If you go up in job levels or into management, the equity grants might be higher, but in my case I stayed at the same level the entire time. I did change job families, which in hindsight I realize that I traded job level/promotion opportunity for experience and technical depth. No regrets. I would have liked to stay but my chosen career path was not valued. The 4-year vesting cliff is a term used a lot. I feel that is by design to manage people up or out.
Turnover is valued at Amazon, it makes sure processes are not people dependent. In addition to managed attrition, they encourage internal transfers to the point where they recently removed the 1 year minimum at a job before transferring.
So yes, there are refresh equity grants. I've heard from a good source that they do that at Apple as well.
You should not listen to what anyone at Amazon tells you.
And my experience was pretty awesome. I did hear about PIP issues, though. That does suck. I'd probably just quit if it happened to me. I have a low tolerance for crap at work.
I like the "get severance pay" strategy someone mentioned. I was only working there at all because the money and people were great.
You get $100K and $50K of stock (grant value): "target compensation" = $150K
Next year, when stock vests, your target compensation is $160K, so you get $110K cash plus a stock refresh grant: * Stock went down to $0 -> $100K refresh to make up. * Stock stayed flat: -> $50K refresh * Stock went up to $100K: -> 0K refresh to cancel out. * Stock went up to $150K: -> 0K refresh to cancel out, but you still come out ahead.
So, you get upside if the stock shoots up enough, and you are protected from downside, but you lose upside if stock grows insufficiently.
It works well if you like guaranteed income, but you have to ignore a lot of the "expect" upside potential. And it makes you wonder why they bother giving so much equity, doesn't it? 1. They don't give a lot of equity. 2. It's a shell game and most new hires don't value the offer accurately.
