Comparing with my friends over at Microsoft, while the base salary is certainly lower, cash bonus and stock pretty much equalizes compensation, at least as an SDE I. Total compensation is lower than Google/Facebook, but that's a high bar for ANY company.
I think this myth really continues both because people tend to only pay attention to base salary and don't consider cost of living/state taxes, and due to the fact that Amazon does underpay warehouse workers, as evidenced by the current strike in Germany.
I can't speak for higher level positions though. But Amazon tends to strongly favor giving out more stock over more cash, which goes back to the same issue of not comparing total compensation.
Recruiters push the "total compensation" idea because it's cheaper than offering real money, but in my experience salary is all that matters.
Stock always comes with a vesting schedule and a forfeit clause, which means that if you accept more stock as a substitute for a better salary, you are implicitly agreeing to let them retroactively underpay you for the last couple years of your tenure, whenever you move on to the next thing.
Don't kid yourself that you're going to stay at the same company long enough that it won't matter, either; the raise you get by switching jobs always dwarfs the raise you get by sticking around and jumping through the perf hoops and trying to get a promotion. So the only way to make the stock pay out is to screw yourself on salary over the long term.
What's more, keeping a large portion of your net worth in your employer's stock is a terrible diversification strategy, so you will probably end up flipping it and investing in something else as soon as it vests. So.... what was gained by accepting compensation in stock, again? I'd rather they just pay me cash money and let me invest it however I want.
Senior people at Amazon that I personally known and worked with have said they were undercompensated compared to offers from other, similarly-sized companies. Most of the good ones no longer work at Amazon.
