Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

561–570 of 618 posts

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

#561
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, at least, you don't have to show a judge anything.

Unless the employee sues you, which is discouraged by practices like these.

Sue for what?

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

#562

> That next day, I called my manager and I told them I was resigning. They blew a gasket — absolutely blew a gasket I don't understand how someone could be responsible for a policy that puts people's livelihood at risk under the headline of "just business things" and not expect the same treatment from their employees. "sorry boss - just looking out for my shareholder: me"

Context: yes I got Amazoned a few months ago, see my top level comments.

My livelihood is based on my ability to get a job, keeping my skills current and keeping my network strong. I would never base my livelihood on the whims of one company.

A job is merely transactional. I exchange labor for money. When the company decides my labor is not worth the money they are paying me or I decide that the pay/bullshit ratio is going in the wrong direction, I change jobs and find another company that will give me money for my labor.

I’ve done so 9 times in my career and 6 since 2008.

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

#563
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manager was probably mad because they wasted a PIP on someone else. From other accounts here I've seen that if your manager gets any inkling that you are leaving they will throw a PIP on you to meet their quota.

So you mean when they resign instead that PIP no longer counts towards the manager's quota and they have to find someone else?

I refused to resign when I got put on pivot. But I did prepare. Why walk away from in my case an additional vesting event and 3+ months salary as severance and getting reimbursed for my unused paid time off?

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

#564

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…

I think Amazon's 4-year vesting schedule is 5%/15%/40%/40%, so monthly vesting wouldn't help much.

The first two years are great because you get a large prorated monthly signing bonus to make up for the back heavy vesting.

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

#565

> 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?

Because I got a little over $40K serverance by waiting until I got PIPed and I got another $30K+ by surviving the process.

Oh and I was able to put all of code through the open source process and post it to the AWS Samples public GitHub repo and reuse it.

I worked on ProServe.

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

#566

I never worked at Amazon, but I did work at other companies known for toughness and "places you can get fired from" - most notably Bridgewater (from where I did get fired...) These places are not for everyone, but there are very good reasons why people consciously join a place with an "elevated risk of a PIP." Most notably, these places execute very well. Amazon is crushing it in vastly unrelated fields from Retail t…

> Amazon has chosen letting good people go I work at Amazon and I can tell that it depends on the organization and politics. Of course nobody is untouchable when it comes to the layoffs, but quite many people have made their spot pretty much resistant to firing. They are crucial for business to continue. (Again, maybe my organization) Also, it is very common at Amazon; Nobody is doing the job they are hired for. As a…

Statistically eventually Amazon is always going to Amazon.

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

#567

Why does anyone choose to work at Amazon? Given all the stories of PIP, it sounds like a not great place to work Go to other fang, or other tech. Lots of companies that pay just as well. Amazon would be my last choice - my job search is going awful, gotten rejected from most big tech companies, and I have well paying Amazon and a long tail of little shit companies that don’t pay that great (think of the equity!!)

They offered me more money in exchange for my labor than any other company was willing to offer a CRUD developer with AWS experience and above average soft skills. It was also remote. (Professional Services).

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

#568
post #42

Amazon seems like a really awful place to work, at the warehouse or at the corporate office. Why do people still work, and want to work, there?

I worked there for 8 years (both retail and AWS) and loved it and never experienced a toxic environment. Consider that the anecdotes that are published by the media may not be representative of everyone's experiences.

Have you ever thought that your experience may be anecdotal?

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

#569
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Unless you own the company you are never "in control".

If you own the company you are still not in control - you have to worry about customers and a larger company throwing a few people at your product and squashing you like a cockroach

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

#570

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 t…

Let’s be honest here. To say that FAANG hasn’t achieved anything is demonstrably false
Post reply on HN