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

181–190 of 618 posts

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

#181

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #46
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #16

> 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. So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term, and some hyper-rational VP repurposes that reward as a kind of tenure cliff forcing people out just ahead of it? All the pieces are in the article, just wa…

Amazon's stock vesting schedule is 5% - 15% - 40% - 40%, so you're not new anymore by the time you reach any significant number of stocks vesting.

Convenient considering their average tenure is less than 2 years.

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

#182

Post by pierat »

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.

No, a PIP is about creating a culture of fear, so that management can PIP anybody with no or manufactured reasons, and control workforce with loss of job.

And it has the double advantage of 'id you leave under PIP, you lose a bunch of money'.

It's 100% about culture of fear and control.

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

#183

Post by NBJack »

cyanydeez wrote: post #96
rawling wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bingo. Remember, one of the key points of a PIP is to gather documentation. When they sit you down for The Meeting, the 'evidence' is already on record, reducing your leverage should you decide to pursue them legally later for something like wrongful termination. Then, they often dangle a pittance in the form of severance pay if you go ahead and exit right away, of your own free will and volition. This gets even worse if the person is on a H1B.

It's a machine.

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

#184

Post by rgblambda »

>there were no warning signs. There was no trail of communication saying, "You are underperforming."

I don't know about the U.S but in many countries, I imagine this would be a valid justification to reject a PIP. Take it to an employment tribunal and say: "There was no indication that I was performing anything other than as expected until I was handed a PIP".

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

#185

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

We should normalize tech companies vesting monthly.

Everything else is a scam to pretend like you have good wages when you really don't.

I get at startups - there's some artificial need to keep the number of people on the cap table low. I'm not sure why one of the cap lines can't be "EMPLOYEE EQUITY" which is a company (like a VC company) where the shares are distributed by that company to the employees in accordance with their contracts...

This is a problem that could definitely be solved, but like most "problems" - it's working as intended - to give employers the optionality to clawback your equity if it ever really does become worth a ton and they don't like you.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

intunderflow wrote: post #58

I've heard so many terrible stories about working at Amazon that I'm not sure I would ever work there, both in the media and from friends who were severely mistreated. It's a shame, because some of the tech they work on (like S3) is super interesting and high scale, but I do not want to acquire a mental health crisis from work.

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by dudul »

capableweb wrote: post #68
intunderflow wrote: post #59

> My manager was super mad and asked me when I was leaving. I said two weeks. Serious question for Americans as maybe this is cultural: They're an at-will employee, seemed to already have a new job lined up and the company seemed to have burned all goodwill with them, why not resign effective immediately?

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…

Of course you get let go immediately. Who wants a fired employee to linger for 2 weeks? That would be an awkward half month. Otoh, companies usually pay a minimum of 2 weeks salary.

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

#188

Post by ochronus »

vasco wrote: post #63

If in a PIP you can actually improve the thing in question, then the PIP is useless and your manager failed to communicate it to you properly. In all other cases a PIP is not passable. Nobody becomes a significantly better engineer in 2 months if they haven't in their career so far, with the only new factor in the 2 months being "now you have extra pressure and a clock ticking".

I disagree, having been on both sides of PIPs. Not all PIP reasons are about not being a certain level of engineer. Sometimes it's about behaviors or the lack of them. In some cases, the forcing function of a strict timeline with high stakes attached is what people need. Usually not, but sometimes yes. Anyway, it's a tool that's to be used as a last resort, 99% of performance cases should have a much lighter solution before they escalate.

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

#189

Post by djha-skin »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #156

Many years ago, when I worked in high finance, it was common knowledge that 3-5% of the staff would be fired every 1-2 years, all at once. This created a lot of tension every time rumours swirled that the "culling" was coming up. But, when you were fired, you were simply given a phone call, out of the blue one day, told to come to an office, and then offered a severance package based on your years of service, and esc…

It's about liability management I think. The company can show a judge that "they did all they can" while like the same time gathering a paper trail on the employee.

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

#190

Post by NBJack »

danaris wrote: post #145
ballenf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In some ways, yes. Firing you immediately for bullshit reasons is something you can potentially take to court, and also make a solid case for unemployment payments due to unfair termination. If they put you on a PIP, and then claim that you're failing to meet it, even if they're lying through their teeth, that makes it much harder to prove that their actions were unfair or illegal. Suddenly it's no longer a "person s…

This reminds me of the big piece years ago talking about employees crying at their desks from the pressure. People joked about it, and to be fair, it wasn't that common.

Reality is, you wanted to find a conference room or the bathroom for that.

Let's not forget that in order to use said documentation legally later, you would potentially run the risk of violating company policy on confidential information disclosure.

Post reply on HN