4 ms·

Ah. Fair enough; I misunderstood the original post. I will admit to not having paid any attention to the 401k policy while I was at Amazon other than ensuring m

by jsolson 11y ago

Ah. Fair enough; I misunderstood the original post. I will admit to not having paid any attention to the 401k policy while I was at Amazon other than ensuring my employee contribution maxed out each year. Also the parent's assertion that you might be vested after as little as two years seems completely off base. I didn't really care much as Amazon's match didn't amount to very much money (particularly compared to my current immediately vesting 50% match up to 100% of salary or the 18k limit). Regardless, it still feels like a good way to protect their downside losses by conditioning expected compensation payouts against probability of someone actually sticking around that long. edit: Oh, I see, if you join exactly mid year you might be able to accomplish this. Wow, what a pile of horseshit.

delecti 11y ago
> edit: Oh, I see, if you join exactly mid year you might be able to accomplish this. Wow, what a pile of horseshit. Considering they promise 3 years, I fail to see any problems with being able to do it in 2.
- jsolson 11y ago
  There's a bunch of shit that's basically pinned to calendar start date that's sort of absurd. Consider this: if you started June 3rd and I started January 3rd, your 2nd anniversary with Amazon would come with full vesting of your 401k while mine would wait another six months. We'd both have worked the same number of days, and overall the policy would be simpler to understand if vesting was pinned only to start date or hours reported on your paystub. On the flip side: I was eligible for more stock in my first annual review[0]; if I'd started two weeks later I would not have been eligible for full additional year. This despite the fact that review conversations typically happen in March/April. If I'm being uncharitable (and after having had conversations with managers about Amazon's total compensation philosophy in which raises are scaled back if the stock did well but not scaled up proportionally if the stock underperformed, I am perfectly willing to be uncharitable here), I would believe that large chunks of their compensation system are structured around an average employee tenure of roughly 18-30 months. If you assume that, it almost looks like the company has gone out of its way to minimize the amount it will actually have to pay to people while maximizing the amount it looks like they're offering. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that it feels sleazy, particularly in retrospect. [0]: Not that I actually saw any of it, because unlike my current gig where refreshes begin vesting immediately Amazon's refreshes don't start vesting until ~18 months after they're granted.
  - giaour 11y ago
    The law on cliff vesting 401k matches is that it has to happen in three years. If it were tied to your start date, then everyone would have to wait exactly three years. Since it's tied to calendar years, you only have to wait the full three if you start on January 1st. Even if you start on January 3rd, you come out a couple days ahead.
    - delecti 11y ago
      Actually the way to maximize the time it takes to vest your 401k is to start just late enough in the year that you can't accumulate 1000 hours. Around mid-late July, if I remember correctly from the math I did when trying to figure this out for myself.
      - giaour 11y ago
        Ouch. Good thing I started in June.
      - madcaptenor 11y ago
        Assuming 40-hour weeks and that you get credit for "work" on holidays (I don't know how long people are working, but if we're talking exempt employees the calculation is probably based on a 40-hour week), you'd maximize that by starting 25 weeks from the end of the year. The 175th-to-last day of the year is July 10. So, yes, mid-July is the worst possible time to start from a 401k point of view.
    - jsolson 11y ago
      I did not know that. So the options are either 100% vested at match time (which is what I have now) or a three-year cliff? In that case I suppose you could argue Amazon is just trying for the most liberal interpretation of the law; bully for them. Except of course that the other option was to ditch the cliff entirely and give people their 401k match from the get go.
      - giaour 11y ago

by jsolson 11y ago

delecti 11y ago

> edit: Oh, I see, if you join exactly mid year you might be able to accomplish this. Wow, what a pile of horseshit. Considering they promise 3 years, I fail to see any problems with being able to do it in 2.

jsolson 11y ago
There's a bunch of shit that's basically pinned to calendar start date that's sort of absurd. Consider this: if you started June 3rd and I started January 3rd, your 2nd anniversary with Amazon would come with full vesting of your 401k while mine would wait another six months. We'd both have worked the same number of days, and overall the policy would be simpler to understand if vesting was pinned only to start date or hours reported on your paystub. On the flip side: I was eligible for more stock in my first annual review[0]; if I'd started two weeks later I would not have been eligible for full additional year. This despite the fact that review conversations typically happen in March/April. If I'm being uncharitable (and after having had conversations with managers about Amazon's total compensation philosophy in which raises are scaled back if the stock did well but not scaled up proportionally if the stock underperformed, I am perfectly willing to be uncharitable here), I would believe that large chunks of their compensation system are structured around an average employee tenure of roughly 18-30 months. If you assume that, it almost looks like the company has gone out of its way to minimize the amount it will actually have to pay to people while maximizing the amount it looks like they're offering. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that it feels sleazy, particularly in retrospect. [0]: Not that I actually saw any of it, because unlike my current gig where refreshes begin vesting immediately Amazon's refreshes don't start vesting until ~18 months after they're granted.
- giaour 11y ago
  The law on cliff vesting 401k matches is that it has to happen in three years. If it were tied to your start date, then everyone would have to wait exactly three years. Since it's tied to calendar years, you only have to wait the full three if you start on January 1st. Even if you start on January 3rd, you come out a couple days ahead.
  - delecti 11y ago
    Actually the way to maximize the time it takes to vest your 401k is to start just late enough in the year that you can't accumulate 1000 hours. Around mid-late July, if I remember correctly from the math I did when trying to figure this out for myself.
    - giaour 11y ago
      Ouch. Good thing I started in June.
    - madcaptenor 11y ago
      Assuming 40-hour weeks and that you get credit for "work" on holidays (I don't know how long people are working, but if we're talking exempt employees the calculation is probably based on a 40-hour week), you'd maximize that by starting 25 weeks from the end of the year. The 175th-to-last day of the year is July 10. So, yes, mid-July is the worst possible time to start from a 401k point of view.
  - jsolson 11y ago
    I did not know that. So the options are either 100% vested at match time (which is what I have now) or a three-year cliff? In that case I suppose you could argue Amazon is just trying for the most liberal interpretation of the law; bully for them. Except of course that the other option was to ditch the cliff entirely and give people their 401k match from the get go.
    - giaour 11y ago