Amazon will hire you for the same job and pay you significantly different amounts based on your demographic

Hi all, was a recruiter for amazon for a couple of years. Full disclosure i like the company, have stock options still. I’m not a fan of the pay to play requirement to be a recruiter, but that’s a different post. <br><br>The pay will depend on your demographic. For example I was recruiting for a software engineer position, and a woman, 28 years old with 3 years of experience at Google was offered 200k base + 50k signing bonus and 50,000 shares vested over 4 years. If you’re a white man who is 28 with 3 years of experience at Google, you will be offered 180k base, 30k signing bonus, and 30,000 shares vested over 4 years, which is a significantly different amount. <br><br>They also will adjust for length of time at the last company. If you were at Google for 5 years for example, that would put you in tier 2, and they will offer you more money. <br><br>There are a few “buckets” for race & gender. Ie white female, black male, latino male, asian female, etc <br><br>Asian men are treated like white men and are in a lower “bucket” - I saw this come into play a few times where I had a difficult time getting more money for an Asian candidate who should have gotten more, but wasn’t able to because of his race/gender. <br><br>I found the system to be rather odd, but this is what they have in place to try to get more diversity in engineering and other positions. I’m not sure what I think about the system, I feel like it’s a bit flawed, but also it’s a good way to diversify the company if they are trying to hire the best candidates that have been in the game the longest. <br><br>I hope this helps someone, let me know if you have any questions!<br><br>Edit: wow this snowballed. As I mentioned above, I’m not sure what I think about the system. But it’s not a conspiracy theory, this is a fact and it’s what they do at the company. They truly believe that hiring more people with different backgrounds and life experiences will lead to better products and a better future. I tend to agree with this theory. <br><br>This being said, I understand why white men might be upset about this, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do wish they would be more transparent about the pay because it can sometimes create the perception that one candidate is more qualified than another. These are highly qualified candidates who are being offered the same position, so I don’t believe that one candidate is inherently more qualified than another. I also feel like some candidates would be upset if they knew the pay was different based on race/gender. <br><br>But also, this is Amazon and they do not care, they are hiring a lot of people and they will continue to do this. I feel like some of you are misinformed about what it’s like to work in tech, at these huge companies there are hiring managers and recruiters and they don’t always treat candidates the same. It is truly a business, and they want the best product at the cheapest price.<br><br>TLDR; everyone isn’t treated the same, and the company doesn’t care. But they do care about the products, and they think bringing in diverse candidates will lead to a better product and future.