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I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

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Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#91

Post by regularfry »

aylmao wrote: post #78
capableweb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like a cultural quirk they have over there, where even though it's not stipulated by law, people need to stay at the place they're leaving for two weeks, no matter what, otherwise the optics are really bad, for whatever reason. But it only works one way, if you get fired you usually get fired immediately, no two weeks to find something else. In my mind, it just looks like employees have been getting the short…

I had never thought of it that way, but you're right— firing is immediate but employees always feel the obligation to stick around for two weeks. It tends to be a weird two weeks too. If you know you're quitting you're usually already preparing for it prior— taking less responsibility, finding who to hand projects to, etc. In my experience at times it's just two uncomfortable weeks of showing up and doing nothing.

Assuming your last paycheck includes those two weeks, that's (almost certainly, in context) an $X,000 difference in what you walk away with. I could probably stomach hanging around for an extra fortnight even if X was quite small.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#92

Post by hef19898 »

wil421 wrote: post #41
hef19898 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You what's funny? When this PIP culture hits German labour laws. Then the result is basically pointless bossing, which ultimately results in, for the employer, rather expensive severance packages. Nothing funny about bossing, but funny that employers still want to force their head through a wall, instead of just offering the package they have to pay anyway from the get go.

Large companies just stagnant hiring in one region or another to offset risk. I’ve seen companies hire like crazy in places like the US and India but the same people have been working in the UK/EU for decade(s) without any new hires. UK/EU companies will do the same and recoup costs by laying off regions like US/India because it’s easier. You can easily avoid these kinds of companies who are always hiring and firing.…

Companies hire where employees are cheaper, and where labor protections are weaker. All the time. They also are limited to hire in regions that can support their business, e.g. Poland in case of Germany. India wouldn't work for an inhouse team running order management for a German production company, but Poland might. Might because getting such an org off the ground, and running, takes considerable efforts which might not justify whatever salary savings one might have.

That being said, Amazon in Germany is more like a up-or-out place than a hire-and-fire one for white collar folks. And the blue collar personal is pretty much treated like logistics workers at other places, read not really great. Salaries tend to be higher so (accounted for region and other things).

No idea how things are on the ground in the US so, but I guess worse. Which seems to be a general thing so.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#93

Post by aylmao »

bratbag wrote: post #75

So stepping back from the unreliable narrator of a person living through this with ptsd: -person is suffering mental health issues due to strain of job. -persons performance drops rapidly without warning as a result. -boss takes workload off them without putting them on a pip process, to give them time to work through their issues. -person quits right after stocks vest which upsets boss who put extra effort into help…

Even from this perspective I don't think the employee is in the wrong.

If a job gives you mental strain, especially if it is affecting your performance, IMO the right thing to do is to quit. I'm not surprised the boss was disappointed, but I do think they should've seen it coming.

I've been in situations where a job evidently isn't for me anymore, albeit in a seemingly healthier environment— my boss and I talked openly about the team no longer being a fit for me for weeks if not months prior.

I was evidently not working at my full potential too, and when I told my boss I was quitting, they told me what date I should officially submit my resignation so that I'd still get my latest bonus. It was all very amicable and objective.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#94

Post by civilized »

_the_inflator wrote: post #28
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

Senior Manager here. This is common to any large entity and may only influenced by workers' rights and culture. 1. Large numbers In large companies, you have numbers. There are 10000 individuals so to say. There is a difference between individuals and groups. The larger the group, the more HR and controlling tend to use their understanding of statistics. This is the conflict between groups and individuals. Why take c…

> Say there is a job offer on a job portal and you apply to it. Behind the scenes, there is already the right candidate with the right profile. However, in order to get the candidate through all the controls along the process, you have to evaluate other candidates as well.

For example, companies must perform this process in order to defraud America's H-1B visa program, which is now considered a table stakes employment practice.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#95

Post by mattgreenrocks »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #47
miningape wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.

Unless you're a director you will never come even close to $100K of stock vesting in a single event, and directors are not subject to PIPs. So that's a nice theory you have here but it doesn't work in practice.

Look at how their boss responded.

If it wasn’t about the equity, why would they be so mad? The point of the PIP is generally to remove the employee.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#96

Post by cyanydeez »

rawling wrote: post #77
miningape wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.

I read through the article expecting this, but... if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? > I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me. > ... > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money…

at some point, I assume they meta game the PIP expecting employees to leave willingly.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#97

Post by aylmao »

gumballindie wrote: post #60

The mindset is that you can always find new factory floor operators to push buttons on keyboards and operate ci/cd pipeline interfaces. Software "engineering" is the new factory work. To be automated soon so y'all can be freed to work on important things.

> Software "engineering" is the new factory work.

I always found interesting how this has always been true, but a lot of people seemed to not notice, behind the high-pay and benefits of past. Software engineering has always been just labour. Relatively scarce labour, but we were never "in control".

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#98

Post by capableweb »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #87
capableweb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the person interviewed is lying then, you claim? Inflating the number? > I got to the point where they offered me a job, and I was going to quit. But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. > If you walked away during the Pivot or anytime before you had your investment before it was there for you, you woul…

No, she isn't necessarily lying but just making it seem as if she would have received $200K over a single vest while it would have likely happened over at least 2 years and 4 vests. I have £110K coming up if I look on the stock portal, but it's over the next two years, so 25K at a time, and I don't consider it as money I already have.

Well, it seems what the interviewed person is saying is that "Day X I didn't have the money in my bank account. I waited for Day Y, and now I have \"couple hundred thousand dollars\" in my bank account", which sounds like it didn't happen over 2 years and 4 vesting occasions. But maybe it's just worded weird.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#99

Post by phpisthebest »

_the_inflator wrote: post #28
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

Senior Manager here. This is common to any large entity and may only influenced by workers' rights and culture. 1. Large numbers In large companies, you have numbers. There are 10000 individuals so to say. There is a difference between individuals and groups. The larger the group, the more HR and controlling tend to use their understanding of statistics. This is the conflict between groups and individuals. Why take c…

>>In large companies, you have numbers.

This is the root cause of the problem, for many reasons that average size of a company has expanded, today the market share consumed by large enterprises is higher than it as ever been, cutting out SMB where employees are often treated as humans not as a numbers

I think we will see a correction at some point, as I dont believe Companies on the scale of Amazon, Apple, Google, etc are sustainable and today are artificially supported by government regulation, at some point however that will prove to be these companies weakness

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#100

Post by rand_r »

CalRobert wrote: post #35
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

This is random but I was recently rejected for a role from a company I find very interesting - https://www.overstory.com/ - and when I asked, the engineering manager gave me clear, detailed feedback on why (I don't have experience with satellite imagery tools like STAC, I accessed dict members with x['a'] instead of x.get('a', {}), and I didn't go in to depth on my takehome assignment.). I really appreciate it and me…

Depending on your perception, x.get is either error recovery (good) or a silent failure (bad). One is not necessarily better than the other; it depends on what you want. In my experience, x[] is usually the better choice because failing fast makes debugging easier.

I hope no one is recommending x.get as a general practice, because that is pretty naive.

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