
Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself - DVassallo
https://danielvassallo.com/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts/
======
hprotagonist
_I’m going all in on independence, and I’m going to try to make a living with
my own bare hands starting from nothing._

500k/year in your last year is "nothing", huh? It really undercuts the entire
thrust of the post, because you're starting with a nice big war chest and a
hell of a safety net, not "nothing".

~~~
DVassallo
Yes, I saved a lot. About $1M in liquid assets. But I meant that I'll start
with no income, no product, no business. I'll write another post about how I
set up my safety net.

~~~
TheShrug
I know you're looking for attention or validation, but I have a feeling you'll
probably get more negative attention than positive when you seem to be
equating having $1M in liquid assets to "starting with no income, no product,
no business".

~~~
DVassallo
Those two things are not equivalent to me. Yes I have savings, but I also have
no income right now.

~~~
TheShrug
You are correct! But the way you phrased it makes it sound like you are
experiencing a hardship, which I think most would disagree with. Don't get me
wrong, I think you should be proud, you clearly did a lot to earn your
savings, but you're trying to make it sound like retiring young with $1M in
liquid assets part is the difficult part when its probably the easy part. You
don't have to work for a very long time, or at all!

~~~
DVassallo
Not at all. I live a very comfortable life and I don't expect it to change.
Wasn't my intention to make it sound like hardship. But I don't have infinite
runway, so I do have to make something.

------
LeifCarrotson
> I made $75K in my first year and that gradually grew to $511K by my last
> year.

Wow, I'm envious of this rate of internal raises. Is this consistent within
Amazon's culture, or other SV companies?

I've found (in the small-town Midwestern shops I frequent, not in the FAANG
bubble) that I have to change employers to do better than a token 3-5% annual
raise, even if my value to the company is increasing much more quickly.

I've even been heartily congratulated and thanked at my annual review for
completing successful, profitable projects in my first year at one job, and
offered a reward of a $1/hour raise. I was a bit shocked, as that represented
a pay cut when you factored in inflation. They 'capitulated' to an increase of
$1.50/hour, which was just about keeping up...had to go look elsewhere to do
better.

~~~
DVassallo
Author here. I got a big bump from $230K to $396K in 2016 when I got a
competing offer and Amazon matched it so that I wouldn't leave. From then on,
the growth from $400K to $500K happened because the AMZN stock nearly tripled
in that time frame.

~~~
blunte
Well, this just illustrated why a company shouldn't play the matching game.
What did Amazon get for matching the offer? They got to keep you for a couple
more years at a premium. I'm sure you did some good things in those two years,
but the accounting side would probably have a difficult time assessing the
real value of those two years.

~~~
startupdiscuss
Huh? This seems like a non-sequitur. What does leaving in 2 years have to do
with your worth this year? How many years would he have to stay to pay off
this year?

By that logic hires are bad deals if they ever eventually leave because you
"lost" the money of their last n years.

------
catacombs
> I joined Amazon as an entry level developer. Within 3.5 years I had been
> promoted twice to a senior engineer, and I was practically guaranteed
> another promotion to principal engineer this year if I had stayed.

> My potential at the company was high, I was told.

> My esteem within the company grew along the years and I was regarded an
> expert and a leader in my field.

> People looked up to me and respected me.

> I made $75K in my first year and that gradually grew to $511K by my last
> year.

> I could have made another $1M if I stayed another couple of years.

> My work–life balance was good too, despite Amazon’s reputation.

> I didn’t need to prove myself anymore, and I could get everything done in 40
> hours a week.

> My team worked from home one day a week, and I rarely opened my laptop at
> night or weekends.

> Also, the people I worked with were exceptional. I had three managers in
> total, and all were generous people with lots of empathy.

I can't fathom the number of people who would kill to have 1/3 of this list,
myself included. I'm sure leaving all this behind is good for now, but, as
someone else said, you're in for a rude awakening when you're back on the job
market and you're grinding like the rest of us. Enjoy the vacation while it
lasts.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
He thinks all these things are attributable to his own performance, and that
all he has to do is get hired by another FAANG and things will be just the
same. Later, he may well be hirable but this type of advancement doesn't
happen without a serious amount of timing/Luck and those stock market gains
aren't typical either.

I guess you could look at it as an act of generosity. the more people quit
from those jobs, the more there is for everyone else. :)

~~~
DVassallo
I'm totally fine not getting back the same compensation, level, company, etc,
if I had to get a job again. I'm relying on being able to find a job that
covers my expenses though, which I'm reasonably confident in.

------
fma
Looks like lots of comments here are negative. I hope it doesn't deter you or
get you down. It's tough to leave a high paying job to pursue something
different and I wish you all the best.

It's interesting timing to quit now. If you have 45 years to work, why not
work a few more years to have a much longer runway?

Safe withdrawal rate now is $40k...if you did 3 more years to and saved $2
mill, that's a double of your safe withdrawal rate to $80k. You're doing 40
hours a week on a good team...

Also I saw you put your health insurance is $1.2k per month...Amazon's health
insurance../sucks?

~~~
DVassallo
> why not work a few more years to have a much longer runway?

Because I didn't want to keep postponing. There will always be something that
I could be waiting for.

PS. Regarding health insurance. No $1.2K/month is from the ACA marketplace. I
could have continued Amazon's through cobra for 1 year, but it was about
$1.5K. When I was with Amazon, I think I only paid $300/month.

------
whalesalad
Well I sure hope going off on your own helps you gain some humility. This
whole post just reeks of first world problems™

Yes you can still be miserable with a ton of cash but I'd rather cry in a
Corvette than on a bus. Hoping to see a follow up post from OP after they've
gained some perspective.

My spidey sense tells me the op just needed a reality check, a long vacation
and some introspection.

------
Dayshine
> When I first hit $100K income, I would take a peek at my W2 for a few days
> admiring the six digits, but then it wore off. When I hit $200K, $300K,
> $400K, and $500K, it was the same thing. I would be delusional to think that
> earning $1M, or $10M would suddenly make it different.

>What is out there that I could do that would make me excited waking up every
day for the next 45 years that could also earn me enough money to cover my
expenses?

At $500k, with UK tax rates (probably higher than US), you'd have $275k net.
If you remove generous expenses, you have $200k a year in savings. Five years
working would get you $1M.

With $1M, you would probably never have to work again (~$40k in safe
withdrawal per year).

Then you'd have the ability to pick any job, irrespective of pay. Go help
charities, help with research, spend all your time on open source projects,
whatever you want.

~~~
Someone1234
> you'd have $275k net. If you remove generous expenses, you have $200k a year
> in savings.

In Seattle Washington? You'd have an extremely hard time making ends meet on
$75K, it certainly isn't "generous." For example median home value in Seattle
is $725K.

~~~
DVassallo
My expenses are about $150K a year.

Fixed costs per month:

* $5K mortgage

* $1.2K health insurance

* $300 life and disability insurance

* $800 utilities

* $2K home services: nanny, sitter, cleaner

* $800 school / preschool and kids activities

* $2K groceries, essentials, etc

I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in
Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere
cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this
experiment I'm doing with my life.

~~~
hinkley
I live a comfortable life in Seattle and my mortgage is $3k a month including
taxes, in a house that’s too big for us to keep clean. I think “comfortable”
might be understating things.

If I moved into my neighborhood _now_ it might be closer to $5k (without a
bigger down payment) but I wouldn’t recommend it.

~~~
DVassallo
$5K includes property taxes, HOA, and home insurance. The total was $4K
originally when I bought a $850K townhouse in 2015. But I refinanced recently
to get some cash out and that got it to $5K.

~~~
antongribok
As someone trying to do something similar in 5 years (not nearly in the same
situation), I'm having a hard time imagining why you would refinance and take
money out (and not the opposite, refinance and pay things down or pay off your
mortgage completely).

A lot of the things in your post resonated with me, but seeing this in the
comments really got me curious about your math.

Good luck with your endeavor!

~~~
DVassallo
I didn't need the cash out, but it adds a bit of a safety margin. Liquid cash
gives you optionality. For example, if things don't work out as I hope, I
could use that cash to try to buy another small business, or something like
that. It would have been harder (or impossible) to refinance without a steady
paycheck, so I planned for that while I still had the job.

My mortgage interest rate is 4% and I've put the cash I've withdrawn in short
term US treasures at 2.5%, so that cash is only costing me 1.5%.

Another reason I did a refinance was that when I bought my house I had only
been in the US for 2.5 years and my credit score wasn't great (in the 600s
IIRC). I could only get an 5/1 ARM loan that was about to start becoming
variable at a higher interest rate.

------
towaway1138
OP is getting crapped on a bit here, but I think he's doing the right thing
for himself. I've not done as well, but well enough to realize that past a
certain point, money just isn't worth as much as a lot of other things in
life. And if having money doesn't buy you the freedom to take some risks or
time off, it might be worth even less than we think.

It's worth asking yourself regularly not only "Am I being paid enough?" but
also "Am I being paid too much?".

------
emilfihlman
Most of the comments seem to not understand that he wasn't developing per se
anymore. He was managing, which explains the larger payout.

In addition, I greatly dislike how the top post is negative on the story: it
disregards the idea behind the post and instead replicates the typical "you
have things good so fuck you" response.

------
jpeg_hero
Everyone here is bent by the $500k, but nobody is mentioning working for
yourself can lead to less autonomy as you have to take on lame projects just
to pay the bills, or the product your customers actually will pay for is not
he one you want to build.

Ideal autonomy is getting corporate patronage to mange your open source
project.

~~~
jressey
Until you're bored of it. It's the same kind of handcuffs as freelancing.

------
icedchai
Why not stay there and milk it for a few years? Once you have that safety net
built up, there is little reason to care. So do as little as possible... Come
in late, leave early. Do this a little bit at a time. With your good
reputation, you can probably get another mil out of them.

~~~
ryanSrich
Yeah. Or like why not build something on the side first? If he was in fact
only working 40 hours (which is mind blowing, but I guess there’s no reason to
lie), he could have easily bootstrapped an idea to revenue in 6-12 months all
while making that insane amazon money.

~~~
mrep
Amazon has a policy that they own all the code you write unless you get it
signed off by them as a project that is not related to ANY of their
businesses. With Amazon being in so many businesses, they will almost
certainly deny whatever idea you want to work on because they have something
they claim is related.

He could still do it but that is risky as he could get sued later and I have
even heard that it can block any future sale until it gets ironed out.

------
halfnibble
I've heard of Amazon paying between $200 and $300K for software engineers, but
this is the first time I've heard of them paying $500K! Goodness, I don't have
any work/life balance now, so it really makes me wonder if I shouldn't start
applying at Amazon.

~~~
cowsandmilk
the 500k is due to Amazon's stock value going up. The amount of stock you'll
be receiving is set several years out and is frequently a major portion of
your salary. Amazon's stock tripling has put many people at high salaries.

OP is an SDE3, which levels.fyi puts at $154,259 base, $150,648 stock, $19,227
bonus. The stock goes up 3x in the years between the grant and when you vest,
you are making tons of money. Most people don't expect Amazon's stock to
triple again in the next few years.

~~~
halfnibble
Thank you for clarifying!

------
olliej
I’m going to suggest earning 500k in the previous year opens up this as an
option

------
davidscolgan
The golden handcuffs are real.

From my own experience feeling trapped in a job that makes significantly less
than $500k, and those of several friends, sure it may be a privileged position
to be in, but the human mind doesn't care whether it should be feeling a huge
mental burden.

Taking the leap and giving up a well paying but soul crushing job is hard. And
it can feel really isolating and guilt inducing, when you certainly can't talk
about it to your friend who is barely making ends meet and yet has a job
seemingly less soul crushing. I'm sure they would tell you to go cry in your
pile of money.

But work is most of life and I basically see finding work you like as a
primary means to happiness. I've been scoping out interest for a coaching
business around this topic lately and it seems that a lot of people have this
problem. Heck, the "is freelancing the best thing ever or your worst
nightmare" posts seem to come up every other day. I'm glad we are taking about
it.

~~~
DVassallo
That's true. Just for the record though, I wasn't in a soul crushing position.
Things were good, but I'm vastly more excited about the new path I'm about to
take.

About the handcuffs, tbh it's not just the money. There's also other
intangibles. I had built a lot of connections and a good reputation inside the
company, and by leaving I've lost access to that. I could reason about the
money in a spreadsheet, but the other things were harder to value.

------
bquinlan
The declining motivation with increasing scope really resonates with me. I
often feel the same.

And I feel that his career trajectory is pretty typical - you start building
cool stuff in a small team and you end up trying to coordinate large groups of
people (who a typically the managers of the people who will build the cool
stuff).

------
thorwasdfasdf
That's great if you can earn a lot of money and save up for early retirement.
But, that's not what's happening here. It looks like by his own admission of
"running out", that he really hasn't been saving aggressively and will be back
in the job market in a few years, possibly with a rude awakening. I see these
types all the time: making a ton a money thinking they're on top of the world,
the same ones saying how they don't mind higher taxes.

I don't know how long the good times will last, but I don't think we can just
count on super high demand for developers forever. There will come a day when
the market balances out the supply and demand in favor of employers and when
that happens people like this guy are going to really regret their earlier
choices.

------
mindcrime
Holy fuck, the cynicism and negativity here is totally out of control. What
started as a very interesting post on the merits of extrinsic motivation vs
intrinsic motivation has turned into "let's shit on somebody for pursuing
their dream". This is pathetic.

------
josefresco
> The last couple of years, however, were quite different. I was leading the
> most important project in the history of my department, with many
> stakeholders and complex goals.

Well yeah dude - you started at 75K and now you make 500K - bigger salary =
bigger obligations.

------
nodesocket
This is a very common theme. Once you reach a certain threshold of income (not
everybody though) you start valuing freedom, flexibility, traveling and start
looking beyond work. This is primarily because money has lost its forcing
function. Even if you have the best setup in terms of work, compensation, co-
workers, you lose motivation and drift away. This isn't true of everybody
though, most successful entrepreneurs despite earning massive amounts of
money, are still as hungry, motivated, and dedicated to their work as the
first day.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The idea of "enough" in the book by Joe Dominguez.

------
anaolykarpov
I love these kind of articles where people are transparent about their
salaries. I don't quite understand the envy and the backlash the author
receives. With such a negative reaction, I doubt we'll see too many articles
like this in the future (who needs all the negativity?).

I'm a software developer myself for +10 years and haven't made $500k in my
whole career and for some reason I don't feel any envy for him. On the
contrary, I am glad that we're in an industry where people can earn this big.

------
debt
I do think this is stupid on the surface, but better overall for the economy.

If people have the ability to make things themselves and build a business,
then should pursue this under the banner of providing greater choice to
consumers.

Particularly if the entire industry is bifurcating between a few enormous,
ossifying tech conglomerates.

------
maxxxxx
As someone who did something similar and blew through a lot of money I would
now recommend to milk this for a few years until you are truly financially
independent. If your business doesn't go well it may be hard to jump back on
the gravy train.

------
tw1010
Now the hard part will be finding a way to be disruptive/innovative after so
many years of monotonous work and so much time being brainwashed by the
solopreneur propaganda/filter bubble.

~~~
DVassallo
You’re right. I don’t need to be disruptive though. I just need to earn enough
to cover my expenses. It can even take a couple of years until I break even.

------
TheShrug
This might just be envy speaking, but I don't feel like this was a very tough
decision (not that it needs to be!). Either way, congrats on the early
retirement!

------
kamaal
If you are making $500K an year. By many a definition, you are already on a
way to NOT needing to work ever in a few years, than even working for
yourself.

Why would you throwaway an opportunity to amass like $5 million in 10 years,
and then put it in a retirement fund and just retire. Instead of throwing it
all away and starting all over again on something that is known to work in
only exceptional cases(start up lottery).

Looks good on paper and all. But not a smart move.

~~~
DVassallo
I have no interest in retiring. I like working, and I would miss it if I
stopped. And I’m not a believer of the traditional deferred life plan. I
prefer doing it now rather than in 10 years.

------
jacknews
"My target is to cover my family’s expenses before I run out of savings"

On the one hand I applaud people chasing their dreams, taking risks to start
something new etc, but on the other hand, it seems like he's putting a lot of
risk on the family and even seems a bit selfish to me.

Wouldn't he be better off starting a fulfilling hobby, or trying to negotiate
a 3 or 4-day work-week and starting a side business, etc?

~~~
DVassallo
I couldn't do a side business while working from Amazon. My employment
contract prevented it.

But even if I was allowed, I probably still would have left first. It's hard
working full-time, raising kids, and doing a side-business. If the
circumstances were drastically different I could have done that, but I didn't
need to.

About risk to the family: If I don't manage to pull this off for whatever
reason (run out of money, get bored, find it too hard, etc), I'll just go back
on the job market. I promised my family that our lifestyle won't change, and
if our savings drop below a certain threshold I'll get a job and make sure our
expenses are covered. For catastrophic stuff I got abundant insurance (life,
disability, health) to protect the family. If we end up spending all our
savings, we can consider it an advance from retirement and I’ll make up for it
later.

------
otabdeveloper2
> Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

Presumably, the answer is "because I already earned all the money I wanted to
earn".

------
tyler-
What kind of companies pay software engineers 300k+? Is it realistic to make
500k-1 million+ at these companies as a developer? What sort of title/level
are these developers at? How much is it in stocks/rsus vs salary at that
point? Can someone lay out a traditional example at this level? What skillsets
do these people have?

~~~
TACIXAT
300k+ is senior. The higher ranges would be principal / individual
contributor. This is a pretty common pay scale in the Bay Area.
[https://levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi)

~~~
tyler-
Thanks! Roughly, what does is the difference between a senior and principle
engineer? How common is it to reach senior for a normal dev vs principle?

~~~
grigory
Senior at a lot of the larger companies I've interacted with is often a kind
of a "terminal level", meaning that you're not expected to rise above it, and
can comfortably spend most of your career at that level.

Staff, sr staff, principle and other monikers are usually about affecting
change at the scale larger than your team, operating at larger scope, and
growing people around you.

------
humbleMouse
This is one of the most yikes worthy posts I've ever seen on hacker news. I
wonder what OP's wife thinks.

~~~
DVassallo
I promised my family that our lifestyle won’t change. If I don’t make this
work, I’ll go back on the job market.

------
x15
I'm currently working alone making less than 10K per year. My networking is
not great and I wasn't able to land a job in many smaller than Amazon
companies. I wouldn't leave even a 50K job, let alone an order of magnitude of
that.

It's his life and his choices, but many of us have it quite hard.

------
czechdeveloper
We have saying in Czechia along the lines "he is dissatisfied because he has
it too good".

I've had friend of a friend like this who ended up in suicide, because he was
unable to replicate his success in big company.

I wish him luck regardless.

~~~
DVassallo
That sucks. I'm okay if I never reach the same income as I had though.

------
jayonsoftware
How do you make 500K at Amazon, is that 200K base, 50K bonus and 250K in stock
?

~~~
DVassallo
My base was $160K for a long time. I think it's the max at Amazon. The rest
was stock. I got lucky that AMZN stock grew a lot in the last few years.
Without the growth it would have been about $380K/year (i.e. that's what I was
granted originally before the stock grew).

~~~
meritt
I'm not following how $380k is the baseline. Were the grants based in dollars
or in AMZN shares? I assume it was based in shares and if the stock had fallen
you'd have made less?

~~~
DVassallo
The grants were based in AMZN shares. Yes, if the stock had fallen I would
have make less. If it falls significantly (happened only once in 2014-2015
when I was there) the company typically tops you up with the difference (or
part of it).

------
sytelus
Seems like classic case of lack of empowerment. If you find most of your
energy getting spent in convincing “stockholders” all the time that you are
doing the right thing then your org has much bigger issue.

------
strikelaserclaw
Time and dreams are more important than money, if you are smart enough to make
500k, i'm sure even in the worst case scenario, you will do OK. Solider on
brother.

------
mprev
The tl;dr is that when someone is paying you $500k a year then the work itself
might not be all that motivating. However, within time, the money isn't enough
to motivate you either.

You gotta wonder, though, what the rest of the world would think if they
stumbled across this kind of blog post.

~~~
DVassallo
Author here. Agree. But I bet most of the audience here is already earning
enough. Once you cover the basics, the returns of additional income diminish
quickly. I chose to say how much I was earning just to emphasize that
everything was really going well at my job, including compensation.

~~~
NKosmatos
No offense, but there are people all over the world reading HN. We’re not all
living in a country that can pay SW engineers such large salaries. Good for
you and all the best, but please try to think of us living with 15k€ per year.
The reason you’re getting a lot of negativity and envy is because we’re living
in different environments and we can’t relate to what you’re describing.
Anyhow, I hope your decision plays out and you finally find what you’re
looking for, even if I don’t agree with you.

~~~
DVassallo
None taken. I grew up and worked in Europe in a country with a median
household income of $20K. I understand and been through different
circumstances. However this happened to be my situation and I’m describing it
as it happened. I think my general point still stands though, that motivation
through rewards wears off quickly after clearing a certain level of
necessities.

------
sherlock_h
What are your plans now? How are you going to get started? Any direction you
want to take or will you first take a few weeks/months off to re-direct?

~~~
DVassallo
I will spend a couple of months exploring some idea. Then will test something
in the market and iterate/change based on market feedback.

------
solarkraft
Interesting read, I think you'll make a great open source developer!

> Now that I can use Twitter without being subject to Amazon’s social media
> policy

What _is_ their policy?

------
dennisgorelik
> doing things that I’d rather not do

What were these things?

Do you think you would be able to avoid these things at your new business?

~~~
DVassallo
I had to disagree and commit sometimes or commit to a compromise that I didn't
like. I didn't mean anything nefarious. Just the usual stuff that happens when
doing something with a group of people and many stakeholders.

I plan to avoid this by being in charge :) ... If in the future I hire
employees or get a partner, some of this might still happen obviously. But I
still expect it to be significantly less than at a corporate job.

------
jordache
Do you support a wealth tax?

~~~
anaolykarpov
Would you, if you were him?

How much would you consider it to be your "fair share" out of those money?

------
humbleMouse
OP - what does your wife think of this decision?

~~~
DVassallo
Neutral. I promised my family that our lifestyle won’t change. If I don’t make
this work, I’ll go back on the job market. If we end up spending our savings
we can consider it an advance from retirement and I’ll make up for it later. I
got insurance to cover for catastrophic situations.

------
jiveturkey
"because i like hearing the sound of my own voice when i repeatedly reread my
blog, even though, you know, i have nothing insightful to say really"

------
wrestlerman
TL;DR OP liked his job, but his motivation was decreasing. Could be possible
earning much more in the next few years. Gonna build his own things from now
on.

Long story short money is not everything. I understand it. I'm currently
unemployed working on my own things and I pretty like it. Although I don't
have that much money saved and probably I'm gonna find work soon, I've found
out that I'm that kind of person, who wants to explore the world by myself and
on my own terms.

------
iradik
Is 500k due to stock appreciation?

~~~
DVassallo
Yes, about $100K of it was.

------
manishsharan
.... to get some sweet sweet HN Karma points ?

------
justboxing
Here we go. Another humblebrag.

~~~
ar_lan
What, you _also_ don't casually make half a million a year and think that's
peasant salary?

------
dsfyu404ed
I shouldn't have to run JS from both your site and a 3rd party just to view a
text blog post.

~~~
DVassallo
I agree. Just started with Wordpress and I'm still figuring out how to get rid
of all the unnecessary stuff. I made sure I didn't have any creepy analytics
though. The third-party JS is just fonts from Adobe.

