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Comment by savanaly | Hacker News Reader

Impossible to judge the effect until someone investigates the relative sizes of the lost bonuses and the increased hourly wage.

I did read Amazon's claim in the article that the increase outweighs the decrease. But I would like to see a journalist confirm that and also report on how big the difference is and whether it affects certain types of workers differently than others.

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I don't think there's anything to judge here. Amazon said multiple times that with bonuses and stock awards their average compensation was well above any compensation for fulfillment workers in the sector. People thought this was bullshit/paper money and kept demanding for a higher hourly wage.

So Amazon did the logical thing. It increased the hourly wage, removed a highly unappreciated and misunderstood form of salary and simplified the compensation scheme so it could actually rebalance this value into a more predictable, easy to understand and liquid compensation. This should help anyone that felt exploited and of-course is going to piss off the people who actually understood the variable portion of their compensation and the ones who were already above the 15 USD mark.

I don't think what were people expecting? Hourly wage raise + stock + bonuses? I mean I don't want to sound like a capitalist pig, but that doesn't make sense, especially when we are talking about this kind of job. People deserve livable wages but also they deserve to get recognized economically when they pursue advanced studies and put the effort to get into jobs that require more specialized skills.

Saying that their compensation is higher than competitors in the sector says nothing about whether they will be paying out more total dollars after the changes than before.

For those hourly workers, Amazon plans to replace its RSU grant program with a direct stock purchase plan by the end of 2019. The net effect, the company says, will mean "significantly more total compensation" for the workers.

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653597466/amazon-sets-15-mini...

Amazon is a trillion dollar company. They did not have to make any decision.

Amazon is valued at $1 trillion but Amazon does not have $1 trillion. Amazon's total assets are only about $131 billion. $20 billion of that is cash.

Moreover, it stands to reason that much of that excess (beyond assets) value is predicated on their unit economics, which depend on fulfillment costs, remaining good.

> only

"Only" as in an order of magnitude less than originally estimated.

So they have plenty of money not to have to choose.

There is no way to really investigate this claim since only Amazon has all the numbers.

Over half the pay rise for Amazon workers in the UK.

They gained a pay rise, but lose a yearly share (£1,500 or $1,950), and another share every five years.

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