381–390 of 525 posts
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Easier said than done you’re on an H1B visa and HR hangs you out to dry.
If you are on H1B and you have a family in the country I think you need to be very careful about how you behave at work, and if your work situation sucks you better start looking for a new H1B sponsor. You can always complain later.
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I am Russian and my best manager ever, in 20 years of software development, was Indian. So YMMV and these kinds of generalizations need to become a thing of the past.
I need to clarify, this is from the perspective of American or first world working conditions. Coming from Russia an Indian boss must be a god sent(just guessing, don't know). There are maybe 100 millions Indian bosses. Do I know all of them? Like everything in life, this is my experience. It isn't a scientific fact!
Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. Most employees will never complain to HR, they may need some routine services that HR provides and that’s the extent of their interaction. But there are a few who do complain. If these are peer-related complaints, HR will work with the employees managers to resolve the issue. But let’s say someone has a problem with their manager. Maybe no one else has complain…
> Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. This. Which is why I do my best to avoid working for (or doing business with) large corporations. They're simply toxic.
The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…
I imagine the number of people who today looked up Oleg's commits and his manager's survey results is in low single digits. I don't think you are being as "throw away" as you think here.
The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…
Not doing much to help Amazon’s image by bringing up a lack of weekend contributions as a negative.
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I've left some scathing feedback in reviews. Frequently spelled out in a way that they could figure out it was me even if it was anonymous. The trick is to not complain about your treatment, but explain why management is taking actions detrimental to the company. Don't say "boss made me work late and I want to quit". Say "management is overextending the team and it's eroding morale and will likely cause retention iss…
If you come at the king, you best not miss.
- "Amazon Connect." The program is called Connections. Every employee gets a multiple choice question every day. You never submit specific comments about a manager. It's truly high level stuff. "Does your manager help clear obstacles for you?" "How many teams do you need to work with to get something done?" "Are you achieving your career goals" "Are you accruing tech debt?". Responses are anonymous and the results are not shown once the population gets below 4 or 5 total responses.
Maybe some rogue Connections employee is sharing data--they should be fired if they are. But it's wildly against policy and the idea that a manager would care enough to go find out what an individual employees response is seems off. Who has time and the individual data points don't matter that much.
It's just good macro level data. It's great to have a pulse on what's working in a team and what isn't. It's actually a great way to find where teams aren't happy with their manager. Call it a bad manager locating device. That Connections is the triggering point seems improbable.
- His manager asked HR how to prevent them from receiving immigration benefits. Seems very off. Individual managers do very little w/ respect to immigration. Employees interact directly with the company's immigration department and lawyers. Managers approve green card sponsorship and work with employees where they have immigration challenges like renewals or home country returns. His manager didn't ask HR how to do this unless he was seeking his own performance problem.
- Transfers. With few exceptions, Amazon has one of the most liberal transfer programs you can find. Don't like your job on your first day, you can apply to a new one. You cannot link transferring to any conditions involving spouses or other external factors. You can be blocked from transferring if your current manager has flagged you as having an active performance problem, and you can appeal that block itself. You cannot be prevented from transferring for any other reason than performance. If the author was blocked from transferring to another role, it's only due to performance.
- Working from home. Amazon's a pretty in-person culture, but people work from home. Some teams have different norms. A manager might discourage an employee who was struggling performance-wise from working from home, if, for example, they had done so previously with limited results. It's not a rule, but people use common sense when people are scuffling, particularly if them being around others will help them avoid getting stuck.
- Pivot is a process where people who have been identified as having performance problems can appeal this determination. If you lose the Pivot appeal, you then go through the usual performance improvement plan dance that most companies use. An employee's case is heard by three peers (people in the same job role) or a manager who manages people in that job role. Which appeal choice is up to the employee. Most people choose peers and more people win their appeal than lose. Three independent peers agreed with his manager that he had performance problems. That's the only way you lose a Pivot appeal.
Bottom line, it seems likely the person in question was not performing at the level needed. They don't see that and don't agree. Most people who aren't performing don't agree. They began having the expected performance management interactions with their manager and it sounds like many wires were crossed along the way. Did they have a demon manager? Maybe. Some level of Dunning-Kruger seems like a more likely cause. It's a big company with lots of great jobs and people who enjoy them, ymmv.
I want to preface this comment with a statement that in no way am I trying to blame the victim here, only to point out what can be learned from this situation. This is certainly not the first time I've heard of Amazon being a shitty place to work at, and I don't see much reason to doubt the story of a vindictive boss doing everything they can to make an employee miserable after learning that the employee submitted ba…
> If you are at your job as part of your Visa process, you are essentially a slave with a slave's rights to match, and you are better off not rocking the boat if you want to complete the process. No, you are not. That's taking the premise way too far. Slaves were owned as property. You are not property of a corporation just because your job is connected to a visa. You don't have slaves rights (almost entirely non-exi…
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What 25 year old has the resources to take on even a 100-person corporation, much less a megacorp?
At 27 I took on a multi-million dollar, VC-backed property management startup that was trying to defraud me on my rent and rental deposit. It’s amazing what some legal research and a few hours of spare time can do.
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LMIA seems like a balance. In LMIA, the employer is made to test the local labour market before applying for a visa, rather than an LCA in which the USCIS trusts the employer's word.
The LCA process also forces the employer to test the labor market first. It's all theater, and based on 20 year-old business practices (you have to publish your job ad in a major newspaper and some other places, of which one option is to have it be read out loud by a local radio station!), but it's not like you can skip through that process. How does LMIA compare here?
However an lmia supported work permit it's the employee's and not employer's, meaning that if you get fired you can still stay in the country and find another job. You do need to apply for the Visa again for the next job but being in Canada already makes it much simpler. Essentially you aren't at your employer mercy.
Also if you work for one year you usually already have enough points for PR, once you apply for a pr you gain the right for a BOWP visa, which is essentially an open work permit that allows you to work for any employer until a final decision in your PR is made.
IANAL but went through all of above and am now a pr