Hacker News Reader

Comment by DVassallo | Hacker News Reader

Author here. I got a big bump from $230K to $396K in 2016 when I got a competing offer and Amazon matched it so that I wouldn't leave. From then on, the growth from $400K to $500K happened because the AMZN stock nearly tripled in that time frame.

View on HN

Thanks being quite open about what's changed the trajectory!

I do share the same sentiment as yours. I'll be closely watching your experiment and hopefully learn something from you!

Good luck and best wishes!

Well, this just illustrated why a company shouldn't play the matching game. What did Amazon get for matching the offer? They got to keep you for a couple more years at a premium. I'm sure you did some good things in those two years, but the accounting side would probably have a difficult time assessing the real value of those two years.

might have been just to avoid letting that particular skill set and experience go to a competitor. the value of that competitor getting that person was more valuable than amazon keeping him/her.

Hiring a replacement would cost them a lot of money and the replacement would also expect $400k for the same responsibilities anyway.

Huh? This seems like a non-sequitur. What does leaving in 2 years have to do with your worth this year? How many years would he have to stay to pay off this year?

By that logic hires are bad deals if they ever eventually leave because you "lost" the money of their last n years.

with Amazon's reputation, i imagine it's pretty difficult for them to hire and retain talent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com