More true at Amazon. Amazon actually has a salary cap, and everything else is stock. Amazon pays towards a "target total comp" number, which includes vesting RSU's. They do not do bonuses.
When someone excludes “the top subset” why do the next several replies describe Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc as if these were mid-tier companies? These are the generation-defining outliers that are printing money.
Q: “What does an ordinary non-elite baseball team do?”
Yep. I haven't worked there but got an offer from them and work with a number of ex-amzn people. I forget the exact numbers but it was something like ~20% in total vest over the first two years and then something like 40% a year in years three and four. It's heavily back-loaded and, what a surprise, they have a lot of attrition in the first two years of every cohort. There is a bonus to offset this in the first couple of years, to be fair, but iirc there's a clawback clause on that as well as relo. Everything I've heard and seen about their work culture makes them seem like the 21st century wal-mart.
Vesting Schedule after working with the company for X months months:
12: 5%
24: 15%
30: 20%
36: 20%
42: 20%
48: 20%
They give cash signing bonuses for the first 2 years while RSU vesting catches up. SDE1 gets a lump sum with prorated clawback, SDE2 and up gets monthly installments and no clawback. The year 1 signing bonus is slightly larger than the year 2 signing bonus. The larger RSU vest in year 2 more than makes up for this. With this structure target total comp rises 5-20% per year.
Base salary is capped at $160k in most locations, $180k in ultra-high COL areas like San Francisco and New York City.
The problem with that is that they become a talent pipeline for Facebook/Google/Apple/Netflix.
I met tons of people who did 2 years at amazon and departed to Facebook for a fat offer that was worth far more than the remaining unvested amazon stock.
Trying to nickle and dime people when they come in the door just leads to people departing early. Employee turnover is a massive cost.
I have also met people who shifted opposite direction. The market for salaries in the tech space will self correct over time. If you are a solid engineer you'll get paid enough and it becomes more of a decision about where you want to spend your time. Do you want to move Facebook forward? Is there a new team in Google you want to work for? Is your passion movies so you want to work for Netflix?
At some point it is less about money and more about where you want to spend your time.
I can never grasp why any developer who didn't need the money would do anything other than work to build their own business. I know if I ever have enough to not worry about it I'll never work as an employee again.
They know that the options would be quite difficult to pass up, and so they don't have to try as hard to retain people during that time. "Treat like shit" may be a slight exaggeration, but we've also all heard about the working conditions at Amazon.
