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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

#211

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #181
iLoveOncall wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon typically offers cash bonuses during the first 2 years that bring total comp up to a similar amount in the years where 40% of stock vests. They manage towards a target compensation number. The stock vest schedule just changes the mix of cash vs. stock.

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

#212

Post by francisofascii »

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…

If you are put on a PIP, at least you have some time to start looking for a new job. The takeaway seems to be, one on a PIP, put all your effort into finding the next job rather than trying to keep your current one.

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

#213

Post by nness »

rgblambda wrote: post #184

>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".

That was my first reading — in every country I've worked (that is not the U.S.), the burden of proof on the employer is very high. Which is not to say that organisations can't find their own ways to fire staff that align with the regulatory environment in which they operate — just, it's very hard for this kind of U.S-style ultra-capitalistic culture to develop.

I largely think that is a good thing. Employers have a disproportionate power over the employees, and having to go through the hurdles to fire a few troublesome employees is well worth the protections afforded to everyone else.

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

#214

Post by balderdash »

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…

To be fair the employee is getting paid for those two weeks (and as others have noted it’s a pretty easy two weeks)

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

#215

Post by kortilla »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #113
CalRobert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

:x['a'] instead of x.get('a', {}) This seems like splitting hairs. Sure, maybe x.get is better, but would that be a deal breaker? Know you are just giving quick example, but this just struck a cord. Are jobs really so hard to get that employers can be that nit-picky?

It’s not nit-picky because the behavior of the two is completely different when ‘a’ isn’t present.

If the assignment is dealing with dirty/partial data or implementing APIs with optional fields, [] can be a complete deal breaker.

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

#216

Post by g-b-r »

sumtechguy wrote: post #193
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.

Late stage? This is SOP for many large companies going back decades. The tech companies are just sort of new to it and gave it a new name. Many companies in the 70s/80s/90s famously had their 10% culling every year. Microsoft called it stack ranking. This is hardly new and is fairly commonly done in many industries. The book name escapes me but the CEOs loved it about how it touted this very thing to do. Is it the 'r…

I did know about Microsoft (in the 90s), and I think many companies took inspiration from them; do you have older examples?

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

#217

Post by philipwhiuk »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

> If you have a very competitive interview process and high compensation to attract the best talent

It's a big assumption that the competitive interview process is sufficient to identify only the top talent. Every other week News@YC has posts complaining that every type of interview process doesn't identify talent well.

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

#218

Post by bitwize »

trgdr wrote: post #114
capableweb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

They're being paid half as much but they're much better off because world-class health care and education are effectively free. And if they have a job it's much harder to fire them and leave them twisting in the wind.

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

#219

Post by xkekjrktllss »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

>the old Wall St model of doing one cut in one afternoon, calling people into an office and giving a severance is far more humane.

Since when did being "humane" contribute to profit?

>Everyone understood it was about the numbers not about your performance

The idea is literally to make the remaining employees think it's about performance. The company doesn't care what ex-employees think.

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

#220

Post by from-nibly »

I'm sorry, but this is why FAANG are such trash companies that can't achieve anything of substance. Their employees are too busy playing games to get anything done. This practice is like setting up a museum with priceless artifacts and explicitly saying to the night watchman "if you can get away with stealing from us you can have it, also you're probably going to get fired next quarter"

In any normal sized business this would be an absolute disaster. FAANG has to spend like triple on talent for people to be ok with this nonsense. Why not just treat people like people?

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