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Comment by burger_moon | Hacker News Reader

> Fin-tech firms WILL HAVE TO compete against Amazon for (supposed) west coast wages, and could help build a much stronger tech industry than NYC has atm.

Those fin-tech companies almost certainly pay more than Amazon already. IIRC amazon has a cap of 275k for base pay, which means even if you're James Gosling that's the most you're getting, the rest has to come from RSUs which amazon also has a terrible vesting structure for. Amazon is regarded as a top-tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).

More tech presence is good, but I don't think big name companies are going to be too worried about their employees leaving to get paid less and have fewer benefits.

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Very true. It's amusing to see people talk about "west coast wages" comparing favorably to wages in NYC.

The reason top tech generally kept out of NYC until recently is that they had trouble competing against investment bank salaries.

This only changed as top tech (especially FAANG) comp increased to catch up.

The less charitable interpretation is that top tech found itself compelled to pay more and more due to the talent crunch, until after all the increases it finally caught up with average NYC pay. Now, since it already pays at NYC-competitive levels, it might as well open offices in NYC and enjoy the talent pool there.

I am not sure if I agree with you on wage distributions.

Sure, Google and FB pay more and so do top investment banks / hedge funds in math/stat/algo positions . However, those simply are not the bulk of fintech employees.

The majority of fintech SDEs at GS,Morgan,etc. are working on software engineering and maintenance work. These roles pay closer to the $100k number than Amazon's quoted $150k. At least for new hires.

Even in Philly, fintech is offering 150k for software engineers. New York has gotta be over 200, probably closer to 300.

Pretty much this and fintech isn't this one thing that pays well but ranges from highly paid domain experts to generalists working on maintaining legacy systems. most generalists are not usually paid that well by SV big tech standards and the work environment is generally not as great. Amazon is more than competitive enough against the bulk of software engineering roles even at top investment banks and you will see lots of ex-top-IB engineers already working in their NYC office.

You don't understand Amazon's pay model completely. They have a backloaded vesting structure of RSUs, sure, but Amazon also provides a cash 'signing bonus' that vests monthly over years 1 and 2 in an amount that gives approximately the same total expected yearly comp for the first 4 years (same as calculated at time of grant; subject to change with stock movement).

My Amazon comp has been more than competitive with FB, Uber, Google.

[Disclaimer/Source: work at Amazon]

Competitive? Are you a new grad?

Amazon's base pay cap is $160k-ish in Seattle, and $180k-ish in SFBA/NYC.

That's very surprising that their base pay cap in Seattle is only $160k. I know several people, who aren't very senior, that are pretty close to that cap at Amazon.

If Amazon milked these cities to get the most value out of them, then they aren't going to dole out the red carpet with "west coast wages" for their new employees out of benevolence. I'm being cynical, but Amazon accumulated a wealth of data on cost of living, workforce statistics, and real estate to know how to play the HR game so what they pay their employees will always work out in Amazon's favor.

> Amazon is regarded as a top-tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).

Can you expound on this?

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