I honestly don&#x27;t recall if I was L4 or L5 or both.<p>Both of these were in Seattle. I do know for a fact that there were&#x2F;are others who were hired and paid more than me.

I work at a podunk Santa Clara, CA startup<p>20+ years experience. Working remote from southeast U.S.A.<p>Tenure so far: 2.5 years<p>Salary: $150K<p>Stock: purportedly .75% of company 4 years 1-year cliff, with small follow-on grant later, don&#x27;t know what recent dilution is, though I think more recent funding has been &quot;debt&quot; at low interest with preference<p>Not a regular VC situation, company funded through other means.<p>Outlook -- real uncertain, market has definite need, execution so far has been very mixed, company willing to re-do things the right way

* Area: Austin, TX<p>* Position: Systems Engineer<p>* Level: 5<p>* Base Pay: $98k<p>* Signing Bonus: $18k immediately, 15k over months 12-24<p>* Stock Units: ~$120k, 5% first year, 15% second, 20% every 6 mo after. Additional (smaller) grants starting year 2.

I work in Portland, have 5 years of experience, and I&#x27;m making about 90k after bonuses (no stock or sign-on bonus). I love Portland, my hours are very nice (~35hours), and I have a good amount of technical freedom. But boy....Maybe I should make the move up to Seattle.<p>It&#x27;d be nice if people mentioned how many hours&#x2F;week they work for me to get a good idea of what to expect. Especially since we&#x27;re talking about Amazon.

Out of curiosity, what does this add that GlassDoor.com doesn&#x27;t?<p>Note: as of right now, GlassDoor is down for &quot;Scheduled Maintenance&quot; but the question stands.

At my old company, I was a &quot;Jr Sysadmin&quot; in title, but really a mid level Syadmin. I started at $42k&#x2F;yr, then moved up to around $49k&#x2F;yr. I should be making $55-65k&#x2F;yr given my certs, experience: 8 years as generalist IT, mostly Windows Sysadmin, some Linux. Familiar with ShoreTel, comfortable with security -- really REALLY want to make a lateral move to it.<p>I&#x27;m also an SME &amp; do reviews for a certain book publisher to see if I think it is worthwhile, accomplishes the goals set out by the author &amp; is technically correct. I&#x27;m unfortunately currently unemployed, so things suck, but I have no qualms about sharing my salary, where I think I should be &amp; why.<p>Yes, I may not be using crazy automation stuff &amp; yes, I need to learn something as ubiquitous as VMWare, but it&#x27;s not hard. A monkey can do those things. What I want to get into is SCCM &amp; serious Windows automation. It&#x27;s just, the positions are few &amp; far between :-(

Still in first year.<p>Position: SDE 1 Location: Seattle Base: 110,000 Signing: 25k over two years RSUs: 40k when stock was high in 300s

I worked for IBM and we had a policy where you couldn&#x27;t discuss salary with your peers.<p>I had a long discussion with manager at the time where I asked the question: &quot;How do I advance my financial career?&quot;. We concluded that being an external hire is the best way, and as such, pretty much meant if I wanted more money, get a job elsewhere.<p>So in the end I did. It was the money that triggered it, but ultimately there were other factors, such as not being given the role I was promised, a miss communication about who would decide my promotion (my old or new department), and of course, being asked to accept a band promotion for no extra money.<p>I also recall there being published market data you can get from HR which shows the average for your role, and I did notice I was way below average in compensation.<p>I don&#x27;t miss leaving one bit.

SDE, Level 5, four years, started w&#x2F; bonus: $126k, ended: $117k New job: 175k + equity (fuck you amazon)

Position: SDE1 Tenure: &lt;1 years Base Pay: $110k Signing Bonus: $20k Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes<p>Beat my best bay area offer overall, so quite good with the low cost of living here. It does seem like you have to move companies every 2 years to keep climbing the salary ladder.

I knew the UK salaries can&#x27;t compare, but I wasn&#x27;t aware the difference was so high.<p>It would be interesting to see the difference in pay in the same company between US and UK offices.<p>Looking at these numbers makes me wish I had moved to the US when I was younger.

These discussions feel good, but are ultimately useless. This is just going to be a collection of anecdotes from people who self-select to report because they feel good about where they&#x27;re at, or because they feel righteously justified in complaining about their situation. And, as they say, the multitude of anecdote does not data make.<p>Unfortunately, salary &quot;surveys,&quot; like the recently-reported Stack Overflow one, or the classic Computerworld one, are much the same. Self-selection ruins the data. The responses have to be random to be useful. And the silly thing is that most people who are involved in this business know this.

A friend of mine when he graduated got a base developer salary of $90k in 2011, shares &amp; benefits (whatever that works out to), and I think $10k bonus for every year he stayed with Amazon. He worked in the Seattle, WA, area.

I&#x27;m not an Amazonian (for some reason I laugh when I hear someone refer to themselves as this).<p>I started out at about 64k which after 2 years on the job became roughly 90k, this year I&#x27;m on track to make a little under 100k. I think at the moment my role is the equivalent of an SE II or an SE III.<p>Because of the place I work at, I don&#x27;t get stock or profit sharing, etc. I think that software engineers across the board don&#x27;t receive the right compensation until it becomes shockingly apparent to the company and they risk losing us. Honestly, my org didn&#x27;t bump my pay up until I started putting out feelers to move on.

Stating which location you are in would be important for salary comparison purposes.

Facebook Offer:<p>iOS Developer<p>Base Salary: 140k Signon Bonus: 25k Stock &#x2F; 4 yrs: 200k Annual Bonus: 10%<p>The job I took this year:<p>iOS&#x2F;Android dev Base: 190k Stock &#x2F; 4 yrs: 3% Bonuses: tied to company revenue<p>Work History: 4 years over 4 different companies (startups and one big co)<p>Gender: M<p>Native English Speaker: Yes

Mountain View Googler here:<p>1 year prior professional SWE experience at the time of hiring, CS undergrad degree from a state university<p>Female, mixed ethnicity, American&#x2F;native English speaker<p>SWE II, L3<p>$110k base, ~$45k in stock, 15% target bonus ($172k total assuming stock price stays stable and I make said bonus)<p>Worth noting that I tried not to give my then-current pay to the recruiter during the hiring process and was (very politely) told that they&#x27;d cancel my application if I didn&#x27;t give them a number. Also tried to negotiate the base salary up (asked for $120k) and again, got very politely told to take it or leave it.

Non Amazonian(final interview with Amazon) but had to chime in:<p>Based in AZ Base Pay: $80,000 Bonus: 12-15% holiday bonus My Experience: 2 years front end dev, self taught. Company: Won&#x27;t name. But ~200 people in the company. 40ish engineers.<p>Interviewed with Amazon for Web Dev I . Each time salary was discussed, base range was for 85-115k, sign on of $10-25k and I can&#x27;t recall stock. Confirmed with friends who work there, all are SDEs making 6 figures.<p>Throwaway account as well, just want those in my area anyways to be aware that earning potential is good.

Ex Amazonian here. I worked as a SDE1 in the Downtown Seattle set of offices from about 2012 to 2014. My compensation was $95,000 base, and about 105,000 once you took into account stocks.

Love this idea! Made a quick site to help everyone post and share easily, hope it helps!<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;honestsalary.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;honestsalary.com&#x2F;</a>

Honest question + comment + disclaimer<p>question:<p>why not add your info on glassdoor.com? (is there some evil behind glassdoor I don&#x27;t know about?)<p>comment:<p>Probably worth noting general location of employment, like the metro region you&#x27;re in.<p>disclaimer:<p>I&#x27;ve been researching salary myself in the bay area based on glassdoor data:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1BoMvtY_mICEYygy0jXVGwmGIJxFs2zsAXsQvM6K8BEk&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1BoMvtY_mICEYygy0jXVG...</a>

This is a web application for anonymously sharing salary information among a pool of participants. Each pool is identified by a UUID. A user cannot view the results of the pool unless they first share their information; the pool must also meet a minimum number of contributors set at pool creation time.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;anonymous&#x2F;894b151cc981f783e3af" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;anonymous&#x2F;894b151cc981f783e3af</a>

Position: Developer Evangelist<p>Tenure: 1.2 years<p>Job Level: 5<p>Base Pay: $130,000<p>Signing Bonus: $25k Year 1, ~5k year 2<p>20XX Stock Vest: 10 shares<p>LY Review Score: Exceeds<p>LY Pay Increase: 1.1%<p>Gender: M<p>I really enjoyed my job and would go back. No counter offer when I left but that was at my request. Was up for L6 when I left.

This is super interesting. A lot of responses make me feel underpaid, but I&#x27;m not really sure because it&#x27;s dirt cheap to live in Reno: You can get a 1 bedroom apartment for $500-$1000 a month. For reference, my wife and I bought an 1800 sq ft house on 9000 sq ft of property for $230k.<p>I&#x27;ve been a software engineer at a small software company ~20 employees for 3 years now, but I&#x27;ve only been out of school for a year and I make $75k.

This thread is depressing, but I&#x27;ll post my information:<p>Company: small, non-startup software company in DFW<p>Position: Senior Research Software Engineer<p>Tenure: 4 years<p>Experience: 14 years (4 EE, 2 non-IT SysE, 8 SwE)<p>Salary: $92,500 (started at $78,000)<p>Signing bonus: $0<p>Yearly bonus: $0<p>Stock: 0<p>Many of the comments here make me feel like I ab seriously underpaid. However, over the past several years in my interactions with prospective new companies (ranging from startups to subsidiaries of huge defense contractors) I get the impression that my salary is slightly above average.

MS employee here, with a bit of anonymization<p>Location: Seattle area<p>Gender: Male<p>Category [1]: White<p>English native: no<p>Age: 35-40<p>Years in MS: 5<p>Title [2]: Senior SDE<p>Level [2]: 63<p>Hiring bonus: 0<p>Base salary: ~$140k<p>Annual bonus: ~16k<p>Annual stocks: ~17k (over 5 years)<p>Annual benefits: ~$25k<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewsocialtrends.org&#x2F;interactives&#x2F;multiracial-timeline&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewsocialtrends.org&#x2F;interactives&#x2F;multiracial-time...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;geekologist.co&#x2F;decoding-microsofts-sde-titles-and-levels&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;geekologist.co&#x2F;decoding-microsofts-sde-titles-and-lev...</a>

* Area: Seattle, WA<p>* Position: SysDE II<p>* Base Pay: $120k<p>* Signing Bonus: $75k over 2 years<p>* Relocation: Fully paid + $2.5k<p>* Stock Units: $115k [200 RSUs] (5% at 1yr mark, 15% at 2yr mark, then 20% every 6 months from then on)<p>* Gender: M<p>* Native English Speaker: Yes<p>I have ~2 years of experience.

Why not just check here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.jobsintech.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.jobsintech.io&#x2F;</a> real data from H-1Bs

This is super interesting. A lot of responses make me feel underpaid, but I&#x27;m not really sure because it&#x27;s dirt cheap to live in Reno: You can get a 1 bedroom apartment for $500-$1000 a month. My wife and I bought an 1800 sq ft house on 9000 sq ft of property for $230k.<p>I&#x27;ve been a software engineer at a small software company ~20 employees for 3 years now, but I&#x27;ve only been out of school for a year and I make $75k.

I work as and SDE2 in Germany: ~€70k base pay + ~€20k RSUs

Here is an offer for someone with 5 years of experience in San Francisco:<p>Base 180k Sign on 80k over two years 189 RSU over four years with 5-15-40-50% vesting schedule.

By federal law, an employer cannot discriminate or retaliate against employees for discussing compensation. One of the good things that unions made happen in the past before they made themselves their own worst enemies.<p>Some companies treat this as &quot;you can discuss internally but it&#x27;s a company trade secret externally&quot; which I don&#x27;t know how the courts have actually treated it (if at all.)

Ex Amazonian but I was an SDE1 ~1 year of experience before joining. I worked in Seattle<p>Salary: $100k Bonus: $25k Stock: I forget but it was not much

I&#x27;m genuinely curious, this post has over 208 points and is only 3 hours old.. why is it falling off the front page already?

Ex-Amazonian here. Started as an SE1 in 2012 @ $98k, $20k signing bonus ($18k second year), 160 RSUs, and relocation expenses.

Started at 110k + 15 sign on bonus my first year. I got at least 90k over 3 years in stock after the prices went up so high.

Position: SDE 2<p>Joined: Last year<p>Base Pay: 145,000<p>Native English Speaker: Yes

your pay is probably fairly unique since you listed it down to the stocks allocated and per year performance. I have to imagine that the list that includes all the attributes that you have is a fairly short list(probably just you).<p>just a word of caution if you do fear retaliation at all. might want to fuzz the numbers a touch.

You&#x27;re getting screwed, big time. Quit now.<p>Source: I was hired at Amazon as an SDE1 in 2004 at a base salary of $85,000.

There can&#x27;t be an amazon policy against sharing your compensation (well, there can be, but it would be void). It&#x27;s legally protected in the US, under the laws which support union&#x2F;labor organizing.<p>(I&#x27;m not a lawyer; I&#x27;m not your lawyer; this is not legal advice.)

Company: midsized South Bay startup (50-100 people)<p>Position: Developer (not web)<p>Age: 25-30<p>Tenure: 2 years<p>Initial Salary: $105,000<p>Current Salary: $120,000<p>Signing Bonus: 20,000 shares, vesting over 4 years (Taking into account current valuation and strike price, assume stock is worth, to me, ~$0.50&#x2F;share)<p>Annual Bonus: None<p>Additional stock since hiring: 25,000 shares, vesting over 4 years<p>Gender: M<p>Native English Speaker: Yes

I&#x27;m in Montreal, full-stack developer at a small&#x2F;medium-size company, four years experience, ~$80k. Feel like I messed up a bit and they would have gone for 90 or 100. But they give great benefits and a 35&#x2F;hr work week.

Salaries for Germany anyone?

I&#x27;m not working for Amazon or any other big ones but I think this is a very good idea. Transparency always helps and I wish something good comes out of other people sharing their financial details.

Check out the recently launched site Comparably <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;comparably.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;comparably.com&#x2F;</a><p>It is so much better than Glassdoor at dissecting salary data.

If you work at Google, you can continue the discussion here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11314449" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11314449</a>

Don&#x27;t work at Amazon, but..<p>Social Security(Baltimore)<p>Sr. UI&#x2F;UX Dev<p>Govt. contract at $75 an hour no benefits<p>In this area you should strive to move your Dev career towards govt. work; govt contracting being the best in terms of hourly pay.

(Non-AMZN). ~10y experience UI developer.<p>$165k base 20% annual bonus 200k worth of stock vested over 4 years.<p>I like the company so I did not negotiate showing the other counter offers I had at the time of joining.

Blind <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;blind.&#x2F;id737534965?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;blind.&#x2F;id737534965?mt=8</a> &amp; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.teamblind.blind" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.teamblind....</a> talks about salary ad nauseam... so if you want to see salary discussions, get the app.

This is really interesting and I am m glad that you shared. the company will typically move mountains to keep you if you are good.

It would be interesting if people also posted how many hours they work a week, to get a sense of the work&#x2F;life balance.

25-35 white male 150k base + some equity I haven&#x27;t paid attention to Senior software engineer (front-end) NYC

I wish I had time myself, but it would be really helpful if someone tabulated the results from this thread.

You need more context to make sense of pure dollar values - in which city&#x2F;metro-area do you work?

HR can find you based on the numbers you gave if you don&#x27;t fuzz them a little bit.

I own a small software consultancy based in NYC. I should make roughly 500K this year.

I was there from 2009 - 2011 as a contractor and made $35.00 an hour as an SDE II

Level: SDE II (5)<p>Location: Van, BC<p>Base: 99k (CAD currency)<p>Stock vest in 2016: 60 RSU<p>Tenure: 2 year

4+ yrs, syseng II, ~107k salary and stock push my total comp to ~145k.

I&#x27;ve always wondered how people can make a living doing Turking.

This is yet another millennial trying to skirt earning their keep.

Base Pay is pretty low for either Seattle or SF Bay Area or NY

I don&#x27;t blame you for being nervous, but it&#x27;s actually against the law to punish employees for sharing salary data. Companies try to hide it, but the NLRB would be interested to hear about it.

SWE II at Twitter. Not in SF.<p>Salary: $118.5k<p>Bonus: $10k<p>RSUs: 4500 over 4 years

thats great info, lets make more of these topics!

We went through the comp data on this thread and another one on Google comp (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11314449" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11314449</a>), and we added it all to this Google Sheet: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z14Uov92EgIGjjLjh4lrmTnyk&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;11tyJW9KPcSiLZBBuf0Z1...</a><p>Feel free to share&#x2F;add to this doc. We&#x27;ll post this in the Google comp thread too.<p>Here are the median comps by level for Amazon and Google, just based on the postings collected in the Google doc as of 3&#x2F;22. --Amazon -- New grad: $141K SDE1: $146K SDE2: $173K SDE3: $250K TPM3: $220K<p>--Google-- Level 3: $170K Level 4: $200K Level 5: $312K Level 6: $575K T7: $640K Tech Level 5: $660K<p>Just a few notes - Total comp includes bonus, signing bonus, relocation bonus, and stock. Bonuses and stock were all annualized straight-line. (I know this is not how Amazon stock comp is done, but we assumed this in our calcs.) Since we took postings from 2 different threads, it&#x27;s possible that one person could have posted once in each thread, in which case that would show up twice in the Google doc. Also, there&#x27;s a lot of variance particularly with bonuses which are lumped in, and some of the higher levels only have one data point, but you can look at the data in the Google doc if you want to dig in.<p>If it helps with comparison between Amazon and Google, here&#x27;s how Amazon levels map to Google&#x27;s (from Quora: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-do-Amazons-engineering-levels-map-to-Googles" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-do-Amazons-engineering-levels-map-...</a>) Amazon SDE 1 - roughly a Google T3 (&quot;I&quot;) or T4 (&quot;II&quot;). Amazon SDE 2 - roughly a Google T4 (&quot;III&quot;) Amazon SDE 3 - roughly a Google T5 (&quot;Senior&quot;) or T6 (&quot;Staff&quot;) Amazon Principal - roughly a Google T6 or T7 (&quot;Senior Staff&quot;) Amazon Sr. Principal - roughly a Google T8 (&quot;Principal&quot;) or T9 (&quot;Distinguished&quot;).<p>Full disclosure - we&#x27;re Step (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.step.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.step.com</a>), and we&#x27;re building a platform to help engineers and product managers anonymously crowdsource personalized salary and level estimates from decision makers and hiring experts at tech companies. This thread is especially interesting to us, because it shows the need&#x2F;demand for more transparency around compensation and company feedback. Right now, we&#x27;re working with ~10 NYC startups that will assign personalized salary&#x2F;level estimates and other feedback to anonymous profiles, but our bigger vision is that as soon as someone signs up, they&#x27;ll see how each and every company values them without having to interview&#x2F;talk to recruiters.

Tried the transparency bit. In larger companies like Amazon it might work because there&#x27;s still a bit of anonymity. But for most companies large and small here&#x27;s what happens:<p>Bob gets hired as a developer in 2012. He&#x27;s been with the company for 4 years. Bob is a decent developer who gets his work done but makes the occasional mistake. Bob&#x27;s title is application developer. When Bob got hired he took the job because the pay was as good if not better than his last job and the market was tough back then and he was happy to have the opportunity. Bob makes 50k a year and lives in Florida where the home office of the company is. Bob&#x27;s title is software developer.<p>Fast forward to today:<p>The company is really taken off and they need to hire some top talent and have opened the doors to remote workers. John joined the team back in 2014 at 55k per year. John lives in Florida and is a mediocre developer. Sure he gets work done but it&#x27;s often late or buggy. He tries hard and has shown much improvement and continues to every day. His title is software developer. There&#x27;s a new IT manager and his job is to hire in some top talent to work with the current talent to get things moving. Prior to the hiring push the new IT manager sees the salaries currently and decides to bring salaries more in sync with what the market currently is at. As a result of this Bob, between his cost of living increases and this new pay bump is at 65k and John is at 60k.<p>As he can now look at remote workers he has feelers out around the country. An ace developer applies for a position and has some skills the company desperately needs. She is based in New York and demands a higher salary than the company traditionally pays because the cost of living is higher. The company approves her demands at 90k per year and she starts with the company, also with the title of software developer. Her name is Sally.<p>A month later the company decides to have transparency across the board with salaries and publishes everyone&#x27;s salary.<p>John is immediately offended because in his mind (and by his title) he&#x27;s doing the same job as Bob and Sally yet is making considerably less. Bob is upset because Sally just got hired and is making an extremely high amount more.<p>Each of them are considering their titles &#x2F; positions. None of them are considering the individual situations that have led to the people making what they make.<p>So how should salary negotiations go. If the company is open and transparent, they should explain to John that basically he&#x27;s not as good as the other developers so therefore he hasn&#x27;t gotten the same cost of living increases etc. What he has been getting is an education and the opportunity to improve his craft.<p>Bob would need to know that he started low and it&#x27;s just the nature of salaries to creep up the way they have. They&#x27;d have to discuss Sally&#x27;s situation which frankly is none of Bob&#x27;s business.<p>While all of them are valued employees, if they all made the same exact amount either it wouldn&#x27;t be enough or the company would go broke quick. So they can either suck it up and deal with it or find a job elsewhere. They&#x27;ll be disgruntled either way.<p>Remember your salary is your salary. Negotiate for what you think is fair. If you want a raise, ask for one. if you feel you should be brought up to current market rates, say so. Ultimately if you are not being treated fairly after giving the company ample opportunity to make it right and communicating with them, then find a new position. Finding out someone has something that is worth more than what you have will always make you want what they have, that&#x27;s just human nature. Not disclosing salaries is more to keep harmony amongst the workers and people happy in their jobs and focused on THEIR OWN needs as opposed to just trying to get the same thing as someone else for whatever reason.<p>Are there companies who leverage this for nefarious purposes? Sure but you really shouldn&#x27;t be working for those companies now should you?<p>The key here is communicate with your company. If you are valued they will try to accommodate you or at least give you a good reason, if you are met with resistance or reprecussions then maybe reexamine your relationship with them.

I&#x27;m not an Amazonian, but I wanted to chime in here to say I think this thread is a great idea and I would love to see more like it.<p>I write about salary negotiation and coach people through it, and I think sharing salaries publicly will encourage more people to negotiate and get paid what they&#x27;re worth.<p>I recently coached a new Amazon employee, and he got a very good offer, which he increased by about 15% using VERY simple negotiation tactics that we discussed. If he hadn&#x27;t negotiated, he would&#x27;ve still been paid well, but would have left 15% on the table before he was even in the door.<p>I submitted this link yesterday—it&#x27;s a Salary Negotiation workshop I did for developers in Orlando last week. It&#x27;s definitely relevant to this conversation:<p>EDIT: Here&#x27;s a direct link to the Salary Negotiation workshop summary to save you a click: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;21zFG5q" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;21zFG5q</a><p>Here&#x27;s the HN submission for posterity: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11305683" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11305683</a><p>(Not sure why I originally linked to an HN submission linking to the workshop. ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯)<p>Nice job starting this thread!

A reminder to everyone that the National Labor Relations Act prohibits companies from firing employees for discussing their salaries:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.govdocs.com&#x2F;can-employees-discuss-pay-salaries&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.govdocs.com&#x2F;can-employees-discuss-pay-salaries&#x2F;</a>

I make roughly $20 an hour (about 16 after taxes :( )at the moment as a junior full stack intern working part time (I live and work in US). Sometimes I wonder if I should move on to find some other job, even if its remote...<p>On the other hand, my work is not that stressful, and I&#x27;m still going to school so my job is very flexible on time.<p>Anyone else been in a position like me?

You gave enough information that they could find you without using any links in your profile or your online handle.<p>Another thing that could be interesting is your accent. My eyes were recently opened about the discrimination that happens based on that.

Amazon offered me 104k&#x2F;year + 18k signing bonus for year 1 and a 14k signing bonus for year 2. Software Developer position.<p>35k in stock options that would vest over 4 years.<p>That was March 10th, 2011.

Op (and others) adding your office would be informative if you are comfortable with that.<p>Otherwise compensation is hard to compare.<p>I quit but my pay was ( Lin Seattle, numbers rounded a bit)<p>90k base 53k initial grant, backloaded 5% after 1 year, 15 after 2, 20% every 6 months after that. 37k signing bonus, 20k lump sum, 17k spread over 2nd year.<p>Raises were &lt;1% at first review, 3.5% at second. So when I left after just over 2 years I was at 94k base. They did give me some more stock at my second review, but it was 2 years out iirc

I&#x27;m starting to think I need to move out of the UK to somewhere that actually pays developers a decent salary.

I started out at $35,000 USD &#x2F; year in Vancouver then I stopped working 9am ~ 9pm including weekends and just started my own SaaS which made less than 10% of that.