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

Okay, there are stupid headlines and REALLY stupid headlines. This is the latter.

There is a reason "equity components" of compensation are called "variable compensation" just like bonuses are. Anyone who "counts on them" is really setting themselves up for disappointment.

That people "believe" they are wealthier than they are because they are counting stock that they either don't have, or hasn't vested yet, at face value? Well that problem is quite old.

During the dot com meltdown, so many people put down payments on houses that they were going to buy with "stock options" but didn't exercise the options because once they do that, they would "stop going up." Our neighbor who was a realtor, has 8 houses "fall out of escrow" because the buyer withdrew (giving up their good faith money) before the close during 1999.

Stock based compensation == 0 until it is sold and the taxes paid, then it is worth what ever you were left with. But counting it as "income" before you sell it? Not smart.

While you're absolutely right, I can tell you first-hand that managers at Amazon tell their engineers that if the stock falls, they'll get more stock.

Furthermore, Amazon has a "target compensation" value for every employee, and this target implicitly assumes a 15% YoY gain in stock price. When employees with RSUs are given their compensation breakdown, they don't get to see the target comp, but they do see their expected compensation listed as part of their "total compensation."

So, yes, you're right that people shouldn't be counting their chickens before they're hatched -- but Amazon strongly encourages employees to do so, and pretends that the chickens are fully hatched during compensation reviews.

Source: Spent almost six years working at AWS.