I wish someone with Decades of experience had sat me down and walked me through their salary progression early in my career to explain the lessons that they had learned that would have been so crazy helpful so that's what I'm going to do with you today I'm going to go over my compensation during my 18-year career at Amazon as a software engineer what I learned from it and give you some useful ways to think about your own journey in about 30 seconds I'll tell you what my total compensation was in 2023 my last full year at Amazon and what it would have been in 2024 had and not quit earlier this year I understand that the economy isn't doing too well right now the job market is terrible and that for many it's difficult to make ends meet and that these details may upset people and breed resentment towards me if this is you and seeing my income details is not helpful please navigate away the last thing I want to do is upset people in 2023 I made $528,000 in total compensation and I would have made $732,000 in 2024 at today's stock price if I hadn't left my job earlier this year and here's the proof welcome to a life engineered where we take an engineering approach to your life and career if you're new to the channel welcome my name is Steve Winn I just recently quit my job at Amazon as a principal engineer to make content full-time if you want more from me sign up to my free Weekly Newsletter or join my free online community of over 6,000 experienced and encouraging people upleveling their own Tech careers on my Discord links for both are in the description if you find today's content content useful and you want more like And subscribe it's my mission to help 1 million people with their Tech careers so thank you for being part of that Journey the best way I know to help others is to give people access to knowledge that's locked up now I'm not trying to flex with this video I'm trying to help so I'm going to tell you exactly how much I made over the course of my nearly 20-year career at Amazon as a software engineer talking about money is taboo but it shouldn't be this information asymmetry benefits only one party employers workers you are the ones that are missing out so I encourage more people to be transparent about their wages let's tip the scales back to workers if you have a wage Journey that others on this channel could benefit from reach out to me I'm not defined by my job or how much I make and neither are you I have a lot of friends that make much more than me and less than me if you're rich because you were born into it that's not impressive in the slightest way to exist what you do with what you have who you are what you stand for and how you treat others that's so much more important than money if you create things like art and express yourself make the world a better place or can tell a killer story and crack a joke that makes me gasp for breath you're interesting let's be friends if you drive a Lambo drink 30-year-old scotch and have a private jet we can hang out for a bit but we won't be friends unless you're interesting comparison is the thief of Joy it's all too easy to question Your Existence because of other people's success whether earned or not your net worth is not a standin for your personal worth I understand people in other parts of the world make a small percentage of the numbers in this video you aren't less than me just because I happen to be born in the US and be in the tech sector on the other side of things yeah I could have probably made more money working for another company I know people make more than a million dollars a year at similar levels at other companies if you make more than I do that's great I'm truly happy for you post a video about it and I promise I'll watch it and leave a comment all right that's enough Preamble let's get into it I started my career in 20 6 at Amazon as a contractor software support engineer this was my first real job out of school I wasn't salaried I was a contractor so I made $35 an hour which was crazy money for me at the time I was able to move out on my own into an $800 a month apartment and I bought my first car that wasn't a hand me- down from my parents right out of school in 2005 I made it a goal to become a software developer at a big company but I wasn't getting any bites when I had drinks with a friend he told me he could guarant an interview for a contractor support role at Amazon so I molded over for a long time before ultimately taking the opportunity I figured that I would put all of my effort into becoming a full-time employee and to become a sponge to learn about what it took to be a developer at a big company now it wasn't an easy choice at the time and I was really afraid that I was stunting my career growth but in the end it turned out okay I always advise people if you're not getting any bites for the roll you really want see if you can't get your foot in the door with adjacent rolls there are roles for support like what I did testers aets project and program managers and TPMS just to name a few I also believe my support background was instrumental in my ability to create highly available systems later in my career taking an adjacent role worked out for me in 2007 I transitioned to a full-time employee a blue badge near the beginning of the year which was a relief because I could only be a contractor for a maximum of 9 months this paid me a signing bonus of $10,000 with a base salary of 75,000 I didn't invest any stock that year I was riding high but I couldn't lose focus my goal was to be a software development engineer not a support engineer I became an SD interview expert in an era where there wasn't any leak code or any resources on how to pass a coding interview I scoured the internet for coding problems and solved them the oldfashioned way with a whiteboard and an IDE and hours of study I did searches for SD interviews in the Amazon inter Wiki to understand what types of questions were asked and I forced my SD friends to give me mock interviews I interviewed for three developer roles internally at Amazon and got offers for all three 2007 was a great year for me even though I only made about $75,000 I was a full-time SD in big Tech nothing could bring me down then 2008 happened 2008 was the year of the Great Recession Amazon had layoffs for the first time since the doom boom it was a terrible time people were getting foreclose on their homes and it's it seemed like everybody you knew knew somebody that lost their job or their house or both probably most people watching this video weren't old enough to really experience the fear back then professionally though it was a really good year for me it was my first full year of being an SD it was also the first year that I vested stock in 2008 my total compensation was a little over $85,000 with about $83,500 cominging from salary and $1,600 coming from stock this was 500 shares at the price of $3 23 worth about $91,000 today let's talk about stock-based compensation Amazon's compensation structure is incredibly stock heavy the underlying philosophy is if that they give you stock you're now an owner of the company so that in your day-to-day you act like an owner and do things that are good for the company rather than just doing things that are your job my total compensation from this point forward consists of two components my base salary and restricted stock units or rsus rsus are granted to employees as a performance bonus but you can't access them right away these are called unvested shares grants are severely backloaded in time and you can't sell them until they vest sometimes up to 4 years in the future the idea is that this way you're incentivized to stay this is a real world manifestation of golden handcuffs the downside is that the years you get paid really well are for performance from many years in the past you can do really well performance-wise one year and get paid less than the years you weren't as effective to make this video simpler to understand without having to go into more complicated details like long-term capital gains I'll just talk about vested shares which are basically the shares that I had to pay regular income taxes on and could choose to sell or keep I'll also display the vesting price and what those shares would be worth today had I kept everything using today's stock price of $182 55 there was a 20 to1 split that happened a couple years ago so everything before that split will be divided or multiplied by 20 my first stock rant was Tiny because of the battering the Amazon stock price took during the Great Recession and the years following it and I only vested 5% of the rsus I was awarded but to make up for it shares were granted for the next couple of years and backloaded going into the 2010s as you'll see this bump in shares coincided with amazing growth at Amazon which tightened the grip of my golden handcuffs in April of 2009 I was promoted to mid-level software engineer or sd2 at Amazon in 20 9 my total compensation was a hair under 100,000 with about 86,500 in salary and almost 13,000 coming from rsus I vested 3500 shares at a price of $369 nice shares with the value of $639,000 today to give you a sense of how compensation has increased over the years an sd2 at Amazon today makes about $280,000 according to levels.fyi a website that I've observed to be pretty accurate more than 2 and 1 half times what I made back then but $100,000 in 2009 felt like so much more money than it does right now that's definitely for sure in 2010 I finally crested $100,000 in total compensation by almost 50% I made $148,000 $992,000 from Bas pay and 56,000 from stock I vested 8,120 shares at $6.90 a share worth nearly 1.5 million today in 2011 I made $190,000 from a base salary of nearly $97 ,000 and 94,000 from stock I invested 9,540 shares at $985 a share worth nearly 1.75 million today now these numbers especially today's value may be eye popping but I sold many of these shares back then and put them into boring index funds I also maxed out my retirement accounts since I'm presenting pre-tax income they also don't take into account Uncle Sam and his share it's around this time that I started getting into the fire movement which stands for financial Independence retire early the core idea is that if you save enough money you can live off of your Investments and then you have the option to quit your job and retire early if you'd like most of the fire movement surrounds the 4% role which is that if you're able to save 25 times what you need to live you can safely withdraw 4% of that money every year with near certainty that you won't run out of money before you die there's a very big difference between income and wealth wealth to me is what you save not how much you take in every year I'm a big fan of paying yourself first which is the idea idea that the first part of your paycheck is saved and invested so you're paying your future self then you pay your bills and what's left is discretionary income around this time I started doing this even though I sold most of my shares they were turned into other Investments so I was still able to build wealth even though I don't have many of the shares that I was awarded back then I still cry a little bit looking at all the money I would have if I had held on to all of my shares until today but I think it was the right move at the time nobody has a crystal ball in 2012 I made $173,000 from a base salary of 103,000 and 69 nice th000 from stock I invested 6,220 shares at $11.13 a share worth $1.1 million today in 2012 I was promoted to a senior software engineer for me this represented a meteoric rise from where I started I graduated college in 2005 with a liberal arts degree and got a contract job as a support engineer in 2006 and now I was a senior software development engineer at a big tech company 2 years prior I just crested $100,000 for the first time and the prior year I made almost $200,000 but despite my promotion I made less in 2012 than I did in 2011 even though the stock price went up over 15% in that time so much of stock-based compensation is regulating your emotions there's a quote from Benjamin Graham that says in the short run the market is a voting machine but in the long run it's a weighing machine when the stock price is up and you have shares coming in you feel really good you get high and you think you're the reason the company is doing well then the price goes down and you don't get many shares and you start to feel bad and that you are bad this is the bumpy ride that you get when your compensation for the current year is largely based on circumstances from years prior by this time I'd been at Amazon for 5 years and become a senior I get asked whether this was the right move or whether I should have job hopped Studies have shown that job hopping on average increases your lifetime earnings and there's also reason to believe I could have gotten to senior Faster by doing so it's hard to argue with the data especially when they come from longitudinal studies but what I will say is that my circumstances led me down a different path I had backloaded stock grants that started to pop off around this time I could see the unvested shares in my account during the start of one of the longest bull runs in the history of the United States I was getting promoted at a fast clip and the company itself was also growing at an exponential rate being a senior engineer at a company that's growing quickly during a bull run when you've got a lot of invested shares I felt like I was in a good place so I stayed put if some of those variables went the other direction I think I would have changed my decisions I always advocate for taking a sober look at what your prospects are and to make good strategic decisions don't let one study or anic data sway you too much in One Direction or your compensation and the stock market in another all of this stuff is dependent on your situation and hopefully good choices in 2013 I made $215,000 from a base salary of 107,000 and 107,000 from stock so 5050 I vested 6,800 shares at $15.85 a share worth $1.2 million today 2013 was my first full year as a senior engineer for comparison in 2024 a senior engineer at Amazon averages $421,000 nearly twice as much money as I earned though in 2013 I was just pumped to make past2 200,00 000 a year in 2014 I made $24,000 from a base salary of 107,000 and 76,000 from stock I vested $5,900 shares at $16.37 a share worth $1 million today 2014 was the year that I bought my house this required me to sell a lot of shares for the down payment while my house has appreciated quite a bit over the past 10 years it doesn't really hold a candle to how much I would have made had I kept my shares but you can't live in stocks and money so it's a win in my book I love my house and my neighborhood and really there's no substitute for the feeling that you have that it's your house you can do whatever you want with it until something breaks that is in 2015 I made $243,000 from a base salary of $120,000 and $123,000 from stock I vested $4,680 shares at $26.3 a share worth $854,000 today in 2016 I made $282,000 from a base salary of $17,000 and 154,000 from stock I vested 4,300 shares at $361 a share worth $784,000 today around this time I was thinking that I was ready to get promoted to the next level we talked about Job hopping a moment ago but one thing that I was keenly aware of is that to get to staff levels and above typically requires that you stay put and lay down roots for years obviously there are outliers but if you go to the LinkedIn of highle ic's at most big tech companies what you'll find is that they typically had put in a long shift at a company where they got this critical promotion for me I thought my 10 years at the company was my ticket to getting to principal engineer at Amazon and that moving to a different company would require that I reestablish myself little did I know that it would take another four years from this point to get there in 2017 I made $329,000 from a base salary of 134,000 And1 194,000 from stock I vested 3,740 shares at $528 a share worth $682,000 today this was the year I married my amazing wife well this video is about my personal income at Amazon not our joint income across all income streams I can't say enough how important it is to find a partner in life that's aligned to your values including Financial values my wife is also a software engineerengineering manager now it's important to me that my partner isn't a gigantic spender and is aligned with saving money of course we like nice things but she and I understand the importance of paying ourselves first we splurge though this year on a spendy wedding at a fancy hotel because we had the money and because I always wanted to have a big Asian wedding we were still smart with our spending though for example we had an amazing 5 City honeymoon where we flew first class and stayed at five-star hotels but that was paid almost exclusively with credit card and frequent flyer miles that I had AC Creed over the years churning was and still is a hobby of mine I really appreciate my wife because not only is she smart and beautiful she's supportive of all of the crazy stuff I want to do like quit my job to make YouTube videos she can have whatever I have that's still not enough love you babe in 2018 I made $350,000 from a base salary of 135,000 and $215,000 from stock I vested $2,740 shares at $78 48 a share worth $500,000 today in 2019 I made $311,000 from a base salary of $138,000 and 172,000 from stock I vested $1,920 shares at $899 cents a share worth $350,000 today this year I was starting to get really frustrated because I was getting passed up for promotion it' been three full years since I thought I was ready and to top it off I made $40,000 Less in 2019 compared to 2018 even though I was the highest performing I'd ever been this all changed the next year in 2020 I made $527,000 from a base salary of 160,000 the Amazon Max at the time for salary and 374,000 from stock I vested 2,700 shares at $138 184 a share worth $490,000 today 2020 marks the first year that I made over half a million in a year roughly 1/3 from salary and 2/3 from Amazon stock this was also the year that I was finally promoted to principal engineer it turns out to perfectly coincide with the start of the pandemic coincidence we're still investigating this the pandemic is the origin story for this YouTube channel for the first time in my professional career I had a ton of free time on my hands when we were all cooped up at home I worked in live sports broadcasting at the time and all of the sports leagues had shut down so I decided to take a shot at making YouTube videos how hard could it be I resolved to start the channel in 2020 and made my first video in January of 2021 in 2021 I made $535,000 from a base salary of 160,000 and 375,000 from stock I invested 2360 shares at $170.6 nice sens worth $375,000 today 2021 was a big year for me not just because of the YouTube channel but because I had my first child your life changes so fundamentally when you have Offspring and that changes your perspective on all aspects of life including money paternity leave was the first time that I officially had more than a month off of work since I started my professional career Europeans may be jealous of how much Americans make but at least you guys get generous time off for holidays and vacations I had to have a child before I got significant time time off in 2022 I made $420,000 from a base salary of $224,000 and $195,000 from stock I invested $1,980 shares at $988 a share wor $361,000 today this was a real gut punch for me because the Amazon stock price tumbled almost 50% and I made more than $100,000 less than the previous year this was the start of thinking about whether it was time to quit my job or to make content full-time but at this point I still hadn't broken even with the YouTube channel so I put those plans on Ice in 2023 I made $539,000 from a base salary of$ 256,000 and 283,000 from stock I vested 2,200 shares at $28.90 a shair worth $41,000 today this was my last full year at Amazon I also had another child the jump from one child where you can play a double team to two children where you have to go manto man is a big one by the end of 2023 while on paternity leave I had resolved to quit Amazon which brings us to 2024 I would have made $732,000 from a base salary of$ 270,000 and $462,000 from stock I would have vested 2522 shares half in May of this year the other half in November at a projected $183 128 a share worth $460,000 today okay that was a long trip I just realized I'm really old so what's the big thing that I learned from this well my salary 10x from the start and end of my tenure I never felt Rich which is a good thing I think once I got about 5 years into my career I stopped looking at my paycheck when it was deposited into my bank account money was automatically moved to retirement savings and Investments and I tried to sign up for auto pay on my bills as much as I could which meant I could spend the money in my bank account as I like which never really felt like a big number to me but really while money is a big part of working at Amazon I experienced so much growth there which is priceless it's not a perfect company by any means but man what an awesome place for that part of my life I learned so many things and delivered a ton of software with some of the best engineering talent in the World Part of Me still misses it and who knows maybe I'll be back one day but I want to be clear I was incredibly lucky my hope is that if you're a younger version of me that you two can find the same type of luck or even better manufacture some of it for yourself by making smart choices if you found this video informative take a look at this video I made on my total income from 2021 it goes over all of my income streams not just my Amazon compensation which totaled a bit over $1 million that year