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Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

businessinsider.com

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Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#11

Post by BoorishBears »

shostack wrote: post #7
scarface_74 wrote: post #6

Amazon had an “anonymous” internal Slack channel where you could discuss pay by using a bot to post on your behalf. It was called #pay-equity and there was another one called #pay-equity-discussion. I’m surprised anyone is crazy enough to try to work through a pip. They give you the choice of trying to work through an impossible, subjective list of requirements or take a severance that’s one month severance for each…

If you're looking for a serious answer, not everyone has the extreme privilege of being as in demand and finding another job quickly, particularly in this economy. People may also have financial situations where they need to hold on to whatever hope they can of a job because it is less scary than taking the money and then taking the leap. I generally agree a company who has pipped you is effectively saying they want…

Even if you're not in demand, taking a guaranteed higher payout vs risking losing money and time to gamble on a process that is not designed for you to succeed.

If you really want to drag privilege into this, if anything it speaks to your own to think that people in tough circumstances have the luxury of turning down money now for vague promises of a possibly better payout later.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#12

Post by scarface_74 »

appplication wrote: post #8
scarface_74 wrote: post #6

Amazon had an “anonymous” internal Slack channel where you could discuss pay by using a bot to post on your behalf. It was called #pay-equity and there was another one called #pay-equity-discussion. I’m surprised anyone is crazy enough to try to work through a pip. They give you the choice of trying to work through an impossible, subjective list of requirements or take a severance that’s one month severance for each…

What reasoning did your manager provide when putting you on the pip? That’s also not there worst severance. I assumed you didn’t get anything.

That’s a long story. It was a consulting project that I was only peripherally involved in.

Suffice it to say during the three months I was on “focus” I got perfect feedback from my project managers, my coworkers and a perfect customer satisfaction score from my customers on projects I led - I worked in the AWS consulting division.

Both of the customers reached out to me about working on contract after I left.

I was suppose to be 80% billable and I met those targets all of the time. I refused to take on another project that would have had me juggle two full time projects that would have put my utilization at 140%.

I was going to look for a job earlier. But everyone told me to wait on the PIP and the severance.

I’m 49 years old and my shit tolerance level is much too low to put up with something like that. I knew someone would hire me either as a contractor or full time. My bills are really low (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966).

The full time job I got after leaving was perfect. Not only that, a former CTO offered me a consulting contract the day I found out I had gotten pipped to troubleshoot an AWS implementation.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#14

Post by scarface_74 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #11
shostack wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for a serious answer, not everyone has the extreme privilege of being as in demand and finding another job quickly, particularly in this economy. People may also have financial situations where they need to hold on to whatever hope they can of a job because it is less scary than taking the money and then taking the leap. I generally agree a company who has pipped you is effectively saying they want…

Even if you're not in demand, taking a guaranteed higher payout vs risking losing money and time to gamble on a process that is not designed for you to succeed. If you really want to drag privilege into this, if anything it speaks to your own to think that people in tough circumstances have the luxury of turning down money now for vague promises of a possibly better payout later .

As a 49 year old Black guy who graduated from an unknown state school in the mid 90s, I can’t recall the term “privilege” ever being applied to me…

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#15

Post by oldbbsnickname »

nine_zeros wrote: post #5

Blind app is the best place to find the nuances of corporate nonsense.

I'm against placing employee-to-employee conversations that aren't work related on work resources: No one can be honest because there's always a risk the company will use it against them.

Meta has/had a secret "ADHD support group" on Workplace, but I would be wondering who's reading it, what people are and aren't saying, and, again, how it could be used against them or taken out of context.

There are no "safe spaces" at work. It's fucking work, where politics and bullshit usually win over merit and personal ethics.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#16

Post by pavel_lishin »

LinuxBender wrote: post #2

Corporate Slack instances are probably not a great place to discuss such things. One could in a pinch fire up one of the ssh chat daemons [1] on an EC2 assuming that most of the employees are familiar with using SSH. There is a demo documented in that git repo. People can ssh under a pseudonym rather than using a real name. The daemon uses private keys to track identity so make a new SSH key specific to that server.…

> One could in a pinch fire up one of the ssh chat daemons [1] on an EC2 assuming that most of the employees are familiar with using SSH.

If you want any non-engineers in on your conversation, you absolutely should not assume that.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#17

Post by BoorishBears »

scarface_74 wrote: post #14
BoorishBears wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're not in demand, taking a guaranteed higher payout vs risking losing money and time to gamble on a process that is not designed for you to succeed. If you really want to drag privilege into this, if anything it speaks to your own to think that people in tough circumstances have the luxury of turning down money now for vague promises of a possibly better payout later .

As a 49 year old Black guy who graduated from an unknown state school in the mid 90s, I can’t recall the term “privilege” ever being applied to me…

As a 29 year old Black guy who was born in a 3rd world country, I think people underestimate what counts as a privilege.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#18

Post by scarface_74 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #17
scarface_74 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 49 year old Black guy who graduated from an unknown state school in the mid 90s, I can’t recall the term “privilege” ever being applied to me…

As a 29 year old Black guy who was born in a 3rd world country, I think people underestimate what counts as a privilege.

When you get stopped by the police going home to your own neighborhood in a city where only 4% of the people look like you, it doesn’t matter where you are from…

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#19

Post by BoorishBears »

scarface_74 wrote: post #18
BoorishBears wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 29 year old Black guy who was born in a 3rd world country, I think people underestimate what counts as a privilege.

When you get stopped by the police going home to your own neighborhood in a city where only 4% of the people look like you, it doesn’t matter where you are from…

The world is vast: some people don't have the privilege of their next meal, a roof over their heads, their home even existing tomorrow. Getting stopped by cops in one of the many places where we're a minority doesn't really stack that high up on the scale of it all.

The reality is you probably are privileged, and so am I compared to my parents who grew up on mud floors and lost siblings to easily preventable conditions, and that's why it's pointless to go around Hacker News of all places and throw around the "you're privileged card"... like 99.9% of the people here aren't also just for having the time to be here.

Re: Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs

#20

Post by coredog64 »

oldbbsnickname wrote: post #13

Wait a minute: does Amazon even tell white-collar employees they're being PIP'd? I though they just fired people without giving them any reason.

There’s a secret (to the employees) period pre-PIP where management is either collecting evidence of your inadequacy or setting you up to fail so they can hit URA quota. You’re absolutely notified your in PIP as you can just take the money and run.
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