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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

#121

Post by throwayxx123 »

Resigned some time back. After joining I realized what a sh*thole I fell into and decided to brave it out for some time to get the FAANG stamp. I usually journal interesting work instances and my thoughts on them. Here are some from Amazon:

1. Teammates are out for blood. They go out of the way to ruin their teammates metrics. So much so that manager has to intervene because overall team metrics are declining due to this. Additionally, the metrics tracked are insanely stupid such as no of comments, revisions on a PR. This makes sure no healthy discussion/debate can happen on a piece of code.

2. Manager asks to crunch for no apparent reason. The problem with greedy and selfish managers is that everything looks critical to them. They only want to appease the upper management without any thought to people who will actually work with the deadlines.

3. People expect u to sacrifice weekends for "learning" internal tools. They quote everything as "learning experience".

4. Hell is an agile sprint system that has been optimized to require 10 hour days. We were required to estimate tasks for up to minutes and even then manager questions and pushes to reduce timelines.

5. Some great words from my manager - " Leaders never sit quiet. If u hv nothing to say, then speak anything or just say i agree". One guy follows this religiously. Another say - "Work on ownership aspect. If the guy reviewing ur work is not approving, its ur problem." I really wanted to quit right after this line.

6. If someone gives low Connections score, the whole team is reprimanded and huge "discussions" of pointing fingers happens.

7. All senior engineers and management give different advice on paper and verbally. This is because if the actions succeeds, they'll be lauded for "good management" and on failure, they can point towards their messages of concerns. They've mastered the politics of "gather all credit, divert all blame".

8. Deadlines are very top down where management promises castle in the sky and then asks the people below to achieve it no matter what. We've designed a whole cluster of services in a few hours and got some rubber stamp approvals as well. Most folks then get promoted and jump onto other greenfield projects not dealing with the aftermath.

9. People here are insanely subservient and those who aren't are generally kicked or they themselves jump to other teams.

These are very contrarion to my previous jobs where most points were very normal stuff between coworkers.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#122

Post by NickC25 »

Amazon has enough cash on hand to just own this "mistake" and pay the raises. Just baffling that a multitrillion dollar company can get away with this. Just pay people their worth! I don't care if this makes Jeff's net worth drop by .0001%, he can go dry his tears with his hundreds of billions.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#123

Post by wccrawford »

happyopossum wrote: post #16

The article is kinda useless without amounts… if I got a 4% raise and it got walked back to 2% I’d be pissed, but if I got a 40% raise, I’d expect it to have been a mistake.

I agree, but I'm assuming it's an amount that's big enough that Amazon cares enough to piss off every affected employee. If it was a 2.99% raise instead of 3%, they'd be better off just letting the employees have the money.

I'm also assuming that the proper amount is what the employee would have expected and been happy with if the mistake hadn't happened, which softens the blow considerably. So if they expected 5% and got 6%, going back to 5% is a morale-dampener, but not fatal.

OTOH, tech employees don't really need much excuse to change jobs any more, so literally any amount is a huge risk for your best employees.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#124

Post by brigade »

mikeryan wrote: post #67
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…

The web is littered with people telling their stories of getting overpaid in comp, frequently around bonuses, and having the company ask for their money back. They're always disappointed to find out that they do, legally, owe the company the extra pay back. Good companies will work with the employees on this. Other's can be a bit shitty about it. Big caveat that this is a US-centric view.

Practically, clawing back overpaid compensation from an uncooperative former employee requires a lawsuit with a chance of the employee winning, and has the potential to be more expensive anyway than however much could be recovered.

But, continued employment is easily dependent on recovering the overpayment one way or another. Usually by taking it out of future paychecks.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#125

Post by GingerBoats »

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…

Honestly, I started Amazon with some kick ass managers and a great leadership team. However, that changed after a year or two and I ended up with some of the shittiest leaders I've had in the industry. I couldn't bail quick enough.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#126

Post by throwawaygog6 »

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…

Normally, they will look at two years of stable(typically W2) income (Salary + RSUs) from one company before they make decisions. However, in bay area, some mortgage lenders have started excusing people who jump companies, because, well jumping companies in bay area is common. They now have to tweak their models.

Source: Recently went through the mortgage

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#127

Post by f1shy »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #105
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.

Have you worked in any big company afterward (or before) that was not toxic? The reason of my question: I work in a very big company, and I found it very toxic. I wonder if all big companies are the same.

I need to know if I would switch. But I do not want to go to smaller company.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#128

Post by jklinger410 »

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.

To save all the bickering here, the final answer is that the corporation always wins. No matter what the mistake.

Let the lawyers get together and do a retroactive class-action lawsuit to solve it. But Amazon will do whatever it wants until that suit comes through.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#129

Post by bloak »

bombcar wrote: post #120
SoftTalker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a third option for when the sum is really huge, like more money than you'll ever see in your life: find a good lawyer who can arrange transferring the money into some kind of trust fund, perhaps in a different country, that benefits your children, then wait for the knock on the door, expect to go to prison for a bit, but your children may be allowed to keep the money, and they might support you when you come out of jail. I think I read about a woman in New York successfully doing something like that with an accidental transfer from the United Nations, though I might be misremembering.

Re: Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation

#130

Post by viktree »

f1shy wrote: post #127
innocentoldguy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you worked in any big company afterward (or before) that was not toxic? The reason of my question: I work in a very big company, and I found it very toxic. I wonder if all big companies are the same. I need to know if I would switch. But I do not want to go to smaller company.

I'm curious, what's the big company you are at now?
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