I'm in Seattle so the situation is a bit better than the valley. But here's a breakdown:
L6 at Amazon, single, no kids:
~$400K TC
$33,333 per month gross
About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA.
$8333 per month
Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan.
$3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit complicated if you're not American and familiar with the different account types but it's basically money you're saving that's not taxed, but you can only use it for healthcare expenses.
$3000 max out of pocket per year for medical expenses. For all intents and purposes you can assume that's the most I'll ever pay. Out of network stuff makes it more complicated, but my network has essentially everyone.
$250 a month, but you can use the HSA funds from above, so net $0.
Rent: In the Seattle area a newish one bedroom that's about 50-60 m^2 will run you say, $2200 a month. You can go cheaper or more expensive, but that will get you something that's plenty nice. Commute is extremely dependent on exact location, but if you're in the city, the majority of it has a commute time of less than an hour.
$33,333
-$8333
-$34
-$205
-$2200
=
$22,561 income remaining.
I think you'd be able to survive :)
Obviously doesn't account for internet, a phone, a car, utilities or anything else, but that's maybe another $2K a month on the high end.
My salary is just above $200k. After 6% contribution to retirement (max my employer will match), and $25k a year set aside for employee stock purchase program (max I can set aside - our ESPP is really good), I get just under $10k a month in direct deposit.
My rent is $3k a month. My discretionary spending is also around $3k a month. So I save $4k a month (in cash).
I also get around $350k in stock compensation. A bunch get sold off to cover taxes, but I don't sell anymore, as I believe in the company, and it has done well in the last 2 years.
Altogether, I save above $250,000 a year - in vested stock, and cash.
I just put the extra money into regular investment account. My investments account tend to perform better than the rather boring results that 401k accounts give me. Would be different story, if I was allowed to contribute to Roth IRA. I actually didn't know about the backdoor conversion until this year, but that loophole seems to be on its way out.
If you want to purchase a home, you probably need to replace 2k with 4k-5k/month for a mortgage on a home (30 year loan) + ~1k/month in property taxes.
I own a 1500 sq ft townhouse that I bought in 2017 for $480K with $80k down (all from RSUs, which if I had kept in AMZN would be worth... a lot more). My mortgage (refi'd in 2019) + HOA + taxes are $2500 a month.
I do. I'm a 2-year-in-a-row top tier rated senior SDE. I work 8:30 to 5:30 every day. If I work later it's because I'm working on something interesting to me personally and it's my choice.
I'll admit I have good management. That makes a huge difference. I also give reasonable estimates for project timelines up front.
Tell that to the non-senior SDEs whom either (1) don't have the clout with management yet, (2) don't know any better, or (3) have drunk the the lines of "work hard, have fun, make history" a little too deeply.
Enjoy your seniority; you're harder to replace. But don't apply that experience liberally to the rest of Amazon SDEs.
do you choose that time by choice? or if you didn't have a meeting at 8:30 or until 5:30 would you have to really work that hour? That's more what I mean. Not that the hours can't be reasonable. On my team sometimes I work till 4, others I work till 5 kind of thing.
The funny part about this is that it's an "improvement" over the old policy from ~pre-2017 (IIRC):
- No working on personal games whatsoever. Full Stop.
There's been plenty of complaining about the policy internally. The timing of this is interesting though, it always seemed like the big issue was that Bezos had a personal stick in his ass about this stuff. People are wondering if Jassy will change things up.
People need to get out of these terrible orgs. In mine, I'd estimate >50% get to 5. The average tenure is a lot lower because the org has grown from ~15 to ~70 people in the past 5 years.
You can tell it's bullshit because no one calls them orange badges unless it's their 2nd week on the job. They're yellow badges. Not to be confused with vendor badges, which are also yellow.
The two are complimentary. Engineers can't do anything without the fundamental insights scientists provide. But scientists don't have the practical experience of writing end products that real users use.
Obviously this is a huge generalization but I think it's a useful way to think about it. And when I say scientist, I mean "Professor of CS" not "24 year old with a BS in CS".
The thing is in the US, generally the more you make the lower your insurance costs are.
I made ~$300k last year at a FAANG (Sr. engineer), and my healthcare costs were:
$29/month in premiums
$200/month in an HSA, which I'm saving for retirement (complicated US income tax reasons), so money I don't available for my use but it doesn't go into a black hole either.
$1500 deducible
$3000 total out of pocket
I had a sudden health condition last year, before covid fortunatly, so I maxed out my insurance. So my total costs ended up being $3348 + HSA contributions.
I'm in Washington State, so there's no state income tax, my effective federal tax rate will probably be about 27%.
I'd love to Europe, but it's hard looking at the numbers to justify it. Even if I were willing to take a 50% cut in take home pay, I doubt I could find a job that paid that much.
True, the better jobs tend to have better benefits to go along with the better pay. I'm non-FAANG, making less than a third of you and my max out of pocket is $7k with a $3500 deductible and something like $7k in premiums. My kid has a condition now and so I will be hitting the max out of pocket every year or close to it.
So my comment was intended to apply generally. I can certainly see that there could be some outliers that this wouldn't apply to. I feel like SV and FAANG sort of fall into that category. I think many of us never make close to that money (or maybe I'm just a loser). I think I'll top out at $120k (today's value) if I have some career advancement, which seems unlikely. The US average (median?) for a developer is about $95k.
It takes a bit more structuring but $300k is not impossible. Especially if you have management skills and good communication skills next to solid tech chops.
L6 at Amazon, single, no kids:
~$400K TC $33,333 per month gross
About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA. $8333 per month
Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan. $3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit complicated if you're not American and familiar with the different account types but it's basically money you're saving that's not taxed, but you can only use it for healthcare expenses.
$3000 max out of pocket per year for medical expenses. For all intents and purposes you can assume that's the most I'll ever pay. Out of network stuff makes it more complicated, but my network has essentially everyone. $250 a month, but you can use the HSA funds from above, so net $0.
Rent: In the Seattle area a newish one bedroom that's about 50-60 m^2 will run you say, $2200 a month. You can go cheaper or more expensive, but that will get you something that's plenty nice. Commute is extremely dependent on exact location, but if you're in the city, the majority of it has a commute time of less than an hour.
$33,333 -$8333 -$34 -$205 -$2200 = $22,561 income remaining.
I think you'd be able to survive :)
Obviously doesn't account for internet, a phone, a car, utilities or anything else, but that's maybe another $2K a month on the high end.