2009: $40K - My first full year as as programmer. Worked for a small company doing GPS vehicle tracking in Europe.
2010: $30K - Left my job in April, moved to Dublin, and joined Amazon in November, as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team.
2011: $75K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promoted to SDE-2.
2013: $150K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2014: $185K - Promoted to SDE-3 (senior level), same team.
2015: $230K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2016: $390K - In April I got a competing offer from Oracle at $370K and Amazon matched it.
2017: $470K - Still at Amazon. I led the development of CloudWatch Logs Insights: aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazo.... Income increase over 2016 was mostly from AMZN stock growth.
2018: $511K - Helped the team launch CWL Insights at re:Invent in November. Income increase over 2016 was again mostly from AMZN stock growth.
2019: Left Amazon last February.
All figures are gross income as shown in my W2. My last 3 year-end (Dec) paystubs here for those curious: imgur.com/a/EgIVQln
It's a payment in AMZN stock instead of cash. Amazon, like most public companies, has a cap on cash compensation, and pays the rest in stock. Public companies prefer to do this because stock compensation doesn't come out from the company's bank account, but comes out from diluting their total shares. But to the employee, these end up as cash in the bank account, just like regular cash compensation. They are taxed the same as well.
At Amazon the cash cap is $160K. Anything over that amount gets payed in stock (RSUs).
True. I've heard the same about devs in Silicon Valley. These pay figures are definitely not the same across the world. Many factors to consider there, of course, like cost of living.. In Nairobi, such salaries are reserved for those in management.
$500k?? How on earth is that possible?
Here’s my full income progression:
2009: $40K - My first full year as as programmer. Worked for a small company doing GPS vehicle tracking in Europe.
2010: $30K - Left my job in April, moved to Dublin, and joined Amazon in November, as an SDE-1 (entry level) in the AWS CloudWatch team.
2011: $75K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2012: $120K - Moved to Seattle with the same team. Promoted to SDE-2.
2013: $150K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2014: $185K - Promoted to SDE-3 (senior level), same team.
2015: $230K - Still at Amazon, same team.
2016: $390K - In April I got a competing offer from Oracle at $370K and Amazon matched it.
2017: $470K - Still at Amazon. I led the development of CloudWatch Logs Insights: aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazo.... Income increase over 2016 was mostly from AMZN stock growth.
2018: $511K - Helped the team launch CWL Insights at re:Invent in November. Income increase over 2016 was again mostly from AMZN stock growth.
2019: Left Amazon last February.
All figures are gross income as shown in my W2. My last 3 year-end (Dec) paystubs here for those curious: imgur.com/a/EgIVQln
Thanks for the response.. What is R.S.U Vest? Does everyone get that at Amazon?
It's a payment in AMZN stock instead of cash. Amazon, like most public companies, has a cap on cash compensation, and pays the rest in stock. Public companies prefer to do this because stock compensation doesn't come out from the company's bank account, but comes out from diluting their total shares. But to the employee, these end up as cash in the bank account, just like regular cash compensation. They are taxed the same as well.
At Amazon the cash cap is $160K. Anything over that amount gets payed in stock (RSUs).
OMG that is really a great work, not everyone has the courage to give up their job to do something else.
Salaries for juniors (college grads) in Silicon Valley are around $100/120k.
He's clearly a senior and worked at a company whose revenue is 232 billion dollars and pays no federal taxes in the US.
500K a year, if you're really good, is not insane if you put in this perspective.
Still is a lot of money, that's true :D
True. I've heard the same about devs in Silicon Valley. These pay figures are definitely not the same across the world. Many factors to consider there, of course, like cost of living.. In Nairobi, such salaries are reserved for those in management.
I don't think 500k is a normal salary even in SV but it's more likely to be reached in big companies than in startups.
It's a lot of money everywhere!