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Comment by brut | Hacker News Reader

So how much do they pay for this kind of job? And how much latitude are you given as a "leader"? Is it all talk or are they serious about this? I don't really care if I can buy a private jet but I will put in a lot of hours if that means I get to live a life never caring about money (> 200k a year).

I've seen this said before in other companies ("we want leaders") but when it's time to put some resources into X or Y project, things slow down really fast...

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Amazon tries to push Leadership Principles into every part of at least their corporate world. It's supposed to drive decision making for basically everyone, brand new engineers on up (I don't know if they push them lower down the stack). What I'm getting at is it's not solely for "leaders" as in high level folks.

> live a life never caring about money (> 200k a year)

I'm in my 3rd year as an engineer here (and of my career). Their target for me is 175k as a new SDE II, but I'm already well above that considering AMZN growth. If we're talking calendar year, as long as AMZN doesn't take a dive, next year I'm easily hitting 200k (yes, I realize how crappy the reliance on RSUs is). I'll probably hit 200k as an actual target next year. So, your number isn't difficult to reach, which is both great and ridiculous.

Thanks for the data point. I'm looking at openings in Canada and the only numbers I've found during a cursory search were 'Salary Range: $80,000 to $140,000/yr, commensurate with experience' for a 'Research Scientist II' position.

Ah, my mistake for assuming that you're a software developer (or at least one that would fall into a typical SDE role). Bad habit.

I have confidence that we're nowhere near the ceiling for AMZN, if that says anything.

Pay varies a lot depending on the location, as well. It's meant to be competitive with local industry rates.

is SDE II an L6 position?

EDIT: Whoops

No. An SDE II is an L5 position.

Amazon employee here. Just to clarify these leadership principles are intended to apply to everyone at Amazon, not just those that are in "lead" positions, but if you are applying them a lot you are much more likely to end up in a senior or manager position. These principles are also a significant part of both the initial hiring process and the post hire advancement within Amazon.

Pay obviously varies but I've found it to be competitive with what I've been offered by other large tech companies, and better than almost all startups I've talked to, especially when you factor in that compensation in Amazon stock is actually worth a lot of money, while startup stock is a gamble with pretty bad odds.

As a former Amazon intern, the impression I got is that "every" role is supposed to be a "leadership" role. It makes sense when you realize that they are hiring/growing so fast, they need to (a) transmit culture quickly & efficiently and (b) be able to arbitrarily put people in "management" positions org-chart-wise.

For intern/new grads, Amazon is less competitive than similar sized companies (Google/Facebook/Microsoft). Microsoft is also based in Seattle so this isn't just about differences in taxes/cost of living.

The vesting is also backweighted so that they don't lose too much stock from people who leave after less than a couple years.

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