Amazon staff might get paid 50% less because shares have fallen so much

This is a tough one, because stock (like bonus) is not guaranteed.

But when the stock goes up every year for 20-years straight, it’s hard for people to not think its part of their guaranteed base pay.

Amazon actually tells employees that they have a "total compensation" philosophy, which means that when the value of unvested shares increases then Amazon will take that into account when issuing new grants (ex: as part of the performance review and compensation process).

For example, if Amazon thinks you should be paid $250k per year and your total comp for the next year is at $300k based on the value of your granted but not yet vested stock awards, then Amazon will not award anymore stock awards to vest in that year. This is different from most other companies that usually just give you a stock award with a standard vest schedule (ex: 25% vest over 4 years).

Amazon has justified this buy telling employees that if the stock drops below your TC target, then they'll award more shares to make you whole. So the question is are employees going to be down from their TC target, or from an inflated compensation number from during the pandemic when many employees were likely making more than their TC targets.

At least this was how it worked when I was employed at Amazon in around 2017.