Amazon has told its corporate employees that it is raising its cap on base cash compensation to $350,000, more than double the previous amount, citing “a particularly competitive labor market,” according to an internal announcement viewed by The New York Times.
Amazon previously capped its pay for tech and corporate employees at $160,000 in most parts of the United States, favoring stock compensation that vests over several years for the rest of an employee’s pay package. Despite strong earnings announced last week, Amazon’s stock is down more than 4 percent over the past year.
The company did not say if the increased cash compensation would be paired with lower stock awards. It told employees that it was increasing the overall compensation ranges for “most jobs globally, and the increases are much more considerable than we have done in the past.”
The compensation increases were only for salaried corporate and tech workers, not the hourly workers who power Amazon’s operations. Those employees earn an average of about $18 an hour. Amazon confirmed the note but, declined to comment further.
Amazon has seen a rash of departures at its senior levels, where compensation is heavily weighted in stock. Its cash salary cap was far lower than that of other major technology employees and a source of frustration for its workers.
The changes to compensation come during the first annual pay review cycle since Andy Jassy became chief executive last summer. He previously led Amazon’s cloud computing division, which competed fiercely with other tech companies for talent.
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The announcement was first reported by GeekWire, a Seattle technology news site.
Amazon increased its work force by more than 300,000 people over the past year, and now has more than 1.6 million employees.
SEATTLE — On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon’s singular way of working.
They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.
At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)
Many of the newcomers filing in on Mondays may not be there in a few years. The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual callings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.
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