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Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

businessinsider.com

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Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#101

Post by ripper1138 »

xkqd wrote: post #33
ripper1138 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s a solid summary of the most commonly known complaints and confirmed condition, and the commenter’s opinion is clear. If someone values working for a firm that doesn’t have a questionable relationship with their employees, the comment provides value. It’s up to the reader to determine if the good outweighs this list; or at least enough to work there.

Amazon gets and deserves a lot of bad press, but to me it’s no different than any other huge company with lots of blue collar workers. Apple, google, meta, and many more tech companies manufacture hardware products in overseas factories with awful working conditions, but I don’t see people boycotting working for those companies nearly as often as Amazon.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#102

Post by ajross »

puffoflogic wrote: post #98
ajross wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation for at-will employees does not constitute a contract. That's what "at-will" means, basically. In the breakdown of good faith interaction, the remedy (for both sides) is largely limited to the ability to walk away. But yes: if these were contractors Amazon had hired it would be very different.

This is nonsense, possibly triggered by a misunderstanding of what the word "contract" denotes. An at-will employee and their employer contract that for each hour of work (or each ~week salaried) performed by employee on instructions from employer, employer will pay to employee $X. Just because such a contract doesn't contain any term indicating the length of time an employee will work doesn't make it less of a contr…

That's getting needless sticky about definitions, and harming understanding of the point, potentially leading people to think that these Amazon workers are going to get their raises, which they clearly won't.

Let me be more concrete: am employer presenting you with a plan for future compensation[1] in an existing employment relationship does not constitute a contract. They can pay you what they want to pay you.

[1] Your back wages argument doesn't apply here. These people never got paid at all.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#103

Post by wyager »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

Two things going on here: 1. First, I'm a bit baffled by some of the responses along the lines of "Amazon should just own their mistake". Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies (unless you're talking about crypto, but I digress...). I would certainly want a bug corrected if it were in my favor, and if a bug went the other way, I might need to re-evaluate my company satisfaction based on my new…

> I work in fintech and if a bank accidentally deposits money into your account and you spend it, you can go to jail

So do I, and it depends. There was a whole case recently where chase (iirc) accidentally sent tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to a lender, and the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#104

Post by travisjungroth »

__derek__ wrote: post #76
travisjungroth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not finders keepers. The article is slightly vague, but my takeaway is that employee got raises. Those numbers went through a bunch of people. The pay went out for months. Then, they realized they miscalculated the raises. “Whoops, we didn’t mean to offer you $150k, but really $140k.” 1. I think they have no chance at getting back the pay from before. This isn’t a banking error, this is regret. As an employee…

From what I've heard, this timeline is incorrect. People with approved Q3 promotions received Personal Compensation Statements (PCS) telling them that they would get a raise starting in October. They were never actually paid the increased amount, and the time between erroneous PCS and correction was on the order of days, not months. Some folks didn't even get their erroneous PCS because their manager was slow to shar…

Thank you. That seems less serious. Still a bummer to experience getting your comp lowered.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#105

Post by innocentoldguy »

ozzythecat wrote: post #93

None of this surprises me. I was at that company for over 10 years. Quitting was the best thing I did for myself, and I should have left long ago. Amazon’s real innovation isn’t a cloud service company or a logistics business. The innovation is on how to squeeze every once of labor and value out of a human being, and how to do this legally, without damaging customers’ or public opinion of the company, at massive scal…

This was my experience at Amazon as well. It was the most stingy and toxic company I've ever worked for.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#106

Post by tomatocracy »

michaelt wrote: post #81
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

Two things going on here: 1. First, I'm a bit baffled by some of the responses along the lines of "Amazon should just own their mistake". Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies (unless you're talking about crypto, but I digress...). I would certainly want a bug corrected if it were in my favor, and if a bug went the other way, I might need to re-evaluate my company satisfaction based on my new…

> Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies If Bob signs a contract for Alice to paint a fence for $800 and a copy-paste error transfers her $1000 instead, yes. But if the copy-paste error happened before the contract was signed? Leading to Bob promising Alice $1000 and signing a contract promising it? Then in all probability, Bob will end up paying the contract amount.

This area of law is usually a bit more nuanced than "what you wrote is the contract". If both parties thought the contract said $800 when it was signed (and if that could be proven...) then that might well be enough for a court to either read the contract as if it said $800, or to void it entirely.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#107

Post by the_gipsy »

cooneyb wrote: post #38
monkpit wrote: post #3

The raises had to be approved though, right? It seems like an excuse to blame software for this. And it seems really off-putting that they wouldn’t just own the error, but instead try to revert it.

no such thing as "bank error in your favor" anymore i suppose

This is not a "bank error".

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#108

Post by staticautomatic »

imwillofficial wrote: post #89
staticautomatic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a data point to this, I recently interviewed at a large tech company. As part of investigating the comp, I ran a linear regression on data from levels and the results indicated that you should deduct a few grand for every year of tenure.

Levels is garbage data. How is this not obvious?

One reason it’s not obvious is that several findings of my analysis aligned neatly with things the recruiter told me about the company’s comp structure.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#109

Post by puffoflogic »

ajross wrote: post #102
puffoflogic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense, possibly triggered by a misunderstanding of what the word "contract" denotes. An at-will employee and their employer contract that for each hour of work (or each ~week salaried) performed by employee on instructions from employer, employer will pay to employee $X. Just because such a contract doesn't contain any term indicating the length of time an employee will work doesn't make it less of a contr…

That's getting needless sticky about definitions, and harming understanding of the point, potentially leading people to think that these Amazon workers are going to get their raises, which they clearly won't. Let me be more concrete: am employer presenting you with a plan for future compensation[1] in an existing employment relationship does not constitute a contract. They can pay you what they want to pay you. [1] Y…

None of which has anything to do with at-will employment. Since you do appear to have a good understanding of the situation, this leads me to the only possible conclusion that you were deliberately spreading disinformation about at will employment for some purpose.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#110

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wyager wrote: post #103
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #45

Two things going on here: 1. First, I'm a bit baffled by some of the responses along the lines of "Amazon should just own their mistake". Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies (unless you're talking about crypto, but I digress...). I would certainly want a bug corrected if it were in my favor, and if a bug went the other way, I might need to re-evaluate my company satisfaction based on my new…

> I work in fintech and if a bank accidentally deposits money into your account and you spend it, you can go to jail So do I, and it depends. There was a whole case recently where chase (iirc) accidentally sent tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to a lender, and the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.

> the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.

No. The appeals court smacked them silly in a unanimous opinion and the money was returned to Citi [1]. From the appellate judge:

> In a separate opinion, Circuit Judge Michael Park called the lawsuit a “straightforward case that many smart people have grossly overcomplicated and that we should have decided many months ago.”

> “Put simply, you don’t get to keep money sent to you by mistake unless you’re entitled to it anyway,” Park wrote

1. https://www.bankingdive.com/news/citi-wins-appeal-500-millio...

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