Workplace Edition: Amazon vs Facebook - Who Wins?

For many, working in one of the top FAANG companies in the world is a dream come true. However, there are several factors that differentiate these companies and what they offer their employees. Amazon and Facebook are the two leading top tier companies that are leading to take over different parts of the technology industry. Amazon is a leader in the e-commerce and cloud computing known as Amazon Web Services (AWS) whereas Facebook takes the lead in the social media realm, being a parent company of the top socials such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Oculus.

Round 1: Salaries Comparison

If you are applying to these top tier 1 companies, a big decision influencer you may ask yourself is, “Where am I getting paid the most?”. Let us suppose you are applying to be a Software Development Engineer (SDE) to break it down. At Amazon, a base salary is about 150K annually. However, at Facebook, for the same role, you are earning about 160K. Taking into account any middle-level employee job, Facebook pays 1.8 times more than Amazon. This is a huge difference in the level of pays, where Facebook takes the win in this category.

The average month-to-month compensation of a Facebook product manager is $338,000 a year and varies from $223,000 to $462,000. Levelsfyi estimates that a Level 3 engineer just finished college earns a total of $189,000 in compensation, including $124,000 in salary and $43,000 in stock compensation. Facebook’s E3 (entry-level software engineer) [3] earns a total of $166,000 a year, according to estimates by Levelsfyis.

Winner for Salaries: Facebook

Round 2: Job Opportunities

Amazon and Facebook are both on a high-scale platform that offers millions of jobs to people worldwide. Their low-level jobs are accommodating to consumers everywhere but require minor requirements to receive the job. As of 2021, Facebook has 3,025 job postings available, whereas Amazon has more than 100K job postings available. Amazon offers consumers a surplus number of opportunities to enter the workforce and earn an income, whereas Facebook is not quite there yet. In terms of accessibility for landing a job, Amazon wins this round.

Winner for Job opportunities: Amazon

Round 3: Executive Employee Reviews

Several employees in both companies took surveys that measured each company’s career opportunities, compensation, benefits, work-life balance, senior management, culture, values, CEO approval, and percentage of recommendations to a friend. Overall, Facebook received an overall rating of 4.3 stars out of 5, whereas Amazon received a rating of only 3.8 stars. On teamblind, the ratings are still much higher for Facebook as a workplace than Amazon. In every sub-category given, Facebook received a higher score than Amazon, even though Amazon received a slightly higher reviewer volume. In this round, Facebook has made a comeback and leads, and the battle continues.

Winner for executive employee review: Facebook

Round 4: Perks

Company benefits may be the dealbreaker when it comes to choosing a job between the two companies. There are several benefits these companies offer, so we have broken them into three categories. The first on our list are bonuses. Amazon is known to provide big bonuses that are paid off in increments of years. This strategy is their way for the employee to stay around and work for a more extended period. On the other hand, Facebook offers sign-on bonuses, which can exceed over $100K. In this category, Facebook is the best player for providing upfront bonuses, not just in comparison to Amazon, but most tier 1 company. (add this to compensation (Amazon has 4 year vesting period) Employees at both companies seem to appreciate the different sets of perks. At Amazon, the employees enjoy the shuttles that get them to work and filtered water facilities. However, at Facebook, the employees enjoy free lunches and dinners, shuttles, game rooms, lattes, kitchens, and even massage options. Both employees enjoy the amenities the company offers, but it looks like Facebook offers significantly more perks than those offered to Amazon employees. Lastly, we need to compare the work-life balance at both companies. According to employee surveys, workers at both company’s rate work-life balance as a con. However, 2000+ more Amazon reviews stated “long hours” compared to Facebook.

Winner for Perks: Amazon

Round 5: Stocks

When it comes to the stock market, it can be a gamble as to where you can make the most money. Amazon uses e-commerce and AWS to create online ads which generates a significant portion of their revenue. This has allowed them to reach a market cap of approximately $1.6 trillion. Its forward P/E ratio is about 60 where they are set to continue to grow through this year. Like Amazon, Facebook is a leader in the social media realm, and also leads in generating the most revenue from their online ads. Its dominance of social media has a big influence in todays date, and has allowed the company to surpass Amazon in the lucrative online ad space. Its market cap is approximately at $780 billion, which is less than half the size of Amazon. Its forward P/E ratio stands to be about 25, compared to Amazon at 60. As you can tell from the graphs, there is a clear winner this round, as Amazon clearly dominates the stock market between the two.

Winner for Stocks: Amazon

Final Battle Workplace : Results

Employees at both companies love the experience and cultures and are ultimately happy with their jobs. We even asked anonymous folks on the network called TeamBlind for their overall opinions on the two workplaces, and out of 145 votes, Facebook took the lead once again. After a long and hard battle between these two talented companies, it seems that Facebook has taken the trophy of victory. With the results at hand, we can judge that Facebook offers more benefits and salaries, but Amazon has a broader range of accessibility and breadth of scope.

Winner of Better Workplace: Facebook

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