I'm currently a senior engineer with ~3.5 years of experience.

I'm lucky enough to have received offers from Google and Amazon and I'm having a tough time deciding. The Amazon offer is for more money and an L5, a band that isn't the 'new grad' band. The Google offer can't match those - the Google offer is for an L3 position - but it has intangibles that I value: Year-round warm weather, free food, more interesting work, more vibrant company social scene, the social capital that comes with saying you work at Google...

I have, for personal reasons, wanted to work for Google specifically for a very long time. I'd go so far as to say the role I've been offered is one of my dream jobs.

That said, how does one price a dream? Would I be foolish to turn down an Amazon L5 and ~40k more comp for an L3 role at Google just because Google is a 'dream job'? I mean, at the end of the day, the work seems very similar. The titles, apart from band, are identical.

My Amazon offer:

Title: L5

TC over four years: $264k per year

Base: 160k

Hiring bonus:

Total: 165k, disbursed as followed:

-- 1st year cash bonus, paid monthly: $95,000

-- 2nd year cash bonus, paid monthly:$70,000

Stock: 113 shares. Schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40%

Location: Seattle

Notes: The generous hiring bonus ensures I don't have to care nearly as much about Amazon's steep vesting schedule.

My Google offer:

Title: L3

TC over four years: $226k per year

Base: 140k

Hiring bonus:

Total: 50k

Stock: $210k. Schedule is possibly quarterly, possibly monthly depending on stock price. I'm at ~159 shares currently.

Location: Sunnyvale

Notes: My recruiter said Google would be willing to shift some of my hiring bonus into stock as long as the TC over 4 years doesn't change. Would be a way to guarantee my stock vest monthly. That would help with holding the stock for over a year to reduce capital gains tax.

Given my own assessment of my skills, these two offers, and the fact that recruiters have been barking down my door since I updated my LinkedIn two months ago, I feel like I could get equivalent salaries elsewhere in the future without much problem, so turning down the Amazon offer wouldn't be closing the door on that salary forever, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.