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A significant portion of his compensation was via recurring Amazon.com stock grants (RSUs). By year 4+ most employees are looking at least 3 separate stock grants vesting every single year.

Had you bought $100,000 of $AMZN in 2010, it'd be worth $1.35M today (and $1.6M in September) which would go a long way toward evening things out in a similar manner.

It’s true that a big part of my comp was in stock, but I only meaningfully gained from stock appreciation in 2017 and 2018. In the other years stock appreciation accounted for only $5-$15K. I sold all my stock as soon as it vested, so I sold a lot at $200, $300, $400... etc. Even in 2017, I got it at all under $1000. Now it’s $1700.

I was just in the right place, right time. Ten years ago my target was to make $100K/year by 2020. Never would have I imagined these amounts were even possible. But once I attained a basic level of financial security, additional income stopped mattering for my satisfaction. It’s one of the reasons I left, despite everything was going well by every traditional measure.

It’s not commonplace.