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the 500k is due to Amazon's stock value going up. The amount of stock you'll be receiving is set several years out and is frequently a major portion of your salary. Amazon's stock tripling has put many people at high salaries.

OP is an SDE3, which levels.fyi puts at $154,259 base, $150,648 stock, $19,227 bonus. The stock goes up 3x in the years between the grant and when you vest, you are making tons of money. Most people don't expect Amazon's stock to triple again in the next few years.

Thank you for clarifying!

From the description in the blog post, the author was a high performing L6 SDE[0] getting paid the rates of an L7 SDE[0] because he was about to get promoted.

Amazon has very few L7+ SDEs (~1% of SDEs). So when you read that salary, you have to remember the author is relatively rare even within Amazon.

[0] https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Amazon/Facebook/Google

Yes, I was told to not expect another big increase after the L7 promotion.

It may be time for me to start listening to the people saying a bear market is coming.