World's smallest violin spotted at Amazon HQ as exec pay packets deflate

C-suite payslip shock

It has been reported that Amazon’s senior executives saw much smaller public pay packages for 2025 than the bumper hauls of recent years. CEO Andy Jassy received $2.07 million in total compensation (his $365,000 base salary unchanged), with about $242 million in unvested shares or units still on the books. Founder and Executive Chair Jeff Bezos was paid roughly $1.68 million in total — including a reported wage component of about $82,000 — even as he remains an 8.8% owner of the company.

Big drops for lieutenants

Some of the steepest falls hit Amazon’s top lieutenants. CFO Brian Olsavsky’s package slumped from $25.7 million in 2024 to about $372,000 last year; AWS head Matt Garman was allotted roughly $617,000 versus $32.8 million in 2024; Amazon Worldwide Stores CEO Douglas Herrington fell to $425,000 from $34.2 million; and chief legal officer David Zapolsky’s reported pay dropped to $372,000 from $25.7 million. Stock awards that vest in one year can make numbers explode — and in years without those vestings, the totals look, well, modest.

Profits up, sympathy low

Numbers for the business overall tell a different story: revenue rose 12% to $716.9 billion and net income climbed 31% to $77.7 billion, led by AWS, which generated $128.7 billion in sales and $45.6 billion in operating income. Median pay across all Amazon employees was reported at $40,206 (US full-time median $53,211), and the company is still ploughing money into capacity — it’s investing roughly $100 billion in datacenters this year. Sympathy for the C-suite? Allegedly, they’ve been “forced” to bring sandwiches to work and cycle home — a picture that’s more comic-strip than crisis, but it does make the pay-story feel oddly human.

Sources: The Register