Did AWS offer you more than ten days PTO? I saw on levels.fyi that is the listed starting point at AWS, which is noticeably lower than other employers like Microsoft.
15 days 2nd year on.
Microsoft gives you 15 days from year 1, 7 holidays and 10 sick days which you can use just for "mental health".
So Microsoft is definitely better but it's not huge. Microsoft has WAY better 401k and free health benefits for family etc.
I'm taking that all into consideration and yes, I'd make 50k+ more at Amazon and that would help me retire a bit earlier. I'm also not a homeowner currently, and houses here are insanely priced.
The 7 holidays are literally holidays, like Christmas, thanksgiving, etc, where most everyone is off work.
The 6 days are basically sick days, but you can also use them as one-off "dont feel like working" days .
I would say this is a decent policy by USA standards, but most tech companies have better policies. Amazon pays high salaries to engineers, but the other benefits are pretty poor.
Edit: also, health insurance is optional but most people pay for it. It costs me and my wife about €240 per month, but options range from €45pm to €650pm with my provider. But that is used to cover stuff like queue jumping. I can go to a specialist, get a fast MRI etc, and my private hospital costs are paid. If I didn't have insurance I'd still get that for free, but I'd be waiting for weeks or months to see a specialist. Having said that, some specialists are rare. If you need to see someone who specialises in a particular type of condition you might be waiting a few weeks even if you have the best health insurance imaginable. And when it comes to the big urgent stuff, public health can really work. My sis died from cancer a few years back, and after a 9 month battle, I don't think they paid a cent. She had a lot of life threatening symptoms during the last 5 months and every one of them got immediate care. (That's something I didn't know about cancer - you can wake up one morning with a collapsed lung or a blood clots)
Going to be terse and just say it's not a decent policy in the slightest. Don't be afraid to negotiate for more.
Personally I have never had a white-collar job in the US which started out at 10 days but it does seem to be the average in the US (when starting out) [1]. All of my employers have always started out with 15 days of vacation time with more after a certain amount of tenure. Given the age and experience of OP, I think they are getting shafted with 10 days.
On a side note, the US is truly awful when it comes to vacation and time off from work. The culture here is non-stop work and it's not sustainable.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/heres-how-many-paid-vacation...