If you constrain "reality" to the LinkedIn list[1] that Jeff referenced, Amazon is #1. If you drill into the urls and read the LinkedIn ranking methodology[2], you'll see it's based on views of the companys' job listings and career page.

If it was a ranking based on The New York Times stories and reader comments, Amazon would definitely not be #1.

Yes, when Jeff translates LinkedIn's limited criteria into "the most sought after places to work for professionals in the United States.", he's editorializing. That's not too surprising since it's a letter to his fellow owners. Cheerleading is to be expected.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-companies-2018-w...

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-we-created-2018-linkedin-...

I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge majority of average joes who would kill for an Amazon job.

You need to qualify that. Most people would not kill to work in a warehouse or customer support, which is a huge portion of Amazon jobs.

This absolutely. While we tech scene folks love to consider ourselves "average joes," Amazon employs around 100,000 warehouse employees, and for them Amazon is decidedly NOT the #1 place people want to work.

It's a fine place to be a software engineer, so long as you enjoy the high stress/low perks part of the tech scene, but that's a very different, air conditioned environment.

I met a couple of a guys at a bar a few months ago. They both had on Amazon gear and, when prompted, would excitedly talk about their job at a fulfillment center and what it's like to "work for Amazon". They had worked their jobs for 1 and 2 years respectively.

Remind yourself that the warehouse employees are in areas where their choice of work would normally be Walmart or a coal mine. Working for a big name company like Amazon has as much prestige for them as it does for us "tech scene folks".

They aren't slaves...

I know someone who works as a low level manager at Amazon and I've seen salaries of the average Software developer - for both the salary is like $140-$160K. That's nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living. You can make that in 1 of 20 other metro areas that I know of with a much lower cost of living and much lower stress. Even when considering the signing bonus and stock, I was never enticed to actually fly out there and interview even after I got through some preliminary phone screens.

I'm not sure what planet you live when $140k dollars is nothing. As a software developer you might be able to do better, but you are incredibly lucky. I assure you the median wage is significantly lower than that, and of course many people make minimum wage.

In context - $140K for an experienced software engineer in a major metropolitan city isn't outrageous. A "software architect" often does hands on coding. For reference:

https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/

If I can make $140K in metro Atlanta, where a newly built 3000 square foot house can be had for less than $350K in a nice neighborhood, why would I want to live in Seattle?

So not sure what you define as experienced (2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?) but a 5 years of experience SDE at Amazon may make that in salary, but their total compensation will be quite a bit more than that.

If you hang on through your last 2 years of vesting (which is notoriously painful).

Don't fret, there's a good chance HQ2 comes to Atlanta and hikes those home prices. In fact, if I lived there, I'd probably make sure to buy ahead of time

There are plenty areas of metro Atlanta where the house prices are much lower than $335K for a nice size house. I purposefully chose the most affluent county in Atlanta (and one of the top 25 in the US) for comparison.

"Metro Atlanta" consists of either 5 counties or 10 depending on which definition you go by. There is so much sprawl in Atlanta and so much undeveloped land that builders will jump at the chance to build. This is still the South. The government doesn't make builders jump through as many hoops to build.

Politics. Nicer weather. Better environment for women/girls in schools. :)

The weather point is, of course, tough. Seattle summers are bloody amazing. The winter sorta blows.

>Politics

Says nobody that's been to Atlanta or has taken two minutes to use the internet to check preconceived notions about Georgia against the city.

https://www.myajc.com/atlanta-neighborhood-2016-presidential...

Apologies for not responding. I actually forgot I posted this. :(

Lived in Atlanta for many years. It is much more liberal than surrounding areas, true. However, Seattle is in another league when it comes to this sort of thing.

Which is not to say that we don't have a ways to go, either. In particular, we have some really hard problems to consider out here.

Politics isn't just local laws but also state laws.

Which state laws affect individuals more than they would n liberal states? Atlanta being such a major city makes GA very pro business. Businesses are doing a lot to keep pressure on the state to keep it from becoming more conservative.

Laws about abortions, bathrooms, access to the social net, etc.

The weather in Atlanta isn't much better than Seattle, if you compare season to season.

Seattle has one bad season, one good season. Atlanta is the same.

The weather in Atlanta is just more extreme, honestly. Which can matter a lot if you like hot weather. Out here in Seattle it is almost always cooler. Hardly ever actually "cold" though, in that I think Atlanta actually got more snow and I had my pipes freeze more there than I have out here.

Now, the winter is much darker. The shift in sunset and sunrise is much more pronounced. This is somewhat offset by how much bloody sun we get in the summer. Which is truly insane. Sun is up by 4:30 most mornings, and you can see outside till near 10 most evenings. (Sunset, I think, is well earlier than that, but our twilight is bright. I am likely mistaken on this understanding, though. Haven't taken a journal or kept records, etc.)

It is overcast 8-9 months of the year in Seattle.

Yeah, exactly. Amazon pays less than Google and FB, but it is vastly more than your average SF startup, for example.

You know median seattle family income is like 80k right? Less if you consider more of the metro area. That's the family income, so it includes two earner households. NYC is like 50k.

What does the average household income have to do with someone who is choosing between a software engineering job in Seattle and another area with a lower cost of living?

That it's absurd on its face to say that 160k is "nothing to live in Seattle with the cost of living". The vast majority of people live with much less. The rest of your comment was fine re: programmers have other options.

It came with the assumption that I wanted the same standard of living. But the truth applies the other way. You won't live in a neighborhood with top rated schools (they will be safe), but you can live in a nice neighborhood with a 70k household income. When I bought my first home in 2002, it was a new build and 2800 square feet for around $170K. I was making around 70K. Looking now, that same house I use to live in just sold for around the same price about a year or two ago. The neighborhood is a safe, quiet, place.

Commuting to downtown was only about a 30-35 minute drive.

(wife works at amazon (but in palo alto) (and is 1 year out of grad school))

a. That salary is not low. If you chose to run a family of 4 on one salary of 160k, it's your choice. It's still quite good.

b. If you discount 30% of the comp because you feel like it, I wonder how many of the 20 other metro areas are going to match up.

Comparable houses in Seattle compared to metro Atlanta is a lot more than 30%. For reference, the area of Atlanta with both the highest average house prices and the highest household income is Forsyth County. The average house price is around $350K and the average income is around 90K.

I don't know if I'm just being taken advantage of, or if your data is just wrong, or you're lucky, but I've never been offered more anywhere that wasn't Sillicon Valley big tech, or Seattle big tech.

- I posted a link from a recruiting agency (that I have used) but because you haven't been offered that amount, my data must be wrong? The link is "2017 salary survey".

- looking at another recruiting agency I've used, I found this job posting.

https://prestigestaffing.jobs.net/job/lead-net/J3W7C8754PTSH...

- from anecdotal experience, I have a group of four friends from a former job. We all still get together about once a month and we are in a private Slack group. All of us are in our early 40s and none of us have any desire to go into management. We all consider ourselves "full stack developers". Our salaries range from $125 to $145K.

- I just turned down a job for $145K as a lead developer (still hands on coding) because of the commute. I accepted a job that paid slightly less that was better commute and used newer technology.

Thats like a military Major's payrate when converted to civilian pay (bc allowances)

I don't believe LinkedIn is concerned with warehouse workers as warehouse workers aren't using LinkedIn to find jobs.

Correct, but I believe the LinkedIn report was in reference to LinkedIn users. Many of which are not looking for warehouse positions.

A lot of it are "permanently temporary" jobs with no prospects of raises, promotions, etc.

Doing what? The point of Amazon is to eliminate whole swathes of human-powered jobs from the supply chain. You're either getting paid six figures or more for coding or you're busting your ass for minimum wage on the wrong end of the supply chain for just as long as it takes them to get the robots that will replace you working right.

What jobs do you think your "average joes" would kill for?

I hear a lot of disaster stories from corporate at Amazon too, some from coworkers who have worked there. It has a well-known bad reputation in general in tech, even for non-software fields. My girlfriend has heard bad stories about Amazon from the hardware side as well. This doesn't even include some of the absolutely terrible things they do on the warehouse side either - I have friends who have first hand accounts from having worked there, and none of them are pretty.

It's one of the few companies on my list of companies to avoid, unless they improved their employee treatment (and got rid of their bad employee RSU vesting schedule).

> I don't think so at all. Sure, Amazon has a certain reputation, especially in hacker-news circles. That said I think you're forgetting about the silent but huge majority of average joes who would kill for an Amazon job.

They are the most aggressive at recruiting. I've never gone 6 months without at least one e-mail from an Amazon recruiter, despite asking to be removed multiple times from their lists. This leads me to believe they have turn over problems that would make your assertion incorrect.

For anyone arguing it is growth, consider they are the _only_ company that does this but they are not the only company that is growing at that pace.

I would bend over backwards to put a few years worth of Amazon on my CV. I assumed that was common especially in this crowd?

The 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule is _really_ rough. If given the choice between Amazon and "no-name company," yes, Amazon will do wonders for your resume. But, if comparing an Amazon and Google offer, I'd want a big, big signing bonus from Amazon.

Amazon does a 2 year sign on reward, the first year in bulk the second year in monthly increments. No other company does that, but all we ever hear about is the vesting schedule.

When all is said and done, Amazon pays a little less than Google/Facebook (the caveat here: most Google/Facebook jobs are in California, not Seattle), but with the stock performance we're seeing, they end up making more on average.

The question, is when Amazon's stock stops appreciating so quickly, is other comp going to make up for it?

Never take upward stock performance into account in a comp offer.

If you think Amazon stock is going to go up and you have an offer from another company for more money, just take the offer for more money and buy some Amazon stock. Upward stock potential is never a valid reason to join a publicly traded company.

This is a misunderstanding because it doesn't take into account the asymmetry of the situation: you have more to gain by RSUs going up than you have to lose by them going down.

Imagine my yearly pay will be 150K at Amazon or 200K somewhere else.

Amazon stock could go up, and my pay in my second year could be 250K, in which case I am making more by being at Amazon.

Or it could stay the same or go down, in which case my pay in my second year would be <= 200K, but in that case I can just ditch Amazon for another company to bring my comp back to market levels.

You can buy call options covering the entire vesting amount of RSUs with less than the 50k that would give you the potential upside that you would have as an employee.

Remember, predicting that a stock goes up is just as lucrative for an outsider as it is an insider. Never make a stock prediction part of your evaluation of a job offer because there are plenty of financial instruments to allow you the same upside as an outsider.

You can always tell the people blowing smoke about stock options because they are speaking in the hypothetical instead of the past tense :)

As I used to tell people about why I was selling my options at [some other name brand company] as fast as they vested, choosing to work for the company is an investment. A huge one. And since I was far more likely to be laid off if the stock tanks, owning shares and working there was not diversifying my assets.

It’s the only time I made money on stock options and most of what I earned I earned by... profit taking on shares of a different company that enjoyed two stock splits before our stock started to crater.

Here's past tense: My grants have tripled in value since I started, and as a result my total comp over that period of time has been considerably higher than the offer I received at Google, which was in Mountain View. The higher COL of the Mountain View offer PLUS the outperforming stock put my comp way above what Google would have paid.

When that behavior ends, if Amazon doesn't adjust my comp, I can go to some other tech company, while still having one of the best names you can have on a resume (although, Google would have been arguably better in that case). Furthermore, if we consider my stock gains as part of my annual comp, it gives me a vastly better bargaining position.

Still blowing smoke?

>Still blowing smoke?

Yes, you're not correctly understanding that you depended on a gamble to outperform the Google offer. That same gamble you could have explicitly made in the stock market while taking the Google offer and capturing the upside of the Amazon stock.

Can you explain exactly how to do what you describe? with Amazon's vesting schedule of let's say $200k RSU over 4 years? how much would it actually cost to "invest" like that?

Not at Amazon.

They take stock performance into account and it effects your future raises.

So yeah stock can go up, but if it does, you are never getting a raise.

That's not quite accurate. They take it into account for future stock grants. If the stock does well, you won't get more for the given year, but you will still get a raise.

Also, if the stock doesn't perform well, Amazon will grant you more to keep you in the expected band; but it won't take any away if you are making "more than you should".

They won’t take away terms of your existing grant, but they will nerf future annual grants when they see that you’re “already making plenty” with the shares that are yet to vest.

They will only grant extra if the poor stock performance isn't a result of real problems in the company or economy.

That's a great point, thanks.

> Amazon does a 2 year sign on reward, the first year in bulk the second year in monthly increments. No other company does that.

That is a really bold way to frame "We don't even give you all of your signing bonus up front" as a positive. Kudos for coming up with it.

Their sign on bonuses are higher? And who cares, everyone's golden handcuffs are 2 years, so you aren't actually getting it up front anyway. It's pro-rated loan until then.

Oh interesting. What precisely is a 2 year sign on reward?

Amazon has a target compensation for you for your first 4 years, with a cash signing bonus making up for the lack of stock in the first two years, so it evens out.

Of course the 5/15/40/40 model only applies to your signing; all further yearly stock grants are over the next 2 years from grant time.

Is it common to get additional grants during that first 4 years?

It's common to get a second vesting in your third year (or else your comp would go down). It's almost common to get a promotion around that time -- managers are responsible for promoting their employees, and it's taken seriously.

It also means your destiny is in your manager's hands, which can be unfair if you end up with a bad manager, or several new ones. And unfortunately at Amazon, this is very common (current employee here).

That's literally every job ever. You aren't going to have a successful career at Google if your manager doesn't want you to. The org golden handcuffs are gone, so if you have a bad manager, change teams.

For the record "bad managers" are no more common or less common at Amazon as any other company.

Stock aside, they still pay healthy tech salaries, well over those of many professions in America. The stock is a bonus over that.

Maybe inside the SV bubble Amazon is viewed as a career stepping stone or prestigious or whatever? I can't relate but I'm in this weird career niche where open source commits trump or entirely replace resume/cv so I don't claim to be thoroughly knowledgeable about what motivates others. Personally I'd rather deliver pizza than work for a company that exists on the back of a pool of exploited low-wage workers. YMMV.

>Personally I'd rather deliver pizza than work for a company that exists on the back of a pool of exploited low-wage workers. YMMV.

Easy to say when you're making six figures. I doubt most pizza delivery drivers would agree with you.

I drove delivery for five years so I know at least one pizza delivery driver who agrees with me.

So did I. I was also a waiter. So I know at least one who disagrees. I guess it's a tie.

......dont pizza companies exist on the back of a pool of exploited low-wage workers

I've worked in a pizza place and known other people who have worked for pizza places, and none of us described it like a prison or felt the need to piss in a bottle.

No, instead they have a dangerous business model where they force their drivers to get to a location in 30 minutes or less causing them to weave in and out of traffic and crash in hopes of getting a tip. Much better than bottle pissing.

The what? That 30 minutes or less thing was outlawed in the 1980s, specifically for the reasons you cite.

Yeah, but they do get free pizza.

Amazon, meanwhile, won't let anybody get free snacks from the bins except for mice.

I mean, if you want to play that game, capitalism itself exists on the back of a pool of exploited low-wage workers.

Having a big-name company on your resume helps you get your foot in the door pretty much anywhere else. That's just the way it is.

You can use that to your advantage or not, but you won't be helping any low-wage workers by choosing to work at a small tech company over a famous one -- well, maybe you will if you pass on a job offer from Uber, but for the most part, tech companies pay low-level workers better than non-tech companies.

Amazon employees are literally pissing in bottles because they can't take bathroom breaks without getting fired. Several have been hospitalized or died from heat-related injuries. This isn't merely about pay.