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

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 618 posts

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

#171

Post by kortilla »

capableweb wrote: post #121
trgdr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.

I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.

This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.

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

#172

Post by damontal »

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.

You may have colleagues or reports who you genuinely like and don't want to burn or over-stress by just leaving without warning. That's the way I see it. If I truly despised everyone I worked with I'd consider just leaving immediately if I had to opportunity, otherwise 2 weeks.

Also if you just leave it may be harder to get a decent reference from your colleagues for future jobs.

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

#173

Post by rsynnott »

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.

Amazon has a weird vesting schedule (40% in the third and fourth year IIRC) and it has gone up quite a lot over the last few years. It also appears to have yearly vests. This doesn't seem implausible under those conditions.

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

#175

Post by throwawayamazon »

jvanderbot wrote: post #110
iLoveOncall wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was offered a position with near-enough 100k per quarter . With amazon, a quarter is the financial decision making resolution. And, mine was a manager position. So, yes, I did start to learn about this pip nonsense, and was asked to identify the low performers from a team that I inherited. The team was full of bright, diligent, capable workers making real impact on our project. It was foolish. But it happens. You l…

(obvious throwaway account) I had a similar experience in Amazon, ngl the thing about "precendent caching" is real. People have to be put on PIP regardless of performance so management set crazy standards that people will fail.

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

#176

Post by jeremiahbuckley »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #56

This has probably already been said, but places that mandate that X% of people need to be put on performance improvement plans are not great. This can force managers (or HR, depends on who decides the PIP) to put otherwise good engineers or staff on PIP when they are perfectly fine employees - they may not be 10x, perfect, and can just be doing what they need to do to do their jobs, but they still aren't doing anythi…

And don’t you end up with hire-to-fire practices as a result of this? Hire a lame employee just so they can be the one on the chopping block; preserving your actual valuable team members?

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

#177

Post by markus92 »

kortilla wrote: post #171
capableweb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.

This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.

I'd say PPE is. Getting paid 5k to spend 4k on rent is pretty similar to getting paid 2k and spending 1k on rent (all else being equal).

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

#178

Post by cpitman »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #95
iLoveOncall wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe it was that the manager was being pressured to PIP a certain percentage of people, and instead pushed back really hard to retain this person because they wanted to retain them instead. Before spending their political capital, they asked the employee if they were committed to the long haul.

In the end, they went to bat for the author and then ended up in the same place. They could have just PIP'd them with a lot less effort.

The article doesn't make the reason clear, but this seems more likely to me than vesting stock.

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

#179

Post by School-Cotton »

capableweb wrote: post #101
andybak wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.

If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.

The U.S. is not really a “modern country”. It’s not fair to compare it to functioning Western European democracies.

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

#180

Post by apwell23 »

ballenf wrote: post #119
bsenftner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.

In earlier times, they'd just fire you without any kind of PIP process. Are you saying that PIP vs. immediate firing is worse?

i was given the option to take 1 month PIP or take 1 month severance. I took severance but not quite sure why they offered me pip. I am guessing something do with unemployment benefits?
Post reply on HN