If I told you “in 2020, Amazon’s highest base pay is $165K”, would that stop you from thinking that Amazon paid tech workers well?

And if it wasn't Amazon, but some other less well known company?

It might stop me, yes. I would be more likely to apply to Apple, Google, or Meta because they have higher base pay (according to the numbers in the article).

    Work at X, base pay $60,000 plus bonuses.
    Work at Y, base pay $100,000.

Would you look into X or Y first?

I'd look into companies that are going to pay the most, which is why looking only at base could be bad.

For example, a senior software engineering manager a couple years ago might see something like Amazon,FB, and Google base salaries of $160k/$250k/$250k respectively.

That's only a fraction of the potential pay, though as both Facebook and Google have a 25% annual bonus. Amazon's package would likely include something like a $275k bonus for the first two years.

Now, add in stock. Both FB and Google would offer $1.4M+ worth of stock, vesting over four years. Amazon might be closer to $700k/800k at that time.

Finally, there are joining bonuses. I'm not sure about Google or Amazon, but FB can (could?) go up to $100k.

Regardless of the actual numbers, the point is that the "base" is less than 50% of your compensation in many cases. It's certainly an important data point as one thinks about possible future stock values, etc, but it sometimes only tells part of the story.