Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 175 posts

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#111

Post by SoftTalker »

kazinator wrote: post #70
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…

When I was 20 something, I had an extra zero added to a severance payment. I randomly called some law firm asking if I should just keep that. The lawyer dude plunged his arm into the telephone line and slapped me silly.

I wonder if you'd be safe just sticking it in a savings account until they asked for it back. I mean, is it your responsibility to point out their mistake? And after how much time might they lose their right to demand it back?

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#112

Post by wyager »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #110
wyager wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ah, I did not see this update! Tfti

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#113

Post by __derek__ »

travisjungroth wrote: post #104
__derek__ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. It's not a great employee experience by any means. Mocking references to Strive to be Earth's Best Employer abound.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#114

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #91
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…

This depends, if we sign a contract saying saying compensation is £X, i cant later lower your compensatuon claiming I made a mostake. It would be my responsebility to check befire signing.

Why all these hypotheticals that aren't relevant? That (signing of a binding contract where work was done and then the employer reneged on payment) manifestly did not happen in this case.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#115

Post by paganel »

ghaff wrote: post #87
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…

>basically have just come to expect that the equity portion of their compensation should be like cash. Not just like cash. Like cash that may be worth 50% or more money by the time it vests. Hopefully, it won't get that bad for large public companies but there are probably people out there today who are banking on their total comp being $400K (and making decisions on that basis) when it's actually more like $200K or…

I’m out of the loop here and too lazy to check, but let’s say those people were to apply for a mortgage, would the bank only look at the “fixed” part of their income when considering one’s application? Or it will also look at the “variable” part? (i.e. the part of the comp that will vest at some point in the future). If the answer to this last question is “yes”, how does the bank “compute” that future/expected income?

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#116

Post by JumpCrisscross »

paganel wrote: post #115
ghaff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>basically have just come to expect that the equity portion of their compensation should be like cash. Not just like cash. Like cash that may be worth 50% or more money by the time it vests. Hopefully, it won't get that bad for large public companies but there are probably people out there today who are banking on their total comp being $400K (and making decisions on that basis) when it's actually more like $200K or…

I’m out of the loop here and too lazy to check, but let’s say those people were to apply for a mortgage, would the bank only look at the “fixed” part of their income when considering one’s application? Or it will also look at the “variable” part? (i.e. the part of the comp that will vest at some point in the future). If the answer to this last question is “yes”, how does the bank “compute” that future/expected income…

> would the bank only look at the “fixed” part of their income when considering one’s application? Or it will also look at the “variable” part?

Should be both. To the latter, it depends how it’s structured. But typically by looking at a few years’ compensation.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#117

Post by tacon »

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…

If a company is going to give some employees a bad taste in their mouth, I would think the very last group to do that to would be those recently promoted. Those are people that just got the seal of approval from Amazon and are in the best position to jump to another company.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#118

Post by KallDrexx »

ineedasername wrote: post #14
athenot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from the employee side, RSUs are usually communicated (and reasoned about) in dollar amount, with the undersanding that one is getting a number of shares corresponding to that amount. So even if it's an honest miscommunication, it's still a painful one.

Then that is a misunderstanding by the employee about how their compensation works. It’s little different than owning stock. I could say “I own $5000 in Amazon stock” but I still know it actually means I own $X shares while the dollar value is variable.

That's not a mis-communication by the employee.

There are several events that happen with refreshers/bonus:

1) Notification period 2) Granting period 3) Vesting period

When the notification period happens, the manager doesn't say "You are getting X units of stock". The compensation system actually at this point has zero idea how many units of stock you are getting. Instead you get told "you are getting $x worth of stock".

Then there's the granting period, in which those unvested stock units are actually granted to you.

This is important because there's a lag time between the notification period and the granting period. If your boss tells you you are getting $10k worth of stock and the stock price is $100 per share at the notification period, but is $105 per share at the granting period, you are granted 95-ish stock units instead of 100, because the number of stock units granted was based on the Dollar amount they communicated to you.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#119

Post by Bedon292 »

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?

I know there is bias in who enters data on levels, but is there something else that makes it garbage data? Can you elaborate? Because I have never seen it as 'garbage data' and would like to know more.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#120

Post by bombcar »

SoftTalker wrote: post #111
kazinator wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 20 something, I had an extra zero added to a severance payment. I randomly called some law firm asking if I should just keep that. The lawyer dude plunged his arm into the telephone line and slapped me silly.

I wonder if you'd be safe just sticking it in a savings account until they asked for it back. I mean, is it your responsibility to point out their mistake? And after how much time might they lose their right to demand it back?

The general consensus seems to be either leave it in the checking account until it is pulled back (and it almost always will be unless the amount is "small or reasonable" and therefor not caught in an audit) or directly contact the company immediately.

Moving it to a savings account is tricky because the automatic clawback will pull from whatever account it was sent into.

Once the company issues a W2 or 1099 the next year that covers it, I would consider it relatively safe to keep.

Post reply on HN