[HN Gopher] Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscal...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated
compensation
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 215 points
Date : 2022-09-26 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| presto8 wrote:
| It looks like what happened is employees got a fixed number of
| RSUs. Their pay letter assigned a hypothetical value to those
| shares based on an incorrect stock price. So Amazon is probably
| not changing anything in the raise itself but rather correcting
| the hypothetical future value of the RSUs.
| athenot wrote:
| But from the employee side, RSUs are usually communicated (and
| reasoned about) in dollar amount, with the undersanding that
| one is getting a number of shares corresponding to that amount.
|
| So even if it's an honest miscommunication, it's still a
| painful one.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Then that is a misunderstanding by the employee about how
| their compensation works. It's little different than owning
| stock. I _could_ say "I own $5000 in Amazon stock" but I
| still know it actually means I own $X shares while the dollar
| value is variable.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It depends how the comp statement is written.
|
| "Salary: $180k. RSUs: $80k (100 shares)"
|
| VS
|
| "Salary: $180k. RSUs: $80k"
|
| With the former, I can easily spot check the share price
| and make sure it's correct. With the latter, I cannot, and
| take it at face value.
| TimPC wrote:
| They have to write the latter because at the time of the
| offer letter the share price on the conversion date is
| not known. If you get hired on September 1st and the
| first board meeting after is September 19th, your RSUs
| will get converted to shares on September 19th at the
| September 19th price. If your offer letter is written
| August 1st, there is no way to include the correct number
| of shares.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| That's not a mis-communication by the employee.
|
| There are several events that happen with refreshers/bonus:
|
| 1) Notification period 2) Granting period 3) Vesting period
|
| When the notification period happens, the manager doesn't
| say "You are getting X units of stock". The compensation
| system actually at this point has zero idea how many units
| of stock you are getting. Instead you get told "you are
| getting $x worth of stock".
|
| Then there's the granting period, in which those unvested
| stock units are actually granted to you.
|
| This is important because there's a lag time between the
| notification period and the granting period. If your boss
| tells you you are getting $10k worth of stock and the stock
| price is $100 per share at the notification period, but is
| $105 per share at the granting period, you are granted
| 95-ish stock units instead of 100, because the number of
| stock units granted was based on the Dollar amount they
| communicated to you.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why would they get a fixed number of RSUs. I have always seen
| them assigned in dollar value, usually as a % of dollar salary
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I've only seen them fixed. That part of your comp is
| variable, tied to the success of the company
| drstewart wrote:
| I've never seen them assigned a dollar value (actually, in
| one case: SpaceX, which also had a 5 year vesting schedule
| instead of a standard 4 year). That would defeat the purpose
| of RSUs.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How would it defeat the purpose of RSUs?
|
| If you get 100k USD worth of RSUs on start date, and the
| stock value goes up 10X you still have a lot of skin in the
| game.
| ineedasername wrote:
| In your compensation letter it may say a $ value but it's
| just a formulaic presentation based on the fixed # of RSUs.
|
| You're not compensated by "You're getting $20,000 in however
| many RSUs that can buy at the time". It's "you're getting 100
| RSUs" and then whenever you get them your compensation letter
| states their current $ value.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >You're not compensated by "You're getting $20,000 in
| however many RSUs that can buy at the time"
|
| In my company this is exactly how it works.
|
| Bonus is X% of salary and the exact number of RSUs and SARs
| is floating until the time they are granted.
|
| Everyone hopes the market has a bad day when the bonus is
| granted.
|
| I assumed this is how it works at all large companies.
| [deleted]
| a4isms wrote:
| Given a certain dollar amount (e.g. X% of salary), the
| number of RSUs to grant is calculated by dividing the
| dollar amount by the market price of the stock. There are
| two common ways to calculate the market price of the
| stock, and the difference comes down to this:
|
| 1. The market price of the stock is determined at the
| time of the grant, and; 2. The market price of the stock
| is determined at the time the RSUs vest.
|
| If there's a one-time grant that is given immediately,
| the two values are usually going to be very close. But if
| the grant vests over some number of years (e.g. four year
| schedule, 25% vests after one year, remaining 75% vests
| monthly), the difference between the two methods can
| differ greatly.
|
| When the price is determined at grant time, employees
| benefit from the stock rising, and are penalized if the
| stock falls. When the price is determined at vesting
| time, employees end up with the same compensation no
| matter what the stock does, they only benefit from
| appreciation if they hold the stock and it appreciates
| after vesting.
|
| In your company, do the bonus RSUs have a vesting
| schedule? Or are they granted and distributed shortly
| thereafter?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In my company there are multiple important days:
|
| 1) Find out RSU bonus _value_ : "you get 20% of your
| salary worth of RSUs"
|
| 2) Grant Date: Company Calculates the number of RSUs,
| issues them, and starts Vesting schedule.
|
| 3) Vesting days: Some of the RSUs become vested and can
| be sold by the employee.
|
| >The market price of the stock is determined at the time
| the RSUs vest.
|
| What is the point of giving stock priced on the vesting
| day? It has no chance to go up or down between the grant
| and vesting date when it is sellable.
|
| It would be the same as a cash bonus with an X year
| delay.
| a4isms wrote:
| > What is the point of giving stock priced on the vesting
| day? It has no chance to go up or down between the grant
| and vesting date when it is sellable. It would be the
| same as a cash bonus with an X year delay.
|
| An excellent question, somewhat epitomized by the late
| Mitch Hedberg's joke: "I think a gift certificate is a
| bad gift. You take money that is good everywhere..." Same
| here, it's no better than cash, only it's a PITA to
| convert it to cash if you want cash.
|
| That being said, there are a few scenarios I have seen
| that fit the pattern:
|
| 1. Some companies have an ESPP program where some cash is
| deducted from each pay and placed in escrow. At regular
| intervals, the accumulated money is turned into shares at
| market value, and the employee receives the shares. There
| is usually a modest discount involved, e.g. 15%. If the
| employee sells the day the shares vest, they harvest 15%
| of the value less taxes. Or the employee can HODL, as
| they see fit.
|
| Even without a discount, some employees may prefer an
| ESPP to making their own investments in the company
| stock. There is the convenience of having the money
| deducted at source, many people find that an easier way
| to save than relying on discipline.
|
| 2. The company is cash-poor and pays some comp in stock
| because they have shares in their treasury. One can
| understand why some companies would want to do this,
| without agreeing that employees would prefer this to
| cash.
| deadmanwalking wrote:
| I think RSUs are better than cash. In the UK I have a
| choice, take my bonus as cash and pay a hefty amount for
| of tax, or take the same pre tax amount as RSUs hold it
| for a minimum 5 years so that it's tax free.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't think that's correct -- everything I can find
| online says that in the UK you pay income tax on RSU's no
| matter how long you hold them.
|
| The only technicality is whether they're "subject to
| forfeiture" in which case you pay the tax after 5 years,
| or not, in which case you pay the tax upon vesting.
|
| But no matter what you're always paying income tax. You
| may not be as aware of it though, since the company that
| grants you the RSU's will generally sell a portion of
| them in order to cover your taxes before you even receive
| them. (That is standard in the US too -- e.g. 50 units
| vest but only ~32 show up in your brokerage account.)
| Scea91 wrote:
| Not Amazon, but when I receive RSUs it is denominated in
| the dollar amount. In a year when the first part vests the
| dollars are converted to stock units based on the price at
| that moment. Thus I do not know how many units of stock I
| am receiving until the first vesting event, because I don't
| know what the price will be in a year.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That... is truly bizarre. I've literally never heard of
| that before.
|
| The entire point of RSU's (or stock options) is that if
| the company increases in value over time, e.g. over your
| first year, so does the cash value of your RSU's. That
| employees benefit as the company benefits.
|
| What you're describing is zero benefit at all. It's no
| different from just being granted cash that vests. It's
| such a strange and seemingly pointless thing to do, that
| I have to ask -- are you sure that's how it works? And if
| so, has someone from the company ever explained _why_
| they do that?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That makes no sense at all. Why not just give you cash
| with an X year delay.
| Scea91 wrote:
| I have 4 year vesting period. After the first vest the
| following vests start to be denominated in stock units.
|
| I think the advantage for company is somewhat better
| predictability?
| [deleted]
| zwily wrote:
| That sounds absolutely bizarre. Why do stock the first
| year at all? I have never heard of anyone trying that
| before.
|
| edit: That setup is basically saying "you don't benefit
| from the increase in share value for the first year of
| employement", which is pretty employee-hostile. I bet a
| company that was doing this before stopped doing it this
| year, when their stock value fell by a lot. :)
| conductr wrote:
| You've not been incentivized to increase the stock price,
| this is poorly designed and only serves to keep you
| locked in
| a-priori wrote:
| RSUs are always granted as a number of shares. It's kind of
| the point of them, so the employee benefits from stock
| appreciation since their hire date.
|
| However, in offer paperwork, it will sometimes be stated as a
| dollar value. This is for two reasons: the first is that RSUs
| need to be approved by the board at a meeting, which can
| happen some time after the hire date, at which time the
| dollar value is converted into shares.
|
| But the main reason is that it makes it easier for the
| candidate to understand the value of the RSUs, and lets the
| company then talk about the total compensation and try to
| treat RSUs like cash in that discussion.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Since there are comments saying things like "I've never
| seen them based on dollar value":
|
| My well known company has always granted stocks based on
| dollar value. Many employees incorrectly thought it was
| "number of shares", but if anyone actually asked the
| manager who decided how many shares they would get, the
| answer was always "We're given a dollar budget in shares to
| allocate amongst our reports - the system then converts
| that dollar amount into shares based on the stock price at
| the time."
|
| So if our company has always done it this way, I suspect
| many others also do it this way.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I think people in this thread might be talking past each
| other.
|
| I get a manager could be told "you have $500k of 4 year
| grants to give out this year". He tells an employee
| "you're getting a $100k 4 year grant." Stock is $100
| today, so that's 1,000 shares, or 250 per year.
|
| A year passes. Stock goes to $50. Here's my big question:
| Are they still getting 250 shares this year from that
| grant (now with a value of $12,500) or are they getting
| $25,000 which is now 500 shares?
|
| The first one is what I mean by it being set in stock and
| it's the only thing I've seen. I get that it was
| calculated in dollars at the beginning, for budgeting
| purposes.
|
| Something in between is what I think Coinbase and Stripe
| are doing, which is 1 year grants. I think they're still
| frozen to number of shares at the beginning of the year
| (even if it's calculated in dollars).
| BeetleB wrote:
| Ah I get it. Yes, even in my company, it would still be
| 250 shares.
| zwily wrote:
| I think some of the confusion is from somebody claiming
| they are granted RSU's based on dollar value, and then
| that dollar value is converted to shares at the 1-year
| vesting cliff. That is incredibly weird.
|
| Offer letters having dollar values for the share grant at
| the time is normalish.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yes, a place I'm familiar with gives you a dollar amount.
| At RSU distribution time (i.e. when you actually receive
| them, not at offer-time), you will receive that dollar
| amount of shares, regardless of each share's value. TBH
| I'm not sure why they structure it this way (maybe fewer
| taxes than payroll? or looks better on a balance sheet,
| somehow?).
| kgwgk wrote:
| One possible reason is that they can pretend it's not
| costing them anything when they report "adjusted"
| earnings.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I've never seen a $$ amount associated with RSUs on the offer
| letter, only the number of stock awarded. The recruiter may
| tentatively tell you how much they're currently worth to give
| you an estimated total comp.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I had $x of RSUs offered at signing at FAANG-esque company. A
| month after joining you were allocated x RSUs at the given
| stock price at that moment for the offered $ amount.
| dnissley wrote:
| Yep, this is how it worked for me as well for my initial
| grant. However, my understanding is that yearly refreshers
| are often done as a set number of units.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Apparently some people received additional cash now in lieu of
| RSUs because of the administrative delay involved with the
| latter (e.g., board approval). For them, the raise itself
| changed.
| happyopossum wrote:
| The article is kinda useless without amounts... if I got a 4%
| raise and it got walked back to 2% I'd be pissed, but if I got a
| 40% raise, I'd expect it to have been a mistake.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I agree, but I'm assuming it's an amount that's big enough that
| Amazon cares enough to piss off every affected employee. If it
| was a 2.99% raise instead of 3%, they'd be better off just
| letting the employees have the money.
|
| I'm also assuming that the proper amount is what the employee
| would have expected and been happy with if the mistake hadn't
| happened, which softens the blow considerably. So if they
| expected 5% and got 6%, going back to 5% is a morale-dampener,
| but not fatal.
|
| OTOH, tech employees don't really need much excuse to change
| jobs any more, so literally any amount is a huge risk for your
| best employees.
| daoist_shaman wrote:
| Imagine if this wasn't a bug, but a way to pull the wool over
| people's eyes to walk back legitimate raises and stop the
| hemorrhaging from poor business choices.
|
| Is there anything you can do in either scenario? It seem like one
| scenario invites legal scrutiny, whereas the other is just an an
| unfortunate accident, we're so sorry about the bug...
| metadat wrote:
| I dislike AMZN just as much or more than the next person, but
| your perspective appears have veered off into paranoid
| conspiracy theory territory.
|
| Amazon has been and continues making money hand over fist. At
| this stage Amazon is a money minting machine, at a scale like
| we've not seen before.
|
| "Don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by
| stupidity or incompetence."
| platelminto wrote:
| So it's likely that previous bonuses/raises were also based on
| 'old' stock prices. But since Amazon stock was (pretty much)
| always increasing, this means that those bonuses were
| consistently lower than what they should've been.
|
| Of course it's only an issue now when the opposite is true, and
| is costing Amazon rather than the employees.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, back in the late 90's, Apple took away profit sharing as
| soon as there was a profit. Specifically, I should say, Steve
| Jobs took away profit sharing.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Don't forget Steve Jobs' wage fixing too.
| arbitrage wrote:
| It wasn't just Steve Jobs. It's never just one person.
|
| Many people enable punitive & regressive decisions like that.
| effingwewt wrote:
| This is what's great about being a CEO!
|
| Things go bad? Ship is too big to steer, the failure is on
| the whole company, the CEO didn't even know, they swear!
|
| Things go right? Obviously it was all the hard work of the
| CEO they definitely deserve millions in bonuses!
|
| It _was_ Steve Jobs, so was the wage-fixing. They were all
| so stupid about it they literally got busted doing it.
|
| Doesn't matter what the company makes, only the C-Suite
| will reap the rewards.
|
| But hey, maybe some $ will trickle down to the people who
| make the money for the company...
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| yeah no one ever makes the argument that Steve Jobs
| doesn't deserve 100% of the credit for Apple's success
| Someone wrote:
| I'll make that argument: Steve Jobs doesn't deserve 100%
| of the credit for Apple's success.
|
| I think that's trivially true. AFAIK, it wasn't him alone
| who put 100+ million iPhones in boxes every year, and
| without that, Apple's success would have been smaller. He
| also didn't do hardware design without help, and I'm
| fairly sure he didn't write much of Apple's software,
| etc. etc.
|
| Even if you think all others involved were replaceable,
| many of them still contributed.
| foobarian wrote:
| I for one am perfectly happy with the mid 6 figures that
| trickle down to us lowly ICEs...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > But hey, maybe some $ will trickle down to the people
| who make the money for the company...
|
| It doesn't trickle down. Some (most) people agree to work
| for someone in exchange for money, rather than go off and
| be CEOs and have people work for them.
| jonhohle wrote:
| When I was last there (albeit 6 years ago), following reviews
| managers determined what your new "total yearly comp" would be.
| Base pay was pretty low compared to industry, but RSUs were
| used to make up the difference based on the price on a certain
| date with a 4-year vesting period, distributed quarterly (16
| distributions).
|
| For example, if your total comp required 20k extra per year and
| the stock price was $100, you'd be granted 800 shares. If the
| stock price had fallen to $80, you'd be granted 1,000.
|
| We always wanted the stock price to have a temporary low around
| review season because that would benefit our RSU grant.
|
| Any dollar amount assigned to the grant on the given review
| date was understood to be based on the current stock price,
| subject to change, and as a way to communicate total comp. If
| the stock dropped over the course of the year, there was
| occasionally corrections, either in base pay or RSUs. This was
| also complicated by the fact that you could have up to four
| years of grants stacked on top of one another, all vesting on
| the same schedule. Obviously, that was taken into total comp
| calculations, so if you got lucky with a low price and big
| grant in the past four years, your yearly grant might end up
| low as a result.
| plasticchris wrote:
| > so if you got lucky with a low price and big grant in the
| past four years, your yearly grant might end up low as a
| result.
|
| Yep, luck is only for the capitalists, not for the plebes.
| Shouldn't it be the case that if a worker was part of a major
| turnaround they should reap the rewards? Instead this would
| just make sure they didn't really benefit. If this were sr
| mgmt they would claim the increase should justify _extra_
| comp as they did such a good job to make the stock go up.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > We always wanted the stock price to have a temporary low
| around review season because that would benefit our RSU
| grant.
|
| What a perverse incentive. I would love to know if any high-
| profile outages are clustered around those dates.
| cj wrote:
| Probably not, since even high profile outages historically
| haven't had much of an effect on stock price.
| __derek__ wrote:
| It's a trailing 30-day window. That would be a potentially
| company-destroying outage.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| None of this surprises me. I was at that company for over 10
| years. Quitting was the best thing I did for myself, and I should
| have left long ago.
|
| Amazon's real innovation isn't a cloud service company or a
| logistics business. The innovation is on how to squeeze every
| once of labor and value out of a human being, and how to do this
| legally, without damaging customers' or public opinion of the
| company, at massive scale.
|
| As a leader, I was coached on how to motivate my employees by
| selling promotions as a carrot, even though my leadership had no
| interest in seeing through that person gets promoted. It was lies
| and gaslighting.
|
| I was coached on detaching myself from employees and their well
| being, so it would make it easier to do the right thing for the
| company.
|
| I was pressured to get onto specific managers who weren't meeting
| their attrition targets.
|
| The idea that amazon would walk back compensation targets is no
| surprise to me.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Amazon's real innovation isn't a cloud service company or a
| logistics business. The innovation is on how to squeeze every
| once of labor and value out of a human being, and how to do
| this legally, without damaging customers' or public opinion of
| the company, at massive scale._
|
| I think this is bang on. Their hiring process for engineers
| every single time I've been contacted by them is an immediate
| (before you could possibly have a clue if you want the job or
| not) is a tech challenge.
|
| It's industrialized hiring that puts 100% of the burden
| immediately on the candidate at virtually no cost to amazon.
|
| This is a huge red flag and I halt the process with any
| employer that uses it.
| GingerBoats wrote:
| Honestly, I started Amazon with some kick ass managers and a
| great leadership team. However, that changed after a year or
| two and I ended up with some of the shittiest leaders I've had
| in the industry. I couldn't bail quick enough.
| tacon wrote:
| If a company is going to give some employees a bad taste in
| their mouth, I would think the very last group to do that to
| would be those recently promoted. Those are people that just
| got the seal of approval from Amazon and are in the best
| position to jump to another company.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| This was my experience at Amazon as well. It was the most
| stingy and toxic company I've ever worked for.
| f1shy wrote:
| Have you worked in any big company afterward (or before) that
| was not toxic? The reason of my question: I work in a very
| big company, and I found it very toxic. I wonder if all big
| companies are the same.
|
| I need to know if I would switch. But I do not want to go to
| smaller company.
| viktree wrote:
| I'm curious, what's the big company you are at now?
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| I prefer small start-ups to big companies but I have worked
| at a fair number of the latter. I enjoyed my time at
| Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems, and Epson. I did not
| care much for Novell, Corel, Amazon, Rakuten, and
| WordPerfect.
| jerglingu wrote:
| Any article about Amazon is guaranteed to inspire a grave post
| like this from a former employee. And as a former employee, I
| agree with the sentiment in nearly all of them.
| throwayxx123 wrote:
| Resigned some time back. After joining I realized what a sh*thole
| I fell into and decided to brave it out for some time to get the
| FAANG stamp. I usually journal interesting work instances and my
| thoughts on them. Here are some from Amazon:
|
| 1. Teammates are out for blood. They go out of the way to ruin
| their teammates metrics. So much so that manager has to intervene
| because overall team metrics are declining due to this.
| Additionally, the metrics tracked are insanely stupid such as no
| of comments, revisions on a PR. This makes sure no healthy
| discussion/debate can happen on a piece of code.
|
| 2. Manager asks to crunch for no apparent reason. The problem
| with greedy and selfish managers is that everything looks
| critical to them. They only want to appease the upper management
| without any thought to people who will actually work with the
| deadlines.
|
| 3. People expect u to sacrifice weekends for "learning" internal
| tools. They quote everything as "learning experience".
|
| 4. Hell is an agile sprint system that has been optimized to
| require 10 hour days. We were required to estimate tasks for up
| to minutes and even then manager questions and pushes to reduce
| timelines.
|
| 5. Some great words from my manager - " Leaders never sit quiet.
| If u hv nothing to say, then speak anything or just say i agree".
| One guy follows this religiously. Another say - "Work on
| ownership aspect. If the guy reviewing ur work is not approving,
| its ur problem." I really wanted to quit right after this line.
|
| 6. If someone gives low Connections score, the whole team is
| reprimanded and huge "discussions" of pointing fingers happens.
|
| 7. All senior engineers and management give different advice on
| paper and verbally. This is because if the actions succeeds,
| they'll be lauded for "good management" and on failure, they can
| point towards their messages of concerns. They've mastered the
| politics of "gather all credit, divert all blame".
|
| 8. Deadlines are very top down where management promises castle
| in the sky and then asks the people below to achieve it no matter
| what. We've designed a whole cluster of services in a few hours
| and got some rubber stamp approvals as well. Most folks then get
| promoted and jump onto other greenfield projects not dealing with
| the aftermath.
|
| 9. People here are insanely subservient and those who aren't are
| generally kicked or they themselves jump to other teams.
|
| These are very contrarion to my previous jobs where most points
| were very normal stuff between coworkers.
| throwaway812935 wrote:
| It sounds like you had a bad manager and possibly team, and you
| made the right decision for yourself. I'd like to offer a few
| counterpoints from having landed on what I consider to be a
| good team/manager.
|
| The first point is that things are manager and team dependent.
| Amazon is a lot more hierarchical than other companies when it
| comes to SDE levels, so I'd assume this also happens with
| managerial levels. There's probably a leadership disconnect
| that allows bad managers to thrive, but this is not a company-
| wide issue.
|
| > Teammates are out for blood [...] metrics tracked are
| insanely stupid such as no of comments, revisions on a PR
|
| I do agree with this to an extent. Some people at Amazon are
| more cut-throat and it can get annoying when you have to deal
| with them if you don't like playing those games. The metrics
| you're talking about are a mechanism for identifying outliers
| and are merely a data point; they aren't used to judge
| performance by themselves. I.e. if the rest of your team sends
| out 100 PRs a year on average but you sent out only 20, all it
| means is that it should be taken into account why your work
| style or output is different. If you've added 10 comments in
| the past year but your teammates have added 100 on average,
| that's also an indication that maybe you aren't pulling your
| weight in reviews. Managers don't have infinite time so they
| should be using these metrics as an indication of when to look
| into the details. Blindly using these metrics to evaluate
| performance is the sign of a bad manager. I'm sure there are
| bad managers, and people also try to game the system.
|
| > Manager asks to crunch for no apparent reason
|
| Could be the sign of a new manager (hasn't learned to say no to
| their leadership chain yet), or a bad manager. There are hard
| deadlines and soft deadlines, though even the hard deadlines
| can be softened up. Always pushing to meet every single
| deadline will lead to burnout and terrible output/operations in
| the long run. Prioritization is important, and that includes
| your team's mental health.
|
| > People expect u to sacrifice weekends for "learning" internal
| tools
|
| I won't lie, I definitely worked a lot my first year. There's a
| large ecosystem of internal tools, systems, and processes, and
| there's no other way to keep up unless you have prior
| experience or have someone helping you. The thing is that after
| about a year, I stopped having to do this. In the past year I
| haven't worked weekends or late into the night, except for a
| few operations-related high-severity issues (which is part of
| being on-call). My first year I definitely pulled 70 hour weeks
| on average, but I learned how to be self-sufficient. Now I pull
| 30 hour weeks, and I spend a lot of my time helping other
| developers on the team.
|
| > Hell is an agile sprint system that has been optimized to
| require 10 hour days
|
| Completely team dependent, we don't do any estimation for
| example and our sprints are more kanban.
|
| > Leaders never sit quiet. If u hv nothing to say, then speak
| anything or just say i agree
|
| We have some people on our team (newer hires in the past 1-2
| years) that do not provide any feedback during design reviews
| or most meetings. Forcing people to say anything is a mechanism
| to get them to start talking so they get comfortable with
| providing feedback even when they aren't confident, so it
| builds up their confidence. Part of the issue here is the
| virtual environment, as it's a lot easier to get people
| contributing in person.
|
| > If the guy reviewing ur work is not approving, its ur problem
|
| This ownership aspect is definitely true and it's something
| that took me a while to get used to. There's no skating by on
| "I'm blocked by person X or thing Y". You have to figure it
| out, even if that means pinging them or their team or
| escalating to their manager (through yours). Typically you try
| to follow the reviewal process, make your PRs as good as
| possible, etc first instead of being annoying. Not all people
| work this way as a default, and you'll have a much harder time
| getting things done at Amazon if you don't learn.
|
| > Deadlines are very top down where management promises castle
| in the sky
|
| These deadlines include a business requirements document that
| includes various phases of prioritization: P0 (must be done by
| deadline or we have to move deadline), P1 (ideally should be
| done, but if it can't be we won't let the deadline slip), P2
| (follow-up or nice to have), etc.
|
| Part of a TPM's role is to figure out whats achievable in the
| timelines, and part of your role as an SDE is to provide the
| detailed inputs on whats achievable and move things to
| different phases if they're not. This type of work is
| uncomfortable for a lot of developers but if you don't do it,
| you'll be working 100-hour weeks and wondering if its worth it
| (its not).
|
| One last point I'd like to make, which took me a long time to
| get comfortable with is that everyone gets assigned work that
| amounts to something like 150% of their max capacity (at the
| individual level, team level, org level). It then needs to be
| prioritized and some things will never get done--the most
| important things (in terms of customer impact) should get done,
| and the least important things should pretty much be ignored
| since there will be more important things coming in that should
| take priority. This means that if you try to get everything
| done you will always be busy and never finished, and burn
| yourself out. I wasn't comfortable with this at first, and I
| can definitely understand how some people would never become
| comfortable with it.
| yrgulation wrote:
| I dont know why but from outside a lot of it looks like
| managers own you. Glad i took the path of contracting instead
| of slaving away at "faang".
| nps1 wrote:
| This is the Cost of having a subpar HRM product. What does Amazon
| uses?
| __derek__ wrote:
| Not Workday![1]
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/28/amazon_canned_workday...
| cnasc wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Odmns
| bArray wrote:
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Didn't something similar happen at Intel recently? IIRC in their
| case they are cutting in other areas to make up for the "excess"
| raises and telling folks not to expect raises for a period of
| time.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Stock price changing in a direction that makes Amazon seem
| generous while costing Amazon nothing? No problem!
|
| Stock price changing in a direction that costs Amazon money?
| Nope, nuh-uh, not a chance.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I don't get it (I never worked for Amazon!).
|
| I've never worked anywhere, where a change in my employer's stock
| price means my pay has to be recalculated.
|
| If you're promoted and given a raise, isn't that a deal? Suppose
| I'm a happy coder on $X, and you promote me to the miserable job
| of Project Manager on $X+10, how's it legal to call me into the
| office and explain that it's actually $X+2?
|
| Is compensation at Amazon stated in virtual shares or something?
| dcre wrote:
| They are paid a number of shares and given an estimate of the
| value of those shares based on some share price. Amazon used an
| old share price, so the estimate was too high. The only thing
| being recalculated is the estimate. The number of shares does
| not change.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sounds like it deviates pretty significantly from AMZ's prior
| practice, where the RSU count matches ${promised comp}.
|
| So AMZ made a mistake and changed the employee agreement.
| Seems unethical to walk that back, despite it potentially
| being legal.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Amazon has enough cash on hand to just own this "mistake" and pay
| the raises. Just baffling that a multitrillion dollar company can
| get away with this. Just pay people their worth! I don't care if
| this makes Jeff's net worth drop by .0001%, he can go dry his
| tears with his hundreds of billions.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Two things going on here:
|
| 1. First, I'm a bit baffled by some of the responses along the
| lines of "Amazon should just own their mistake". Sorry, but in
| the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies (unless you're
| talking about crypto, but I digress...). I would certainly want a
| bug corrected if it were in my favor, and if a bug went the other
| way, I might need to re-evaluate my company satisfaction based on
| my new comp, but I have literally _never_ seen a case of "sorry,
| payroll system made an error, but never mind you can keep it". It
| literally never works like that in any case, e.g. I work in
| fintech and if a bank accidentally deposits money into your
| account and you spend it, you can go to jail [1] - the bank
| doesn't say "whoops, our bad".
|
| 2. Many people who joined the workforce after the Great Recession
| have never had to deal with falling stock prices, and basically
| have just come to expect that the equity portion of their
| compensation should be like cash. _The whole point_ of equity
| compensation is for it to be variable based on the success of the
| company. I get it, I wouldn 't be happy with my compensation
| falling either (and I've certainly been there, in the .com bust),
| but I don't have much sympathy for folks who are just discovering
| that the variable component of their compensation can, in fact,
| be variable in the negative.
|
| [1] https://abc13.com/spending-cash-bank-error-teller-error-
| can-...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| This is not finders keepers.
|
| The article is slightly vague, but my takeaway is that employee
| got raises. Those numbers went through a bunch of people. The
| pay went out for months. Then, they realized they miscalculated
| the raises. "Whoops, we didn't mean to offer you $150k, but
| really $140k."
|
| 1. I think they have no chance at getting back the pay from
| before. This isn't a banking error, this is regret. As an
| employee could you be like, "whoops I messed up my budget. I
| wouldn't have taken this job at $150k. Please backpay me to
| bring it up to $180k".
|
| 2. It's well studied that losses hurt more than gains feel
| good. People hate having their comp lowered and the stock has
| already fallen. May be better to leave the comp where it's at.
| I mean, it's not like it was 10x or something. The numbers were
| reasonable enough for this to be super wide spread and people
| to not notice for months.
| [deleted]
| __derek__ wrote:
| From what I've heard, this timeline is incorrect. People with
| approved Q3 promotions received Personal Compensation
| Statements (PCS) telling them that they would get a raise
| starting in October. They were never actually paid the
| increased amount, and the time between erroneous PCS and
| correction was on the order of days, not months. Some folks
| didn't even get their erroneous PCS because their manager was
| slow to share it.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Thank you. That seems less serious. Still a bummer to
| experience getting your comp lowered.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Right. It's not a great employee experience by any means.
| Mocking references to _Strive to be Earth 's Best
| Employer_ abound.
| rurp wrote:
| Regarding 1, I have seen this happen. I used to work for a govt
| agency that made a mistake and overpaid a number of employees,
| who were allowed to keep the extra payment. I'm not saying
| that's the norm, but it affected a number of people and I have
| heard of it happening other times as well.
| mikeryan wrote:
| The web is littered with people telling their stories of
| getting overpaid in comp, frequently around bonuses, and having
| the company ask for their money back. They're always
| disappointed to find out that they do, legally, owe the company
| the extra pay back. Good companies will work with the employees
| on this. Other's can be a bit shitty about it.
|
| Big caveat that this is a US-centric view.
| brigade wrote:
| Practically, clawing back overpaid compensation from an
| uncooperative _former_ employee requires a lawsuit with a
| chance of the employee winning, and has the potential to be
| more expensive anyway than however much could be recovered.
|
| But, continued employment is easily dependent on recovering
| the overpayment one way or another. Usually by taking it out
| of future paychecks.
| zeruch wrote:
| Your second item is so unbelievably on point, it hurts. The
| failure of so many to look at even a cursory sense of history
| would know that this industry has always had volatility baked
| in, and that affects not only "disruption" of business
| verticals, but disruption of vesting cycles :)
| Closi wrote:
| Yes, absolutely number 1!
|
| There is a huge precedent for companies _not_ paying for
| compensation calculation mistakes, which is also supported by
| law (in the UK at least where I am from - but assume it would
| be the same in the US).
|
| Amazing how many comments in this thread are acting like this
| standard practice is a completely new thing with zero
| precedence.
| tomrod wrote:
| PAYWALLED, else I would RTFA.
|
| You'd be surprised how many people follow the adage: "what is
| right is not always popular, and what is popular is not
| always right."
|
| In this case, a verified compensation item given to an
| employee should be respected on principle, as this isn't a
| one-time "whoops we overpaid you," it's a months-long process
| that affected many people. AMZ should write it off as a bonus
| and move on.
| idunno246 wrote:
| There's a difference between variable and a new hire at my
| current level would get literally double my current comp as a
| person at the company for five years
| alistairSH wrote:
| _a new hire at my current level would get literally double my
| current comp as a person at the company for five years_
|
| That's not unusual. Well, 2x salary might be, but it's well
| established that job hopping is the only way to guarantee
| your salary stays close to market.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| To add a data point to this, I recently interviewed at a
| large tech company. As part of investigating the comp, I
| ran a linear regression on data from levels and the results
| indicated that you should deduct a few grand for every year
| of tenure.
| shostack wrote:
| I wish it were easier to compare that against other
| considerations. Comp isn't everything (though not judging
| those for whom it is) and it can be challenging to weigh
| the benefits of being somewhere for multiple years.
| Especially for places with steep learning curves and very
| large orgs where getting established is a very different
| day to day type of stress than continuing on and growing
| in something familiar.
| jonfw wrote:
| Worth considering the biased data. Levels will only have
| data from job seekers- which would imply that they either
| have A) recent offer or B) salaries from employees who
| are considering jumping ship (biased towards employees
| who are underperforming or in underperforming business
| units)
|
| There is probably a missing category of employees who
| have been successful, gotten raises, and aren't shopping
| for jobs
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Levels is garbage data. How is this not obvious?
| staticautomatic wrote:
| One reason it's not obvious is that several findings of
| my analysis aligned neatly with things the recruiter told
| me about the company's comp structure.
| woobar wrote:
| This is not obvious to me. I had access to comp data at
| two different companies and Levels data was pretty
| accurate across the board.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I know there is bias in who enters data on levels, but is
| there something else that makes it garbage data? Can you
| elaborate? Because I have never seen it as 'garbage data'
| and would like to know more.
| idunno246 wrote:
| Right, like the company raised bands for new hires but
| didn't raise current employees commensurately, that is in
| line with needing to job hop, and tracks with the other
| comment of a couple thousand. But the difference in pay now
| is so drastic now basically everyone with 1+ years is
| looking or left
| alistairSH wrote:
| And even without raising the bands, employees' salaries
| ends up lagging over time.
|
| A lateral job hop comes with a >10% raise, while an
| annual raise is 3-6%.
| idunno246 wrote:
| i know thats the common refrain, im sure its true most of
| the time, but aside from this last year or so ive gotten
| more increases from promos/equity than from job
| hopping(which have mostly been flat)
| kazinator wrote:
| When I was 20 something, I had an extra zero added to a
| severance payment. I randomly called some law firm asking if I
| should just keep that. The lawyer dude plunged his arm into the
| telephone line and slapped me silly.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I wonder if you'd be safe just sticking it in a savings
| account until they asked for it back. I mean, is it your
| responsibility to point out their mistake? And after how much
| time might they lose their right to demand it back?
| bombcar wrote:
| The general consensus seems to be either leave it in the
| checking account until it is pulled back (and it almost
| always will be unless the amount is "small or reasonable"
| and therefor not caught in an audit) or directly contact
| the company immediately.
|
| Moving it to a savings account is tricky because the
| automatic clawback will pull from whatever account it was
| sent into.
|
| Once the company issues a W2 or 1099 the next year that
| covers it, I would consider it relatively safe to keep.
| bloak wrote:
| There's a third option for when the sum is really huge,
| like more money than you'll ever see in your life: find a
| good lawyer who can arrange transferring the money into
| some kind of trust fund, perhaps in a different country,
| that benefits your children, then wait for the knock on
| the door, expect to go to prison for a bit, but your
| children may be allowed to keep the money, and they might
| support you when you come out of jail. I think I read
| about a woman in New York successfully doing something
| like that with an accidental transfer from the United
| Nations, though I might be misremembering.
| bombcar wrote:
| If it's a company or other body at that point you're
| trying to figure out what will let them settle their
| books - perhaps prison time for you will do so.
|
| But other groups I'd be a bit more worried about them
| being willing to go to extra-judicial means to if not get
| the money back, at least get "revenge".
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely
| applies_
|
| If Bob signs a contract for Alice to paint a fence for $800 and
| a copy-paste error transfers her $1000 instead, yes.
|
| But if the copy-paste error happened _before_ the contract was
| signed? Leading to Bob promising Alice $1000 and signing a
| contract promising it? Then in all probability, Bob will end up
| paying the contract amount.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| This area of law is usually a bit more nuanced than "what you
| wrote is the contract". If both parties thought the contract
| said $800 when it was signed (and if that could be proven...)
| then that might well be enough for a court to either read the
| contract as if it said $800, or to void it entirely.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > If both parties thought the contract said
|
| This has zero to do with the actual matter at hand, given
| that the people getting the raises 100% believed they were
| getting raises.
| ajross wrote:
| Compensation for at-will employees does not constitute a
| contract. That's what "at-will" means, basically. In the
| breakdown of good faith interaction, the remedy (for both
| sides) is largely limited to the ability to walk away.
|
| But yes: if these were contractors Amazon had hired it would
| be very different.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| This is nonsense, possibly triggered by a misunderstanding
| of what the word "contract" denotes.
|
| An at-will employee and their employer contract that for
| each hour of work (or each ~week salaried) performed by
| employee on instructions from employer, employer will pay
| to employee $X.
|
| Just because such a contract doesn't contain any term
| indicating the length of time an employee will work doesn't
| make it less of a contract.
|
| As further evidence, if at-will employment were not a
| contractual agreement there'd be no recourse for the
| employee to recover unpaid wages. And yet unpaid wages
| _are_ recoverable.
| ajross wrote:
| That's getting needless sticky about definitions, and
| harming understanding of the point, potentially leading
| people to think that these Amazon workers are going to
| get their raises, which they clearly won't.
|
| Let me be more concrete: am employer presenting you with
| a plan for future compensation[1] in an existing
| employment relationship does not constitute a contract.
| They can pay you what they want to pay you.
|
| [1] Your back wages argument doesn't apply here. These
| people never got paid at all.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| None of which has anything to do with at-will employment.
| Since you do appear to have a good understanding of the
| situation, this leads me to the only possible conclusion
| that you were deliberately spreading disinformation about
| at will employment for some purpose.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Yeah ... employer handbooks are considered contracts.
|
| Every raise I've ever received has been accompanied by a
| "contract" hr puts in my folder.
| ajross wrote:
| So frustrating to see this interpretation repeated here.
| No, that's not correct, because it if were correct these
| Amazon folks would have an open and shut case to keep
| their raises, and they don't. That's not the way
| compensation works. It might be the way one side or the
| other wants it to work in some situation, but it's not.
| You get paid what your employer offers. Your employer
| gets to keep the employees that want to stay. Period.
|
| Work done for contract _is a real thing_ , it's just not
| applicable here. When you hire a plumber or a caterer or
| a security consultancy, you write up a contract ahead of
| time describing exactly the work to be done and the bill
| to be paid, and then get the courts to enforce that when
| needed. That is simply not the way that salaried
| employment works in the USA. It's not.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You're wrong. "Work for contract" is irrelevant to there
| being contracts used for salaried jobs. There was a
| contract involved, but it sounds like it was covering the
| period starting in October - so Amazon just has to cancel
| it and say "actually this is how much we will be paying
| you" and employees have the same option to reject the new
| contract terms as they do the existing contract: quitting
| before the new terms become active.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| To save all the bickering here, the final answer is that the
| corporation always wins. No matter what the mistake.
|
| Let the lawyers get together and do a retroactive class-
| action lawsuit to solve it. But Amazon will do whatever it
| wants until that suit comes through.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The proof is if, due to a bug, a person was undercompensated or
| money disappeared from their bank account, the person would
| absolutely expect to be made whole.
|
| BTW, I've had stock options that were _never_ above water.
| sk5t wrote:
| > stock options that were never above water
|
| That'd be most stock options in private companies, though.
| wyager wrote:
| > I work in fintech and if a bank accidentally deposits money
| into your account and you spend it, you can go to jail
|
| So do I, and it depends. There was a whole case recently where
| chase (iirc) accidentally sent tens/hundreds of millions of
| dollars to a lender, and the lender chose to interpret it is an
| early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the
| money.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan
| repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.
|
| No. The appeals court smacked them silly in a unanimous
| opinion and the money was returned to Citi [1]. From the
| appellate judge:
|
| > In a separate opinion, Circuit Judge Michael Park called
| the lawsuit a "straightforward case that many smart people
| have grossly overcomplicated and that we should have decided
| many months ago."
|
| > "Put simply, you don't get to keep money sent to you by
| mistake unless you're entitled to it anyway," Park wrote
|
| 1. https://www.bankingdive.com/news/citi-wins-
| appeal-500-millio...
| wyager wrote:
| Ah, I did not see this update! Tfti
| ghaff wrote:
| >basically have just come to expect that the equity portion of
| their compensation should be like cash.
|
| Not just like cash. Like cash that may be worth 50% or more
| money by the time it vests.
|
| Hopefully, it won't get that bad for large public companies but
| there are probably people out there today who are banking on
| their total comp being $400K (and making decisions on that
| basis) when it's actually more like $200K or less.
| paganel wrote:
| I'm out of the loop here and too lazy to check, but let's say
| those people were to apply for a mortgage, would the bank
| only look at the "fixed" part of their income when
| considering one's application? Or it will also look at the
| "variable" part? (i.e. the part of the comp that will vest at
| some point in the future). If the answer to this last
| question is "yes", how does the bank "compute" that
| future/expected income?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would the bank only look at the "fixed" part of their
| income when considering one's application? Or it will also
| look at the "variable" part?_
|
| Should be both. To the latter, it depends how it's
| structured. But typically by looking at a few years'
| compensation.
| throwawaygog6 wrote:
| Normally, they will look at two years of stable(typically
| W2) income (Salary + RSUs) from one company before they
| make decisions. However, in bay area, some mortgage lenders
| have started excusing people who jump companies, because,
| well jumping companies in bay area is common. They now have
| to tweak their models.
|
| Source: Recently went through the mortgage
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Amazon recently added "being the best place to work" as one of
| their core values.
|
| If the "best place to work" made an error like this, they would
| figure out a way to let the employee keep it.
|
| Most places wouldn't. But if I was in charge of a FAANG, an
| error like this happened, and I was committed to making the
| FAANG the "best place to work", I'd cough up the change.
|
| Does Amazon want to be the best place to work, or not?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This depends, if we sign a contract saying saying compensation
| is PSX, i cant later lower your compensatuon claiming I made a
| mostake. It would be my responsebility to check befire signing.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Why all these hypotheticals that aren't relevant? That
| (signing of a binding contract where work was done and then
| the employer reneged on payment) manifestly did _not_ happen
| in this case.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I do hope some Amazon employees walk back working at Amazon over
| this.
| trasz wrote:
| [deleted]
| axg11 wrote:
| Amazon should just own this mistake. They are already finding it
| incredibly hard to recruit and attract top talent. Perhaps the
| situation is slightly improved with the recent cooldown in the
| economy. I wonder how much this negative PR costs their
| recruiting efforts when compared to the cost of paying up the
| erroneous bonuses.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| And put their reputation as an abusive workplace at risk? Slim
| chance
| fnbr wrote:
| I had this happen at a different FAANG. I was sent a letter with
| a 25% raise when I got promoted. I then had a meeting with my
| assigned HR person & manager suddenly added to my calendar where
| they told me that I was actually getting a 6% raise.
|
| It was still competitive with market rates, so shit happens.
| Sucks to be on the bad side of this.
| cma wrote:
| Yes it is legal to walk them back if it was a mistake:
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unjust_enrichment
| metadat wrote:
| _" Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated
| their compensation"_
|
| This headline reads as though it came straight out of a newspaper
| in SimCity 2000.
|
| https://66.media.tumblr.com/b102240b1a68b839c4c38b883f85e437...
|
| Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, or enmeshes uncannily
| with it.
|
| Related references:
|
| SimCity 2000 Newspapers ProcGen detailed inspection:
| https://procedural-generation.tumblr.com/post/134086657418/s...
|
| Thread from Sep 2019 about the SimCity2K in-game article
| generator (first search result for "sc2k newspaper":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20971526
|
| Edit: SimCity2K ProcGen deserves it's own submission, no?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984133
| noasaservice wrote:
| [deleted]
| ripper1138 wrote:
| xkqd wrote:
| It's a solid summary of the most commonly known complaints
| and confirmed condition, and the commenter's opinion is
| clear.
|
| If someone values working for a firm that doesn't have a
| questionable relationship with their employees, the comment
| provides value. It's up to the reader to determine if the
| good outweighs this list; or at least enough to work there.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Indeed. And being a cloud/systems engineer well versed in
| Azure -and- AWS, along with networks, DCops, FedRAMP, and
| more, I'm in the ideal target group to get hired in to
| Amazon and spend a few years there.
|
| But I see how they treat their employees from lowest to
| highest. I don't want any part of that.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Amazon gets and deserves a lot of bad press, but to me it's
| no different than any other huge company with lots of blue
| collar workers. Apple, google, meta, and many more tech
| companies manufacture hardware products in overseas
| factories with awful working conditions, but I don't see
| people boycotting working for those companies nearly as
| often as Amazon.
| monkpit wrote:
| The raises had to be approved though, right? It seems like an
| excuse to blame software for this. And it seems really off-
| putting that they wouldn't just own the error, but instead try to
| revert it.
| cooneyb wrote:
| no such thing as "bank error in your favor" anymore i suppose
| the_gipsy wrote:
| This is not a "bank error".
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There has never been such a thing as a "bank error in your
| favor", and folks are living in a fantasy land if they think
| there has been.
| Ekaros wrote:
| "Bank error in your favor", would mean bank screwed
| previously some money from you and now are returning it...
| So, not really in your favour...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Never was, except in Monopoly money terms.
| 71a54xd wrote:
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