Comment by JustExAWS

> Nominally, for the same reason that you pay taxes for upkeep on the roads and power lines. Because everyone capable needs to contribute to the infrastructure or it will degrade and eventually fail.

On the government level, I agree. I’m far from a “taxation is theft” Libertarian.

But I also have an addiction to food and shelter. The only entity capable of that kind of collective action that is good for society is the government. My (and I’m generalizing myself as any rationale actor) goal is to do what is necessary to exchange labor for money by aligning my actions with the corporations incentives to continue to put money in my bank account and (formerly) vested RSUs in my brokerage account.

> To me, that speaks of mismanagement - a poorly run company that is a leech on the economy and workforce. In contrast, as a senior level engineer at a large technology company that has remarkably low turnover, one of my core duties is to help enhance the capabilities of other coworkers and that includes mentorship

The only large tech company I’ve worked for has a leadership principal “Hire and Develop the Best”. But for an IC, it’s mostly bullshit. That doesn’t show up on your promo doc when it’s time to show “impact” or how it relates to the team’s “OKR’s”.

From talking to people at Google, it’s the same. But of course Amazon can afford to have dead weight. When I have one shot at a new hire that is going to help me finish my quarterly goals as a team lead, I’m not going to hire a junior and put more work on myself.

I’m an IC, but in the org chart, I’m at the same level as a front line manager.

> While unrelated to my point, I do have a different experience that you may find interesting in that the most exorbitant salary I have ever been paid was as a contractor for a 12-person startup, not at the organizations with development teams in the hundreds or thousands.

As a billable consultant at AWS (and now outside of AWS) because of scale, I brought a lot more money into AWS than anything I could have done at the startup.

That’s why I said the startup “shouldn’t” have paid me the same close to 1 million over four years that AWS offered me in cash and RSUs. It would have been irresponsible and detrimental to the company. I couldn’t bring that much value to the startup.