21 ms·

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

401 points by jw2013 10y ago

kafkaesq 10y ago
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 working out", offer a (truly decent) severance, and move on. (I know, I know, I know: "because laywers.")
- WalterSear 10y ago
  It's kafka-esque, kafkaesq.
- ojiikun 10y ago
  PIPs are far more insidious than even that. sure, they are advertised as a way to get rid of bad apples or underperforming hires that slipped past the bar raiser. in practice, though, they are used by managers to further their own internal politics and goals as a no-fuss way of removing any existing employee that might make them look bad or be in the way of a friend they would like to get onto their team. all the manager has to do is give you a task with low visibility and then wait 6 months before calling you out as trailing in performance and bam, no way to defend your career. they know that most devs will just quit rather than put up with the bullshit or the humiliation. I feel terrible for the younger or less aware folks who don't see the process for what it is and take it as a genuine indication of their skills, talent, dedication, or worth.
- _d8fd 10y ago
  If you're put on a PIP, and you want to leave, you can use that as leverage to get some severance. Call it a resignation bonus. Getting a month or three of pay is money in your pocket, plus time to line up something better. An imperfect solution to an imperfect situation. Managing steps to PIP-can (methodically fire) a worker is taxing for everyone, and liability exposure. It may make financial sense for the company to cut its losses, paying a small certain liability to prevent a larger one.
  - deegles 10y ago
    Not if you're on a visa. Getting put on a PIP is an existential risk. The rational thing to do is to immediately get a new job.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      Interestingly, the one place I know that loved putting people on PIPs as away of avoiding looking into questions of basic managerial competence... also had tons and tons of H1-Bs.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Can anyone think of a single instance where an employee survived the PIP in any organization? I've never heard of one.
  - acomjean 10y ago
    I had a co-worker survive the PIP he was put on. He was very thorough coder, but not particularly fast (when he delivered code it always worked really well, comforting for radar software), so when he was put on a new project that didn't value that over scheduling he had to adjust. Between that and a change of language he ended up on a pip. He lasted 5 years after that and one round of layoffs, before being let go in a second round. He's somewhere else now.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    I did. I truly wasn't performing as my peers, and my manager was pretty awesome about the whole situation. He asked me for my honest opinion on whether I was performing at the level I could (I thought I could do better), and what things I thought were causing it. I named things about me, things about the team, and things about the company in general. He explained the PIP was a deal: for three months he would take care of the external factors, and I would take care of the personal ones. We came up with a project for that quarter, which would be the metric with which I'd be evaluated. If nothing had been done (no PIP, no anything), I might have been fired during that year. But we all wanted me to perform better; me, my boss, and the company that designed the process. And so all sides were willing to change reasonable things to make it so. Because of that honest conversation, and that feeling of all of us being on the same side, I recovered and have been going strongly for years.
    - quanticle 10y ago
      Was it a formal PIP, though? In my experience there are many managers who'll do that for employees that they wish to retain, but who, for various reasons, aren't performing up to snuff. However, I've never heard of a manager bringing HR in, doing the PIP paperwork, and the employee surviving the PIP. In general, the moment HR gets involved (either in person or via formal paperwork) between you or your manager, you know you're done. As others have stated, treat the time of your PIP as a form of severance pay, do the minimum amount of work necessary to not get fired that day, and look for a job elsewhere.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  It should work that way (especially for people who want to leave anyway), but things like "performance improvement plans" exist in part because outright firing someone without a long paper trail risks a wrongful termination lawsuit. If you fire someone months after putting them on a "performance improvement plan", you have a hard-to-refute paper trail that makes it much harder to prove any non-performance-related cause.
- ible 10y ago
  My (second hand) understanding is that if you get put on a PIP at Amazon it blocks you from doing an internal transfer. So if you have a manager who doesn't like you and you try to transfer out they can put you on a PIP and effectively you're done at Amazon, even if you had someone else who wanted you internally.
  - outworlder 10y ago
    It works like that at many companies. Sometimes a PIP is not even needed, a low performance review is all it takes. I do not fully understand the logic behind it, other than facilitating the process of reducing headcount in the company as a whole.
    - wsetchell 10y ago
      HR can create a policy like this to prevent managers from locally optimizing. Firing someone is a lot of work for a manager. It is easier for the manager to transfer that person, than to deal with the problem themselves (even if they really should be fired). HR might also create a policy like this to improve the average quality of employees. An employee who underperforms on team #1, is more likely to underperform on team X than a randomly chosen new hire.
- ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
  Ex Amazon here. PIP are used to covertly apply stack ranking. A lot of managers seem to always have at least one employee in PIP in their team.
khnd 10y ago
wow. i wonder if bezos is going to address this.
- itg 10y ago
  Doubt it, that nytimes article about their work culture spread everywhere but not much has changed.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    People keep working there, so why would they change? Edit: s/should/would/
    - Bombthecat 10y ago
      Exactly. And other firms will adapt that working style. Why shouldn't they? Amazon gets away with it.
    - fullshark 10y ago
      Maybe they would be more effective if they changed.
  - GabrielF00 10y ago
    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.
- pinewurst 10y ago
  Hardly. According to Jeff, nothing is wrong and everything is for the best in his best of all possible worlds. Read enough https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ and it's a consistent picture though. Speaking as a Seattle local, I hear these sort of anecdotes all the time.
Futurebot 10y ago
Tyler Cowen has written a lot about this: "Individuals don’t in fact enjoy being evaluated all the time, especially when the results are not always stellar: for most people, one piece of negative feedback outweighs five pieces of positive feedback. To the extent that measurement raises income inequality, perhaps it makes relations among the workers tenser and less friendly. Life under a meritocracy can be a little tough, unfriendly, and discouraging, especially for those whose morale is easily damaged. Privacy in this world will be harder to come by, and perhaps “second chances” will be more difficult to find, given the permanence of electronic data. We may end up favoring “goody two-shoes” personality types who were on the straight and narrow from their earliest years and disfavor those who rebelled at young ages, even if those people might end up being more creative later on." http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the-measured-working-man.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the... Pervasive employee monitoring and feedback isn't costless. Some people will improve, others will get fired/quit find a new job, but there will be some who cannot take it at all. If losing a job wasn't so punishing economically and status-wise, it would take a lot of, but certainly not all, of the sting away.
- devoply 10y ago
  When you are treated like a robot, as in the case of pervasive monitoring, then merit has little wait. Merit is about how you contribute over-all to a corporation and its functioning. This sort of management, individual management ignores that... as they are running a factory where you are a machine. Not a person. Machines gets monitored this way. Corporations would look at a department as a profit center or a loss center and leave the decision making of who is performing well or not to your manager. Here you are a machine at the beck and call of Bozo, or Bezos as the case might be. Really this is just neo-taylorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Criticis...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Managers are cogs too. The way to work that kind of system is to identify and exploit the fears of the boss or his boss. I've seen this happen with employees under the thumb of micromanaging PMs in particular. They start spreading rumors, then undermine PM. My solution is to eliminate micro managers asap.
amzn-336495 10y ago
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 their abusive manager" is their oldest trick in their book. Something needs to be done to help people financially who are looking for a way out from the abuse.
- adrianggg 10y ago
  can confirm 100% true. Awful place to learn and develop. Look elsewhere. Do some research.
- cwilkes 10y ago
  What really angered me about that article was Amazon trying to say that this was a "colleague" -- he was on a PIP. Which is pretty much Amazon speak for a dead man walking (no pun intended).
  - outworlder 10y ago
    Pretty much everywhere The most sensible option is to do the bare minimum acceptable work and use all the leftover energy to find some other place, as the clock is ticking. Depending on the company, you have until the next quarter or the next performance review. Or the next headcount reduction.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    At a Big Corp where I worked, I think it was three 'satisfactory' ratings in a row which resulted in a PIP. Satisfactory: fulfilling expectations or needs. But not in Corporate Nu-Speak.
    - lostboys67 10y ago
      I recall British telecom it was "needs some improvement" that triggered a pip that but everyone has some thing that needs improvement. Given the will you can find an excuse to put anyone on a PIP.
Tempest1981 10y ago
Do they still have the backloaded RSU vesting schedule? Something like 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% (each year)? Does anyone else do this?
- suryamp 10y ago
  1)Yes. 2)I do not know.
- discodave 10y ago
  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 bonuses ending. Thinking more broadly, many employees get promoted within 2-3 years and the stock has generally gone up over time so the predictions after the 2 year mark aren't exactly set in stone.
  - dmoy 10y ago
    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, ...
    - SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
      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.
      - jonathankoren 10y ago
        I've heard Apple's equity grants are stupid though. Instead of the standard grant-value / share-price-at-hire = number of shares, and then then vesting the number of shares over 4 years, Apple vests the grant-value over 4 years and then converts to stock using the share price at the time of vesting. This of course results in lower compensation over the vesting schedule assuming an appreciating stock price.
SuperPaintMan 10y ago
>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.
- infinitone 10y ago
  I've survived a 4 story building fall when i was 3. Came out with no scratches or broken bones.
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    You actually knew that you survived the fall at age 3 or someone much older told you the story of how you survived a 4-storey fall when you were much older?
- daviross 10y ago
  12 story building, but he jumped from the 4th floor and hit a balcony midway down. Still resilient, but not the full impact imagined.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    It looks like those details were omitted from the Bloomberg article.
    - umeshunni 10y ago
      Yes, the Seattle PI article said that he fell 20 feet (2 stories) into a balcony after jumping from the 12 story building.
      - nir 10y ago
        Following this, he was assigned to Amazon's employee suicide improvement plan.
u489utaa 10y ago
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 leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever. - No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself! - No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes. - Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software! This is Amazon's mindset TOPDOWN. The root of the problem is that the leadership does NOT care about employees or technology. This is a retailer and a powdered Walmart, what do you expect?! SDE 1 and SDE 2 are simply the slaves working at a sweatshop. Some of my co-workers are hired without onsite interviews. They do some video chat and they are hired at Amazon. They don't even know how to write bash scripts. Our team used to have technical program managers who can't even write a Python script. With simple things like running a command line tool, he cuts a ticket and let the engineers do it. The managers at Amazon pocket bonuses and don't give a damn. They don't carry pagers and when they do, they just page lower level employees. The only reason people take offers at Amazon is that they can't get better packages from Facebook/Google. * I worked at AWS for 2 years.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Those terms are insane.
  - notyourwork 10y ago
    Compared to what?
  - onion2k 10y ago
    They make it clear that Amazon prefer employees who'll stay there for a while because employees only become value after a couple of years, or if you're feeling less generous, Amazon know that they'll extract all the value from someone in under a year before they're driven out. Either way the terms aren't insane; they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs.
rdtsc 10y ago
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 to the workers like him. They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. He liked the pay but couldn't take the humiliating treatment, so he quit.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  > 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-essential staff are encouraged to stay home and avoid injury and possible death trying to make it to work.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    This is the reality for the lower quartile of the American workforce. When I was a part of it, I faced either braving the snow and icy roads or getting fired. I left an hour early because I knew I would be driving about 20 miles per hour. I'm not condoning this practice, just providing context. The state governor's prohibition on road travel be damned. The next time it snows, think about how the workers in your pharmacy or bar got to work while you have the day off. Incidentally, one of my coworkers actually suggested our manager pick him up in a 4x4 during a particularly brutal blizzard. The request was laughed off; there was no way it was worth the fuel and time to go pick up the worker to come to work. It makes sense; a sub- $20-per-hour worker is too cheap for it to work out in most cases. The humane thing to do is just to leave the store or bar closed if staff have to come in. But that extra $1000 of net revenue sounds tempting...
auvi 10y ago
where can I find the text of the email?
ajkjk 10y ago
As has happened before on these threads, every opinion on Amazon is super negative. To balance things out I'll chime in to say that I had a highly positive experience working there as an SDE for 3 years, and would estimate that most of my coworkers felt the same way.
madman2890 10y ago
268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Most of those are warehouse employees whose suicides might not make Bloomberg. And people who die quietly at home (which I've seen a few times in my career) likely don't either.
- uw_rob 10y ago
  I don't think it is correct to get the expected value of suicides using the national average. College-educated people employed at a high paying job living in Seattle may be much less likely to kill themselves. (Making some assumptions about the person who attempted suicide). (Disclaimer: I completed an Internship at Amazon and I am returning for a second one)
  - madman2890 10y ago
    Ok, this isn't a presentation it's a comment. Albeit, I agree with you.
madman2890 10y ago
268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.
sssilver 10y ago
Following some of the discussion on this thread, I am constantly reminded of a priceless advice I got from a senior friend years ago. When thinking about an employer, above a certain size threshold, never judge a company. Always judge a department. You don't work for a company. You work for a department. Above a certain (fairly small) size, the only thing you'll share with the employees in the other departments will be the domain name in your email. Everything else will be coincidental.
- rockinghigh 10y ago
  You can still judge company-wide policies like vacations, 401k match, or health care.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sssilver 10y ago
    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.
    - a3n 10y ago
      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.
      - serge2k 10y ago
        It's a mix, same as any other warehouse.
    - mcherm 10y ago
      Based on the (lack of) attention that SQS has received, I'm guessing that the person coding the internals of SQS has LOTS of vacation.
jimmywanger 10y ago
It's great how this no content article has been turned into a huge Amazon bashing thread that confirms everybody's biases against Amazon employment practices. The facts are: a guy put in for a transfer, got put on a performance improvement plan, threatened self-harm, and then jumped off a building. There are no details why he requested a transfer, the reasons he got put on a PIP, and if he was mentally unstable or not, where these fairly common life events would cause him to contemplate self harm. Nope, the pitchforks and the torches come out.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
outworlder 10y ago
> The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, but was placed on an employee improvement plan Having escaped from an abusive manager myself, I can imagine what this person went though. Managers that are skilled in the art are able to inflict pain without leaving much of a paper trail. I did ask for (and got) professional help, including medication. There's only so much stress 24/7 that you are able to handle before you start to crack. Who knows what would have happened if I just tried to ride it out. I'd have gone bananas if I had been placed in a PIP instead. This was one of the possibilities identified by my branch predictor, so I was collecting a mountain of evidence against said manager. Thankfully, it wasn't needed. (I realize that nowhere in the article it says a manager was the issue, but corporate pattern-matching gets pretty good after a while)
bystander876 10y ago
I live nearby and was walking by when the EMT and fire department were called. Hats off to those folks. It seemed like no time at all before they showed up and moved very quickly to help the injured man. I was really impressed.
Buge 10y ago
Not too long ago an Apple employee shot himself in the office. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body-apple-campus/83598174/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body-appl...
msie 10y ago
When I was young I quit MS rather than get fired. Looking back, I wonder if I should have just walked away without an exit interview. Perhaps get several more weeks pay. I too suffered under a PIP that proved to be pointless.
Merovius 10y ago
Press code: Don't widely report details of suicides, it creates a measurable uptick in simulative acts. Internet: Let's get this thing to the Hackernews frontpage!
pproodd 10y ago
So, based on this thread, communism is the answer.
andy 10y ago
My thoughts are with this man. I was also put on an employee improvement plan at a company previously.
gtirloni 10y ago
Very clever way to write the title and the article itself. You get the impression that 1) he is dead and after reading a bit more that 2) he survived a jump from a 12-story building. From reading other articles, it seems he is alive and jumped from the 4th floor.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Amazon-bashing aside, this is an example of why 'safe spaces' and 'trigger-free zones' may be a bad idea. Colleges should train students in responding to triggers; exercise their self-control regularly in the face of adversity not stunt it. Somebody jumps instead of walking away, they have priorities drastically miswired.
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  How does suicide have anything to do with safe spaces and trigger warnings? Did suicide not exist before college started incorporating safe spaces and trigger warnings? If there is a causation relationship between safe spaces/trigger warnings and suicide does this also mean that countries with high suicide rates have a lot of safe spaces/trigger warnings? What about the high suicide rate of teenagers? Trans people? Homeless? Did they all experience the woes of the safe space/trigger warning?
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    With you (no data available yet) until that last statement. Are 'safe spaces' etc related to relieving trauma (no data available yet)? And yes colleges are responsible for making students resilient. That's the 'job training' part. Many have courses in professional ethics, in responsible management, in meeting deadlines with quality work. These are not incidental to the education mandate, they are central.
    - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
      Specifically, I am asking about how safe spaces or trigger warnings in college are at all relevant to the occurrence of suicide outside of a college setting. I do apologize for my final note, as I realize it is off topic and I would rather not enter tangential discussion. I've edited it out. If you would like to continue talking, let me know if there is another way to talk (email, etc.)
- hiddencost 10y ago
  What? You really have no idea how epistemology works, do you? Just reading David Brooks make unsourced claims with third hand knowledge and thinking about what he said like it's true is no basis for an analysis, especially an easily studied one like this. First off, you'd need to demonstrate an effect that focused on that age group. But suicide rates are going up much more quickly for the middle aged and the poor. [0] Second, you clearly have no idea what "safe spaces" are. They're not "every part of life", they're specific meeting places in the community and focus on problems that have to be grappled with constantly, everywhere else. People who have access to safe spaces are consistently living with unsafe spaces; providing a small space of momentary refuge isn't coddling. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.amp.html%3F0p19G%3De?client=ms-android-google https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/hea...
wcummings 10y ago
The Apollo building looks like an office. Guessing this person was a product person, I don't think warehouse workers get the luxury of PIPs and changing teams. They were probably one of us. Pour one out.
omouse 10y ago
Toxic workplace? I think so.
zelias 10y ago
Is there a reason the text of the email is unavailable?
plandis 10y ago
You know what the worst part of my job at Amazon is? That I continually have to read about how terrible I am both on the internet and in real life (your average Seattlite seems to hate Amazon). Just in this thread alone I've been accused of: * Screwing employees over * Being a slave in a sweatshop * Insulted for not being able to use Bash (I can) * Disorganized * Not be trusted to talk about working at Amazon (lol) * Fostering a toxic workplace * A communist (my favorite insult)

401 points by jw2013 10y ago

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 working out", offer a (truly decent) severance, and move on. (I know, I know, I know: "because laywers.")

WalterSear 10y ago
It's kafka-esque, kafkaesq.
ojiikun 10y ago
PIPs are far more insidious than even that. sure, they are advertised as a way to get rid of bad apples or underperforming hires that slipped past the bar raiser. in practice, though, they are used by managers to further their own internal politics and goals as a no-fuss way of removing any existing employee that might make them look bad or be in the way of a friend they would like to get onto their team. all the manager has to do is give you a task with low visibility and then wait 6 months before calling you out as trailing in performance and bam, no way to defend your career. they know that most devs will just quit rather than put up with the bullshit or the humiliation. I feel terrible for the younger or less aware folks who don't see the process for what it is and take it as a genuine indication of their skills, talent, dedication, or worth.
_d8fd 10y ago
If you're put on a PIP, and you want to leave, you can use that as leverage to get some severance. Call it a resignation bonus. Getting a month or three of pay is money in your pocket, plus time to line up something better. An imperfect solution to an imperfect situation. Managing steps to PIP-can (methodically fire) a worker is taxing for everyone, and liability exposure. It may make financial sense for the company to cut its losses, paying a small certain liability to prevent a larger one.
- deegles 10y ago
  Not if you're on a visa. Getting put on a PIP is an existential risk. The rational thing to do is to immediately get a new job.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    Interestingly, the one place I know that loved putting people on PIPs as away of avoiding looking into questions of basic managerial competence... also had tons and tons of H1-Bs.
linkregister 10y ago
Can anyone think of a single instance where an employee survived the PIP in any organization? I've never heard of one.
- acomjean 10y ago
  I had a co-worker survive the PIP he was put on. He was very thorough coder, but not particularly fast (when he delivered code it always worked really well, comforting for radar software), so when he was put on a new project that didn't value that over scheduling he had to adjust. Between that and a change of language he ended up on a pip. He lasted 5 years after that and one round of layoffs, before being let go in a second round. He's somewhere else now.
- euyyn 10y ago
  I did. I truly wasn't performing as my peers, and my manager was pretty awesome about the whole situation. He asked me for my honest opinion on whether I was performing at the level I could (I thought I could do better), and what things I thought were causing it. I named things about me, things about the team, and things about the company in general. He explained the PIP was a deal: for three months he would take care of the external factors, and I would take care of the personal ones. We came up with a project for that quarter, which would be the metric with which I'd be evaluated. If nothing had been done (no PIP, no anything), I might have been fired during that year. But we all wanted me to perform better; me, my boss, and the company that designed the process. And so all sides were willing to change reasonable things to make it so. Because of that honest conversation, and that feeling of all of us being on the same side, I recovered and have been going strongly for years.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    Was it a formal PIP, though? In my experience there are many managers who'll do that for employees that they wish to retain, but who, for various reasons, aren't performing up to snuff. However, I've never heard of a manager bringing HR in, doing the PIP paperwork, and the employee surviving the PIP. In general, the moment HR gets involved (either in person or via formal paperwork) between you or your manager, you know you're done. As others have stated, treat the time of your PIP as a form of severance pay, do the minimum amount of work necessary to not get fired that day, and look for a job elsewhere.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
It should work that way (especially for people who want to leave anyway), but things like "performance improvement plans" exist in part because outright firing someone without a long paper trail risks a wrongful termination lawsuit. If you fire someone months after putting them on a "performance improvement plan", you have a hard-to-refute paper trail that makes it much harder to prove any non-performance-related cause.
ible 10y ago
My (second hand) understanding is that if you get put on a PIP at Amazon it blocks you from doing an internal transfer. So if you have a manager who doesn't like you and you try to transfer out they can put you on a PIP and effectively you're done at Amazon, even if you had someone else who wanted you internally.
- outworlder 10y ago
  It works like that at many companies. Sometimes a PIP is not even needed, a low performance review is all it takes. I do not fully understand the logic behind it, other than facilitating the process of reducing headcount in the company as a whole.
  - wsetchell 10y ago
    HR can create a policy like this to prevent managers from locally optimizing. Firing someone is a lot of work for a manager. It is easier for the manager to transfer that person, than to deal with the problem themselves (even if they really should be fired). HR might also create a policy like this to improve the average quality of employees. An employee who underperforms on team #1, is more likely to underperform on team X than a randomly chosen new hire.
ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
Ex Amazon here. PIP are used to covertly apply stack ranking. A lot of managers seem to always have at least one employee in PIP in their team.

khnd 10y ago

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

itg 10y ago
Doubt it, that nytimes article about their work culture spread everywhere but not much has changed.
- ams6110 10y ago
  People keep working there, so why would they change? Edit: s/should/would/
  - Bombthecat 10y ago
    Exactly. And other firms will adapt that working style. Why shouldn't they? Amazon gets away with it.
  - fullshark 10y ago
    Maybe they would be more effective if they changed.
- GabrielF00 10y ago
  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.
pinewurst 10y ago
Hardly. According to Jeff, nothing is wrong and everything is for the best in his best of all possible worlds. Read enough https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ and it's a consistent picture though. Speaking as a Seattle local, I hear these sort of anecdotes all the time.

Futurebot 10y ago

Tyler Cowen has written a lot about this: "Individuals don’t in fact enjoy being evaluated all the time, especially when the results are not always stellar: for most people, one piece of negative feedback outweighs five pieces of positive feedback. To the extent that measurement raises income inequality, perhaps it makes relations among the workers tenser and less friendly. Life under a meritocracy can be a little tough, unfriendly, and discouraging, especially for those whose morale is easily damaged. Privacy in this world will be harder to come by, and perhaps “second chances” will be more difficult to find, given the permanence of electronic data. We may end up favoring “goody two-shoes” personality types who were on the straight and narrow from their earliest years and disfavor those who rebelled at young ages, even if those people might end up being more creative later on." http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the-measured-working-man.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the... Pervasive employee monitoring and feedback isn't costless. Some people will improve, others will get fired/quit find a new job, but there will be some who cannot take it at all. If losing a job wasn't so punishing economically and status-wise, it would take a lot of, but certainly not all, of the sting away.

devoply 10y ago
When you are treated like a robot, as in the case of pervasive monitoring, then merit has little wait. Merit is about how you contribute over-all to a corporation and its functioning. This sort of management, individual management ignores that... as they are running a factory where you are a machine. Not a person. Machines gets monitored this way. Corporations would look at a department as a profit center or a loss center and leave the decision making of who is performing well or not to your manager. Here you are a machine at the beck and call of Bozo, or Bezos as the case might be. Really this is just neo-taylorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Criticis...
Spooky23 10y ago
Managers are cogs too. The way to work that kind of system is to identify and exploit the fears of the boss or his boss. I've seen this happen with employees under the thumb of micromanaging PMs in particular. They start spreading rumors, then undermine PM. My solution is to eliminate micro managers asap.

amzn-336495 10y ago

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 their abusive manager" is their oldest trick in their book. Something needs to be done to help people financially who are looking for a way out from the abuse.

adrianggg 10y ago
can confirm 100% true. Awful place to learn and develop. Look elsewhere. Do some research.
cwilkes 10y ago
What really angered me about that article was Amazon trying to say that this was a "colleague" -- he was on a PIP. Which is pretty much Amazon speak for a dead man walking (no pun intended).
- outworlder 10y ago
  Pretty much everywhere The most sensible option is to do the bare minimum acceptable work and use all the leftover energy to find some other place, as the clock is ticking. Depending on the company, you have until the next quarter or the next performance review. Or the next headcount reduction.
- dingaling 10y ago
  At a Big Corp where I worked, I think it was three 'satisfactory' ratings in a row which resulted in a PIP. Satisfactory: fulfilling expectations or needs. But not in Corporate Nu-Speak.
  - lostboys67 10y ago
    I recall British telecom it was "needs some improvement" that triggered a pip that but everyone has some thing that needs improvement. Given the will you can find an excuse to put anyone on a PIP.

Tempest1981 10y ago

Do they still have the backloaded RSU vesting schedule? Something like 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% (each year)? Does anyone else do this?

suryamp 10y ago
1)Yes. 2)I do not know.
discodave 10y ago
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 bonuses ending. Thinking more broadly, many employees get promoted within 2-3 years and the stock has generally gone up over time so the predictions after the 2 year mark aren't exactly set in stone.
- dmoy 10y ago
  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, ...
  - SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
    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.
    - jonathankoren 10y ago
      I've heard Apple's equity grants are stupid though. Instead of the standard grant-value / share-price-at-hire = number of shares, and then then vesting the number of shares over 4 years, Apple vests the grant-value over 4 years and then converts to stock using the share price at the time of vesting. This of course results in lower compensation over the vesting schedule assuming an appreciating stock price.

SuperPaintMan 10y ago

>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.

infinitone 10y ago
I've survived a 4 story building fall when i was 3. Came out with no scratches or broken bones.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  You actually knew that you survived the fall at age 3 or someone much older told you the story of how you survived a 4-storey fall when you were much older?
daviross 10y ago
12 story building, but he jumped from the 4th floor and hit a balcony midway down. Still resilient, but not the full impact imagined.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  It looks like those details were omitted from the Bloomberg article.
  - umeshunni 10y ago
    Yes, the Seattle PI article said that he fell 20 feet (2 stories) into a balcony after jumping from the 12 story building.
    - nir 10y ago
      Following this, he was assigned to Amazon's employee suicide improvement plan.

u489utaa 10y ago

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 leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever. - No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself! - No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes. - Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software! This is Amazon's mindset TOPDOWN. The root of the problem is that the leadership does NOT care about employees or technology. This is a retailer and a powdered Walmart, what do you expect?! SDE 1 and SDE 2 are simply the slaves working at a sweatshop. Some of my co-workers are hired without onsite interviews. They do some video chat and they are hired at Amazon. They don't even know how to write bash scripts. Our team used to have technical program managers who can't even write a Python script. With simple things like running a command line tool, he cuts a ticket and let the engineers do it. The managers at Amazon pocket bonuses and don't give a damn. They don't carry pagers and when they do, they just page lower level employees. The only reason people take offers at Amazon is that they can't get better packages from Facebook/Google. * I worked at AWS for 2 years.

tedmiston 10y ago
Those terms are insane.
- notyourwork 10y ago
  Compared to what?
- onion2k 10y ago
  They make it clear that Amazon prefer employees who'll stay there for a while because employees only become value after a couple of years, or if you're feeling less generous, Amazon know that they'll extract all the value from someone in under a year before they're driven out. Either way the terms aren't insane; they're just very much weighted to the employer's beliefs.

rdtsc 10y ago

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 to the workers like him. They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. He liked the pay but couldn't take the humiliating treatment, so he quit.

morganvachon 10y ago
> 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-essential staff are encouraged to stay home and avoid injury and possible death trying to make it to work.
- linkregister 10y ago
  This is the reality for the lower quartile of the American workforce. When I was a part of it, I faced either braving the snow and icy roads or getting fired. I left an hour early because I knew I would be driving about 20 miles per hour. I'm not condoning this practice, just providing context. The state governor's prohibition on road travel be damned. The next time it snows, think about how the workers in your pharmacy or bar got to work while you have the day off. Incidentally, one of my coworkers actually suggested our manager pick him up in a 4x4 during a particularly brutal blizzard. The request was laughed off; there was no way it was worth the fuel and time to go pick up the worker to come to work. It makes sense; a sub- $20-per-hour worker is too cheap for it to work out in most cases. The humane thing to do is just to leave the store or bar closed if staff have to come in. But that extra $1000 of net revenue sounds tempting...

auvi 10y ago

where can I find the text of the email?

ajkjk 10y ago

As has happened before on these threads, every opinion on Amazon is super negative. To balance things out I'll chime in to say that I had a highly positive experience working there as an SDE for 3 years, and would estimate that most of my coworkers felt the same way.

madman2890 10y ago

268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.

gohrt 10y ago
Most of those are warehouse employees whose suicides might not make Bloomberg. And people who die quietly at home (which I've seen a few times in my career) likely don't either.
uw_rob 10y ago
I don't think it is correct to get the expected value of suicides using the national average. College-educated people employed at a high paying job living in Seattle may be much less likely to kill themselves. (Making some assumptions about the person who attempted suicide). (Disclaimer: I completed an Internship at Amazon and I am returning for a second one)
- madman2890 10y ago
  Ok, this isn't a presentation it's a comment. Albeit, I agree with you.

madman2890 10y ago

268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.

sssilver 10y ago

Following some of the discussion on this thread, I am constantly reminded of a priceless advice I got from a senior friend years ago. When thinking about an employer, above a certain size threshold, never judge a company. Always judge a department. You don't work for a company. You work for a department. Above a certain (fairly small) size, the only thing you'll share with the employees in the other departments will be the domain name in your email. Everything else will be coincidental.

rockinghigh 10y ago
You can still judge company-wide policies like vacations, 401k match, or health care.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sssilver 10y ago
  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.
  - a3n 10y ago
    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.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      It's a mix, same as any other warehouse.
  - mcherm 10y ago
    Based on the (lack of) attention that SQS has received, I'm guessing that the person coding the internals of SQS has LOTS of vacation.

jimmywanger 10y ago

It's great how this no content article has been turned into a huge Amazon bashing thread that confirms everybody's biases against Amazon employment practices. The facts are: a guy put in for a transfer, got put on a performance improvement plan, threatened self-harm, and then jumped off a building. There are no details why he requested a transfer, the reasons he got put on a PIP, and if he was mentally unstable or not, where these fairly common life events would cause him to contemplate self harm. Nope, the pitchforks and the torches come out.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

outworlder 10y ago

> The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, but was placed on an employee improvement plan Having escaped from an abusive manager myself, I can imagine what this person went though. Managers that are skilled in the art are able to inflict pain without leaving much of a paper trail. I did ask for (and got) professional help, including medication. There's only so much stress 24/7 that you are able to handle before you start to crack. Who knows what would have happened if I just tried to ride it out. I'd have gone bananas if I had been placed in a PIP instead. This was one of the possibilities identified by my branch predictor, so I was collecting a mountain of evidence against said manager. Thankfully, it wasn't needed. (I realize that nowhere in the article it says a manager was the issue, but corporate pattern-matching gets pretty good after a while)

bystander876 10y ago

I live nearby and was walking by when the EMT and fire department were called. Hats off to those folks. It seemed like no time at all before they showed up and moved very quickly to help the injured man. I was really impressed.

Buge 10y ago

Not too long ago an Apple employee shot himself in the office. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body-apple-campus/83598174/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body-appl...

msie 10y ago

When I was young I quit MS rather than get fired. Looking back, I wonder if I should have just walked away without an exit interview. Perhaps get several more weeks pay. I too suffered under a PIP that proved to be pointless.

Merovius 10y ago

Press code: Don't widely report details of suicides, it creates a measurable uptick in simulative acts. Internet: Let's get this thing to the Hackernews frontpage!

pproodd 10y ago

So, based on this thread, communism is the answer.

andy 10y ago

My thoughts are with this man. I was also put on an employee improvement plan at a company previously.

gtirloni 10y ago

Very clever way to write the title and the article itself. You get the impression that 1) he is dead and after reading a bit more that 2) he survived a jump from a 12-story building. From reading other articles, it seems he is alive and jumped from the 4th floor.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Amazon-bashing aside, this is an example of why 'safe spaces' and 'trigger-free zones' may be a bad idea. Colleges should train students in responding to triggers; exercise their self-control regularly in the face of adversity not stunt it. Somebody jumps instead of walking away, they have priorities drastically miswired.

SolaceQuantum 10y ago
How does suicide have anything to do with safe spaces and trigger warnings? Did suicide not exist before college started incorporating safe spaces and trigger warnings? If there is a causation relationship between safe spaces/trigger warnings and suicide does this also mean that countries with high suicide rates have a lot of safe spaces/trigger warnings? What about the high suicide rate of teenagers? Trans people? Homeless? Did they all experience the woes of the safe space/trigger warning?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  With you (no data available yet) until that last statement. Are 'safe spaces' etc related to relieving trauma (no data available yet)? And yes colleges are responsible for making students resilient. That's the 'job training' part. Many have courses in professional ethics, in responsible management, in meeting deadlines with quality work. These are not incidental to the education mandate, they are central.
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    Specifically, I am asking about how safe spaces or trigger warnings in college are at all relevant to the occurrence of suicide outside of a college setting. I do apologize for my final note, as I realize it is off topic and I would rather not enter tangential discussion. I've edited it out. If you would like to continue talking, let me know if there is another way to talk (email, etc.)
hiddencost 10y ago
What? You really have no idea how epistemology works, do you? Just reading David Brooks make unsourced claims with third hand knowledge and thinking about what he said like it's true is no basis for an analysis, especially an easily studied one like this. First off, you'd need to demonstrate an effect that focused on that age group. But suicide rates are going up much more quickly for the middle aged and the poor. [0] Second, you clearly have no idea what "safe spaces" are. They're not "every part of life", they're specific meeting places in the community and focus on problems that have to be grappled with constantly, everywhere else. People who have access to safe spaces are consistently living with unsafe spaces; providing a small space of momentary refuge isn't coddling. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.amp.html%3F0p19G%3De?client=ms-android-google https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/hea...

wcummings 10y ago

The Apollo building looks like an office. Guessing this person was a product person, I don't think warehouse workers get the luxury of PIPs and changing teams. They were probably one of us. Pour one out.

omouse 10y ago

Toxic workplace? I think so.

zelias 10y ago

Is there a reason the text of the email is unavailable?

plandis 10y ago

You know what the worst part of my job at Amazon is? That I continually have to read about how terrible I am both on the internet and in real life (your average Seattlite seems to hate Amazon). Just in this thread alone I've been accused of: * Screwing employees over * Being a slave in a sweatshop * Insulted for not being able to use Bash (I can) * Disorganized * Not be trusted to talk about working at Amazon (lol) * Fostering a toxic workplace * A communist (my favorite insult)