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

441–450 of 618 posts

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

#441

Post by Terr_ »

moate wrote: post #357
IKantRead wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way and would also never work at a FAANG. That said, I suspect this is would be viewed as a benefit of the process since I'm fairly confident Amazon and the like don't want people who feel this way working for them regardless of the talent of those individual people.

Exactly this. “Are you willing to kill another human? No? Sorry, there’s no place for you in the infantry”

I feel a better analogy would involve (A) a demand that is outside the official job-description or duties and (B) isn't a fixed-bar but instead makes multiple employees fight each other in an indefinite race to the bottom.

Ex: "Are you willing to spend your free time becoming the General's #1 personal servant? No? Sorry, there's no place for you in the infantry."

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

#442

Post by iLoveOncall »

kortilla wrote: post #191
iLoveOncall wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re just out of touch with how much people can make in the US. An IC software dev L6 offer I reviewed for a colleague 4 years ago was TC comprised of 180k salary and a little over $1 million of stock with a 4 year vest that Amazon backloads so you get most in the last 2 years. $200k in a single 6 month vest cycle is definitely possible in that offer depending on timing of amzn stock. This article was from someone…

I'm very aware with how much people can make per year in the US.

A principal engineer that is tenured will be on around 550K a year. An HR person that administers PIPs is at most L6 and unlikely to be on more than 250K a year.

6 years in Amazon means a salary was low, not that it was high. Managing people doesn't mean anything, you can earn less than $100K TC in Seattle and be managing people.

Additionally, compensation has been reworked a lot 2 years ago to increase a lot the cap on salary and reduce a stocks.

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

#443

Post by iLoveOncall »

BeetleB wrote: post #375
iLoveOncall wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I have £110K coming up The currency symbol is the tell. At FAANG, people get paid a lot more in the US. A former manager of mine moved to another (non-FAANG) company and was given a $500K sign on bonus. If it vested annually over 4 years, that's over $100K each vest. Start adding annual RSUs provided, and I can see a single vesting event going over $150K. And as others have pointed out, Amazon backloads the vesting…

I know exactly the salary bands of Amazon in the US, no HR PIPer is earning even $100K in a single vest, let alone $200K.

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

#444

Post by shivtherust »

A certain Y Combinator startup (two-sided labor marketplace in healthcare and nursing homes) requires that its frontline managers PIP or fire at least half of their team each year and sometimes more frequently. "If you're average, why are you here."

And the managers do because they are terrified about losing their jobs. It has one of the worst cultures, and code bases, in the world, because nobody knows how things work or why decisions got made, and no one trusts their team mates enough to ask questions.

Its all done in the name of excellence.

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

#445

Post by callalex »

englishspot wrote: post #417
JohnFen wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing is one of the big reasons why I would never work for a FAANG company. I prefer to work at a place that encourages good work rather than a weird cutthroat arena combat thing.

I'm surprised it hasn't spilled over to the rest of the industry, unlike their hiring practices.

It has. I went through this exact same PIP process with subjective improvement goals at Twilio. It was extremely stressful and I met all the goals but got fired anyway. In hindsight it was just a layoff.

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

#446

Post by throwrhpip »

ghostoftiber wrote: post #247
apwell23 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You did the correct thing. The PIP is to cover their butt that you really were a bad employee and you were not wrongfully terminated. The laws vary wildly state-to-state but generally if you're PIP'ed out you can't claim unemployment or wrongful termination.

At least in Washington state, that's not the case. When I was PIPed out of Red Hat and claimed unemployment, benefits were approved.

"You or your employer said you were fired.

We decided:

You were fired, but there was no misconduct. You gave your best effort, but you were unable to do your job as expected.

When you are fired but there is no misconduct, you are eligible for benefits."

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

#447

Post by giantg2 »

anvil-on-my-toe wrote: post #432
giantg2 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about fat that I think is overlooked is how fat today might be muscle tomorrow, and how little companies try to convert it. Maybe a person is in a bad role, on a bad team, or simply doesn't have experience or skills fitting the specific requirements of that single point in time. I've been a high performer in the past. Now I'm a low performer (I'm slow) after the company has changed the way it treats teams/w…

I think managers in tech companies are very often just really untalented as leaders. Good leaders create more leaders. Growing talent and getting the best out of people should be the goal for any leader, and I've seen so little of that from the ones I worked with. After a point it just becomes part of the landscape, a pervasive culture of not recognizing what good leadership looks like, and people filtering out of th…

I'm actually in a financial company, but I assume it's all pretty similar at this point.

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

#448

Post by SpaceNoodled »

Terr_ wrote: post #414
jacobyoder wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left a company years ago because I didn't feel I was a good fit for the team/project - skills/goals/etc. But wasn't allowed to leave because it would hurt the image of the team to be seen to have people leaving it for other teams. But... apparently, leaving the company altogether doesn't affect the image (and yes... I've left the team, and people internally knew why, so... how does it really save face?)

Perhaps if the employee leaves the company entirely, all parts of the company get a chance to pretend the deficiency was in the employee . [0] Like some weird inverse of the "You can't fire me, I quit!" trope. [0] P.S.: Even if the employee left for a more prestigious role in another company, the social-circles in the old company aren't forced to acknowledge that the same way as if it were an internal move: HR will j…

"You can't quit, I fire you!"

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

#449

Post by Firmwarrior »

capableweb wrote: post #341
Firmwarrior wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't sitting on a beach playing guitar with your friends if you get a tech job in Germany, you're doing the same boring pain-in-the-ass dead-end work either way. Just with less threat of being randomly fired or mistreated, which isn't even particularly intimidating or stressful when you're sitting on an enormous nest egg

Since you avoided the question, I'm guessing I was spot on :) And I'd guarantee you that someone who worked five years for a average German company definitely has incurred less mental stress than someone working one year for Amazon, on average. But I also recognize that it's hard to see the difference between the two cultures if you only have the experience of one of them, and the "hard working pays off" system is so…

I think you need to go touch grass, or at least check out some real numbers and think about them

https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-...

https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra...

How many years are you going to have to save up to retire at $240k/year vs $80k/year, do you think? Would you rather grind 10 months a year until you're too old to do anything but sit around and watch TV, or would you rather grind 12 months a year for 5-10 years and then do whatever you want for the rest of your life?

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

#450

Post by Terr_ »

psunavy03 wrote: post #352
ep103 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Ranking was pioneered by Jack Welch who was operating in an environment where labor was the dominant party in the labor-capital relationship, and he was taking over companies that had had decades of labor growth and power while capital was stagflating nationwide. Introducing stack ranking was a way of trimming excess fat from decades of build up within companies, while reasserting capital in the relationship wi…

> "I need to hire people I don't want to work with, so I have someone to fire in the next stack rank". And that's its own form of fat. There's a great long-form article on this called "Microsoft's Lost Decade."

Ref: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l...
Post reply on HN