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Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

bloomberg.com

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Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#101

Post by notyourwork »

jonathankoren wrote: post #75
vonklaus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am d…

> I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; I think it depends on what part of Amazon you're working for. From what I understand, Amazon.com is not run on AWS.

Amazon.com is a mighty broad statement to say "not run on AWS".

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#102

Post by peripitea »

u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

The worst part to me was that despite all of the claims of meritocracy, there was zero financial incentive to perform well during my four years there. That's because any previously-granted equity is counted against you when determining your total compensation for the next year. When those big year 3 & 4 equity vests kick in, they just stop giving you additional stock, because the stock you already had went up so much.

What this means is that in four years, despite glowing reviews every year and a promotion, I never got a meaningful raise/bonus/stock grant, because the stock was doing so well. My W2 income went up, but it was completely unrelated to my performance -- I could have done just enough to not get fired and would have made essentially the same amount. People who performed worse than me were regularly given larger stock grants.

It was super demoralizing to figure that out. Big part of the reason I left.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#103

Post by notyourwork »

umeshunni wrote: post #28
tedmiston wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like those details were omitted from the Bloomberg article.

Yes, the Seattle PI article said that he fell 20 feet (2 stories) into a balcony after jumping from the 12 story building.

The building is 12 stories, he didn't jump from the top though. There is a outdoor patio on the 4th story.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#104

Post by jlj »

dmoy wrote: post #30
discodave wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon aims for total compensation, cash + stock. So, the package for a typical SDE I will look like the following: Salary: x Starting bonus year 1: 0.2x Starting bonus year 2: 0.15x RSU grant is 0.6x, vesting 5/15/40/40 (4 years). So when you add it up, assuming a constant stock price, you get: Y1:1.23x Y2:1.24x Y3:1.24x Y4:1.24x So at a basic level the back loading of stock is just making up for the starting bonuse…

Wait there are no refresh equity grants at Amazon? I'm at Google and making over double what I was when I started, almost all from additional equity grants every year. It worked out to more like 1.3x, 1.5x, 1.8x, 2.4x, ...

I made it about 4.5 years at Amazon. The equity refresh grants were very small compared to my initial grant. I left for similar work where my cash comp at the new place was equal to my best case projections of cash + equity if had I stayed at Amazon. The new place also has some pre-ipo options on top that may or may not be worth anything.

If you go up in job levels or into management, the equity grants might be higher, but in my case I stayed at the same level the entire time. I did change job families, which in hindsight I realize that I traded job level/promotion opportunity for experience and technical depth. No regrets. I would have liked to stay but my chosen career path was not valued. The 4-year vesting cliff is a term used a lot. I feel that is by design to manage people up or out.

Turnover is valued at Amazon, it makes sure processes are not people dependent. In addition to managed attrition, they encourage internal transfers to the point where they recently removed the 1 year minimum at a job before transferring.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#105

Post by GabrielF00 »

itg wrote: post #5
khnd wrote: post #4

wow. i wonder if bezos is going to address this.

Doubt it, that nytimes article about their work culture spread everywhere but not much has changed.

Actually a lot has changed since the NYT article (I don't know whether any of it is related to the article):

1. Much better parental leave

2. Easier to transfer internally (no longer need to wait 6 months, transfer can't be blocked by the current manager)

3. At least in my org, more transparent promotion process.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#107

Post by justinlilly »

vonklaus wrote: post #36
u489utaa wrote: post #19

Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things: - Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years - Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it. - 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you…

I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers. I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am d…

It's team dependent. I joined (AWS) because it was a neat project, they pay high for my area, the Google office in my area didn't have interesting projects, and they offered to move me across the country. I will stay 2 years. Perhaps more.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#108

Post by sulam »

gambler wrote: post #84
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at AWS for six months as a contractor and a year as an SDE3. Equity vesting was low for the first year, but they gave me a (cash) signing bonus that made up for it. Pretty much one-to-one based on the starting value of the equity, and it paid out monthly instead of waiting until the end of the year. The cafes were awesome and the prices there were decent. I was paid more than enough to buy my own lunch. Catered…

The oncall routines were terrible, though, I agree. Luckily I was in a strange situation and was able to avoid them. I would think that Amazon of all places would automate anything they could.

No incentive at best, disincentive usually. There is a steady stream of new grads willing to put up with it for a couple years. The horrible vesting means you aren't paying much for them, not to mention salaries are mildly low to start with.

I have repeatedly heard these stories about Amazon -- it is one of the known-bad places to work, unless you have found a truly special situation.

Keep in mind this is only compared to other tech employers. It's fine compared to games companies, non-tech companies that won't value your work, and most jobs if you're not privileged enough to be a software developer.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#109

Post by gohrt »

amazon_employee wrote: post #42
rdtsc wrote: post #22

I was interviewing for AWS, and it was a circus. Completely disorganized. However, I have to say, I enjoyed the parroting back of "the leadership principles" part. It was like being in the Soviet Union again and singing praises to the great party leaders. Very much worth wasting a day over it. However my nephew didn't have such a fun time. He was working for one of their warehouses in Kentucky and they were ruthless…

Sorry to hear that. I work for AWS, and I like to think we're pretty organized. I'm not sure what part of your experience was "unorganized". You probably caught the team on a busy day or something. LPs are just guidelines for what the company "wants" out of its employees. They're used heavily in hiring to weed out small thinkers and bad culture fits, and a bit in performance reviews. Outside of that, nobody really ca…

$115k is embarrassingly non-competitive for the talent and work Amazon expects.

Re: Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff

#110

Post by tmescic »

rbcgerard wrote: post #59
SuperPaintMan wrote: post #15

>The man survived the fall from Amazon’s 12-story Apollo building at about 8:45 a.m. local time Monday and was taken to a Seattle hospital, police said. Aside: That is a testament to the resilience of a body. The physics behind that fall would be astounding to analyze! I come from a long line of suicidal people we're not jumpers, but swingers.

Try 47 stories... http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/nyregion/08collapse.htm...

Try an airplane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
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