That’s no outlier at all a mid level L5 software engineer at Amazon will usual get a 4 year package of around $235K-$250K a year total compensation target. Amazon is in the middle of the pack for BigTech. Apple and Microsoft historically paid less and Google and Meta pays more.

The total compensation target at Amazon is based on

Year 1 - base + large prorated signing bonus + 5% of your total stock package

Year 2 - base + smaller signing bonus + 15% of your total stock package

Year 3 and 4 - base + 20% of your stock vest every six months.

Usually around year 3 you get more stock.

Even an intern I mentored when I was ProServe their from 2020-late 2023 got a 600K four year initial package when they graduate and they got promoted to a mid level L5 in year 3 and will make around $750k-$800k depending on vesting schedule and price of AMZN when the offer was made over 4 years. ProServe (the internal consulting division ) and SAs make around 10% less than software developers.

My four year initial package was for $850K as a mid level consultant - I only had two years of AWS experience at the time. It was supposedly a “field by design” and permanently remote. They had an RTO mandate 6 months after I left - and had moved to Florida partially to save on taxes (no state tax)

GCP pays their senior consultants - full time employees around $250k -$280K

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/solutions-c...

Again they make less than software engineers

As far as “working my ass off” and going 1099, that was never appealing to me. I worked at AWS ProServe like I said for almost 4 years (full time) and now working as a staff consultant (full time) for a third party consulting company - cloud + app dev.

I like not having to worry about sales, accounting, benefits, chasing payments etc.

I like knowing that I can work 40 hours a week and money appears in my account on holidays, when I’m sick, on the bench, on vacation, etc.

As far as taking “any” job. When I was Amazoned in 2023, my goal was crazy enough to get any remote offer that wasn’t at a large company before my paid vacation reimbursement was up (9 days) and well before I started using my 3.5 month severance let alone my savings.

I took a full time job at a shitty consulting company, with a 20% pay cut and kept interviewing until I found something I wanted. It took a year to get the job I really wanted at the pay I wanted.