Amazon RSUs – What's the Future?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31205346

by catsareok • 4 years ago

1 3 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I killed off my Amazon interview process, pre-base salary bump, on a hunch that the RSUs were going to go to shit. Now that they have, and now that they've raised the base salary, I'm thinking of getting back in. What's the sentiment here?

pinewurst• 4 years ago

You'd still have to actually work there. It'd be for a pretty good salary, but is that the tradeoff you want to make? And a 12% decline is hardly catastrophic (Amazon stockholder).

catsareok• 4 years ago

Amazon stockholder here too - 31% decline from peak, been holding for 7 years, last two years flat. I think you're confused.

ozzythecat• 4 years ago

The base salary bumps aren’t in very significant amounts.

Some engineers getting paid at the bottom of the band have had their compensation increased with another $30K-$40K in salary, but I don’t know of a single person anywhere even remotely close to the top of the salary cap. In the 2022 comp discussions, all the “extra” compensation was still in the form of future year RSU vests.

Amazon has not changed their core compensation philosophy. The majority of the compensation will continue to be RSUs that vest in the future. Whenever the stock goes down or sideways in the current year, the company will give you no stock adjustment for the current year.

Your total compensation for this year is down $50K? Here’s another $10K in salary, and we’ll make up the $40K with a few extra RSUs spread out over NEXT year and the following year.

Funny enough, if the stock goes up, we won’t give you any extra shares period. You take the hit when the stock goes down, and you get no proper reward when your previous RSU grants increase in value. We base all your future pay on previous grants :)

Source: 10+ year Amazon veteran who very recently left after being pressured to manage out high performers in order to meet company attrition targets. I thought it was bs not just in terms of being a decent, respectable person, but it made no sense why I’m pressured to do this when we know entire organizations in many of Amazons older businesses are effectively coasting.

Amazon RSUs – What's the Future?

Related Stories