Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 340 posts

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

#91

Post by secure »

linkregister wrote: post #43
kafkaesq wrote: post #2

The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, but was placed on an employee improvement plan, a step that can lead to termination if performance isn’t improved, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing company personnel matters. PIPs are bullshit, and fundamentally degrading. Just tell people "Maybe it's your fault, maybe it's our fault - but either way, it's not worki…

Can anyone think of a single instance where an employee survived the PIP in any organization? I've never heard of one.

I know of one instance. The colleague in question was working on a project which required communication with a sister team 9 timezones away. Unfortunately, the point of contact on said sister team didn’t care about communicating well (e.g. no written minutes of important meetings, no pro-active spreading of information, no willingness to get up earlier or stay late). Since the colleague didn’t have the personality/skills to enforce the necessary amount of communication, their output suffered severely.

After being put on a PIP, the colleague focused on other projects within the same team and eventually succeeded.

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

#92

Post by IndianAstronaut »

amzn-336495 wrote: post #11

Amazon tries to trap people through control by visas, and they will go so far as to relocate people overseas to Seattle. They have a fucked up system where rank and file get the darwin treatment but management gets the rewards. They will pay bonuses around $250k, $500k, $1 million to senior managers, directors, and VPs respectively to abuse the shit out of employees. The "PIP someone who is trying to get away from th…

Sounds like Capital One as well, which is mirroring Amazon's culture as well as stack ranking system.

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

#93

Post by amzn-336495 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #41
dmoy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 only stayed at Amazon for one year, but I was told that if I'd stayed for two years they would have offered me more equity. So yes, there are refresh equity grants. I've heard from a good source that they do that at Apple as well.

There are refresh equity grants unless you are on a PIP. Now you know what all the fucking PIPs are all about at Amazon (other than blocking your transfer).

You should not listen to what anyone at Amazon tells you.

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

#94

Post by quanticle »

gumby wrote: post #80
linkregister wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone think of a single instance where an employee survived the PIP in any organization? I've never heard of one.

I can remember three employees who survived a PIP. Two took it as a wake up call and turned into good team members (one turned back into a good team member, the other just got their act together). The third was a master at reading the PIP, pulling just above the written requirements, then six months later was back in the same stew. Was delighted when they finally accepted a job at our main competitor. There are other…

>I know some companies assume that if you're on a PIP it's impossible for the emp to recover.

If the state has "at-will" employment, the employer doesn't actually need a reason to fire you. HR could come to you tomorrow and say, "All right. Pack your things and turn in your badge." The problem is, if they did that, they'd have to defend against lawsuits from people who say that they got fired because they were a woman, a minority, disabled, or some other protected class. What the PIP does is allow the organization to show in court that, out of all the reasons you could have been fired, you were not fired for being in a protected class. They don't have to positively show that you were a low performer. They just have to raise enough doubts about your performance that a judge or jury can have reasonable doubt about your assertion that you were fired for a discriminatory reason.

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

#95

Post by Dickie_Sticks »

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…

Over the course of my career Amazon is the only place I've interviewed and come away having lost all desire to work there.

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

#96

Post by notyourwork »

tedmiston wrote: post #26
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…

Those terms are insane.

Compared to what?

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

#97

Post by a3n »

morganvachon wrote: post #33
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…

> They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. Punishing an employee for risking their life to try to come in to a job they already hate? That's textbook sadism, ruthless is too weak a word. In inclement weather our critical staff can depend on officers in 4x4 vehicles to bring them in, with no reprimand for being late due to the weather. Non-essentia…

> Punishing an employee for risking their life to try to come in to a job they already hate?

As long as there are more than enough people to hire for a position, managers and policy will tend toward lazy and controlling, it's easier than cultivating people.

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

#98

Post by theparanoid »

manish_gill wrote: post #88
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…

Is tuition reimbursement a thing at companies? That would be pretty awesome. TIL

Almost all, I'd never heard of a tech company not do it.

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

#99

Post by notyourwork »

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…

Remember that the most vocal are the most dissatisfied. Also remember that at a company that large there are going to be more dissatisfied than smaller companies. Lastly, don't forget that no one wants to read a story about an upset engineer from a small no name company. People like seeing big brand names fail and we as a society are a sucker for a negative drama.

They retain people because not every team is like what you read in the news. There are teams with completely normal on-calls who love their life and job and are far from upset with anything that has to do with work. Free food isn't a deal breaker when you make what companies like Amazon pay.

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

#100

Post by a3n »

sssilver wrote: post #78
rockinghigh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still judge company-wide policies like vacations, 401k match, or health care.

I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in an Amazon warehouse doesn't have the same vacation options as the person coding the internals of Simple Queue Service.

I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in the warehouse doesn't actually work for Amazon. Contracting jobs that are easy to fill is a great way to insulate a company from moral responsibility, and you get to imply "success at any cost" to the contracting company.
Post reply on HN