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Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal to a Jury of Their Co-Workers

261 points by jsoc815 8y ago

everdev 8y ago
I like the idea of breaking off a boss/employee relationship that's not working and allowing the employee to find a different position in the company rather than just terminating the employee. However, why not hire an independent mediation firm to judge? Why put current employees in a position of taking sides? It seems like the unfairness cited in the article would be nearly unavoidable as relationships and reputations between the judges, the bosses and the employee would all be put to the test.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Why not hire an independent mediator? The key word here is “hire.” Either the employee has to pay part or all of the cost, or the mediator is paid by the company. In the first case, it places a significant economic burden on the employee; in the latter, the mediator has an incentive to find for the company to obtain more repeat business.
  - eslaught 8y ago
    The mediator is absolutely working for the company. The whole point of this is to retain people who might still provide value to the company, with the idea that it's cheaper to retain an existing employee than to recruit and hire a new one. The process doesn't need to be "fair" from Amazon's perspective if it accomplishes this goal. The main goals for a mediator (again from Amazon's perspective) would be (a) to improve this process (retain more good employees, keep fewer bad ones) by bringing more objectivity and training to bear, and (b) mitigate potential PR downsides by reducing real and perceived conflicts of interest. I do think a mediator could accomplish these goals. While the conflicts of interest might not be reduced to zero, it's likely that the pool of mediators will have more degrees of separation from the managers and therefore will reduce conflicts. (Whereas the normal employees that are on the jury have to consider the very real implications of their actions if they contradict what an important manager says.)
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      This kind of thing only works if you have an employment contract and the company is willing to accept that the manager can be wrong. Meaningful investigations/mediations or tribunals tend to produce surprises, and tend to generate precedent. There’s no way a company would subject itself to that scrutiny.
    - lg 8y ago
      this sounds like it's ignoring political realities. if you find against the employee, they are gone; if you find for them, now there is a manager, maybe an important one, at your client who's pissed at you and might make noise about it to higher ups. better for business to do what the manager wants.
  - everdev 8y ago
    I'm not so sure. It sounds like in these cases the company feels it had the right to terminate but is willing to admit the bus might be wrong. I think the mediators would actually have to show that they saved the jobs of some valuable employees from getting fired to get continued business. If they have a 90+% company win rate then the experiment probably isn't productive.
- shados 8y ago
  > I like the idea of breaking off a boss/employee relationship that's not working and allowing the employee to find a different position in the company rather than just terminating the employee. Yeah, there's two sides to it though. On one hand, its very, VERY common when an employee isn't performing that the problem is incompatible team/manager (it might be incompatible with the company, but often its a localized problem). On the other hand, I've also worked at companies that -always- assumed the problem was the employee/team relationship, and critically incompetent employees would linger around and waste the time of several teams before they were canned, which was an obvious outcome to anyone who had worked with said employee. In one case of a company being way too nice, some dude I worked with took almost 2 years before being fired, when NO ONE wanted to work with him. Imagine how many things we could have done with the 150k+ a year he was paid during that whole ordeal...
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Absolutely it can just be a case of being in the wrong place and having a shit for a hr manager. one particular nasty piece of work who used to work for a large uk company I worked for comes to mind. I have tried to help some one in this situation but they did not get anyone else involved until its to late - other wise it could have been fixed.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    Yes same thing happened in my last employer with one troublesome engineer who was hard to deal with. When his manager left, none of the existing managers wanted to take him into their team. He was eventually kicked out when he verbally abused one the key technical leads.
  - rifung 8y ago
    > In one case of a company being way too nice, some dude I worked with took almost 2 years before being fired, when NO ONE wanted to work with him. Imagine how many things we could have done with the 150k+ a year he was paid during that whole ordeal... Sure but you shouldn't consider the 150k+ on its own; you should compare it against all the goood employees who would've been fired in a different system that you ended up saving. I like to think that it's better to keep one bad person than to fire good people for no reason but I admit that may be more an emotional stance than a logical one. And let me also say that by bad person I mean one who isn't technically able to do well, not one who is a jerk.
- k__ 8y ago
  In Germany we have a "Betriebsrat" (staff council?) for this. It's elected by employees and can't be fired by the employer as long as elected. They are the opposite to the members of the board. Don't know if something like that exists in the US.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    that's the worker reps on the supervisory board is it not
    - k__ 8y ago
      I don't know. I just know when people get fired, the "Betriebsrat" can save the.
      - walshemj 8y ago
        That would be the union branch reps - works councils work at a higher level.
  - lma21 8y ago
    Is there an equivalent in France? How does one who has a CDI appeal in court when he's facing a termination procedure?
    - ckarmann 8y ago
      In France there is a "Labour court" (conseil de Prud'hommes) that handle disputes around employment contract, including termination of it. The court is independent of the company, it's a public institution. There is no jury, but four elected non-professional judges, two of them represent employers, the remaining two represent employees. And if you're not happy with their decision, you can appeal to a higher administrative court, with professional judges.
    - invaliduser 8y ago
      In France the firing itself is a very strict procedure that includes a mandatory discussion between the parties. When an employer wants to fire an employee, here is what absolutly must happen for the procedure to be valid: - The employer appoints a meeting, with a formal convocation. The meeting can only happen 5 days at least after this letter (has to be a signed letter) - the employee can come to the meeting, and is often expected to, with a union representative. If there is no union representative in the company because of its size, the employer has to provide an official list of representative available for this purpose in the city. - During the meeting, the employer explains all the issues. At this point, if the employer provides the slightest hint that the firing decision is already made, the procedure is not valid anymore. - After the meeting the employer has to wait 2 days before they can notify the firing decision (or not). At this point, the employee has a termination period that can be between 1 and 3 months (often 3 months for developpers). If at any point the procedure is not valid, the firing is effective anyway, but the employee can appeal to the Prudhommes court, a special court composed of employers and union representative. The employee can not be reinstated in their job, but can get some compensation money.
- User23 8y ago
  It is interesting how the default assumption is always that the employee is at fault. There's a reason why high quality employees always consider the specific manager when evaluating a job offer. I understand why that presumption exists though, because blaming the manager is an obvious strategy for an underperforming employee to follow. Bonus points for alleging violating some protected status.
alistairSH 8y ago
Do the employees given the three options know this is coming? IE, has their manager communicated to them as part of their daily communication that there is a problem? If not, Amazon really needs to start there. If I have to fire an employee for performance problems, it should not be a surprise to them.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
783629gasd 8y ago
It seems extraordinarily generous to offer a choice of severance or a hearing in front of an impartial "jury", as alternatives to a PIP. Anyone who's been working for a while knows that when you get to a PIP, you basically have one foot out the door. Relatively few people go from PIP back to a valued, productive employee.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  I did, but that's largely because the manager who put me on the PIP was himself on a PIP, and was fired before mine was up.
  - 783629gasd 8y ago
    You're lucky. A PIP is basically HR creating a paper trail to justify your eventual termination (in case of lawsuits, etc).
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Once the PIP starts, start asking coworkers you trust if they'll provide a reference and looking for a new gig. Your chances of coming back from a PIP are non-zero, but at the same time exceedingly low. You'll expend less effort moving to another gig with a chance you'll land with a better skilled manager (assuming your manager is the problem, and not you). You might even get a salary/comp bump out of the move. This advice is more valid in our current, exceedingly tight, labor market and less so when unemployment goes up again (be prepared for a longer search, network more aggressively, and have a longer emergency fund runway).
    - jopsen 8y ago
      I wouldn't b surprised if lots of people comes back from a PIP. But I would be surprised if my co-workers were bragging about that time they survived a PIP. ie. it's likely we believe the odds to be low, because it's not something people talk about.
      - 8y ago
deckar01 8y ago
> She wasn’t invited to watch her boss’s presentation, and he got the last word. Hearing the argument of your accuser and being given time to rebut with evidence contradicting it is a critical part of a justice system.
- walshemj 8y ago
  And in the UK this would be an automatic lose in court - even if say the employee was found bang to rights. And best practice is to have an appeal stage so you can appeal the verdict to a manger completely outside of your reporting chain.
  - kevin_b_er 8y ago
    This is the United States. One of our two political parties is vehemently opposed to workers rights on the claim that it inhibits profit/greed.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      That's a complete strawman. Nobody is claiming that workers' rights should be limited so that employers can make more money. People are claiming that workers' rights should be limited to the same extent that employers' rights are limited (i.e. that either party can end the relationship at any time and without any specific reason) so as to avoid giving excess power to one party or the other.
      - prolikewhoa 8y ago
        Who does all of the work? That's right, the workers. The workers should have the excess of power in all circumstances. The only reason we have weekends and the "40" hour work week is because of workers and left wing movements. Corporations would have never let such happen, and are historically against the worker & only in favor of raking in profit at the expense of labor. Edit: point proven, HN doesn't care about labor rights and prefers rights for corporations over the actual workers who make the corporation.
Rotdhizon 8y ago
This is a really cool and refreshing idea on paper, but in reality it fails miserably. If one chooses the three nonmanager workers to be on the jury, they can lean towards the "support the working man" idealogy and strongly favor retaining worker jobs. On the other hand, managers might tend to favor corporate interests, and be more likely to reject appeals. The article mentioned that these employees who appeal can look at lists of potential jury people for them so they can select who would best sympathize with them. Employees literally get to select which bias' they want in their jury lineup. Not to mention the vast resource cost of these programs. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees, what if every single employee that was set to be fired made an appeal? How many thousands of man hours would that chew up? Lastly, and probably the most important is that lasting tension with boss figures. If an employee challenges a boss and they win, that boss is going to forever have a grudge against them. I'd think that could be fixed by if you win an appeal, you are automatically transferred under a new boss that isn't allowed to view your previous work history at the company. Again this is good in theory, but changes would need to be made for this to be an effective system. Bravo on Amazon for installing this type of plan though. As much hate as Amazon gets for running what are basically sweat shops in their warehouses(I know, I've been in them, it's soul crushing), at least they are in some small part giving employees a voice. Then again, this could be a rigged system for all we know and it's just to save face.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Well a proper grievance procedure would incentivise bosses not to be idiots and mange people properly.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > How many thousands of man hours would that chew up? Given that replacing a developer could easily cost 50k or more, even if only 10% of the appeals were successful you'd still be looking at saving a huge amount of money.
nanoscopic 8y ago
I worked at Amazon developing various portions of the core software that drives their website. Code I wrote runs billions of times per day... While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful. Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment. My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]." I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal. My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn't care. They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week. I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems. After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn't have the funds to endure that. She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon's reckless disregard for mental health. Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months. During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened. Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do. They gave me the following four choices: 1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance ) 2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired 3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me ) 4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff ) I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.
shevek_ 8y ago
* doesn't apply to warehouse workers
tonetheman 8y ago
Maybe they are trying because they are widely known as being a horrible place to work. But man that sounds like Survivor and getting voted off the island... or Lord of the flies... Just sounds weird and broken.
deltateam 8y ago
Silo'd specialized software engineers often don't have the benefit of these relationships with other employees Whether it is for nomination for employee of the month or being acquitted in a workplace tribunal the most introverted people have to go out of their way to let people know how productive and beneficial they've been, and that is a losing proposition
elicash 8y ago
I mean, I suppose this is better than no review process whatsoever. But the real solution is to just have a union, so that the fired worker has some representation. (For management workers, I favor a similar process but that would require some changes to labor law to be fully protected. You could still have a union without that, but it's not going to be one that has the same recognition.)
- cperciva 8y ago
  I would argue that a fair appeal process is much better than a process involving a union which always sides with the employee. In Canada we recently had a case where a union negotiated a glowing letter of reference and the sealing of a personnel file... for a serial killer: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/long-term-care-inquiry-elizabeth-wettlaufer-1.4717729 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/long-term-care-inquiry...
  - elicash 8y ago
    Obviously the union shouldn't have filed a grievance without investigating. Most unions wouldn't. But this adversarial system appropriately shamed the union for not investigating first and resulted in an outcome of the person being convicted. Seems quite silly to use this as an example for why those of us who are not serial killers shouldn't have unions. But I guess serial killers ruin EVERYTHING.
  - lovich 8y ago
    How can it be fair if it's set up by the company? Even if it's an "agreement" between an employee and the employer, the employer is in a much more powerful position and can force a better position. The whole point of unions is to have enough labor negotiating together than it can argue on the same footing as the company
EliRivers 8y ago
I was just reading about how horrible and exploitative Amazon is. How they deliberately hire the weak, the afraid, the vulnerable. I can understand the mindset that designs an employment and recruitment system with the purpose of being able to thoroughly abuse and exploit employees. Doesn't make it any less horrible. I no longer buy anything from Amazon. They're scum. I see well-paid employees expressing their conscience and saying they won't work on surveillance, or won't work on military projects. Where are the well-paid Amazon employees taking a stand against their own company's mistreatment of other employees? I wouldn't be surprised if we had some reading this very thread. Maybe they can tell us. I expect they just don't think about it. Take the money, try not to think about it. From elsewhere: Bezos defended Amazon in a fireside chat with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner on Tuesday evening, saying he was “very proud of our working conditions and I am very proud of our wages that we pay.” He's proud of it. He's proud of the return to the workhouse. He's proud of rolling back workplace protections. He's proud of paying a pittance. He's proud of it all. Or is he oblivious?
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Of course he's going to say he's proud of it; he's kinda obligated to. I'm willing to bet he neither knows what the day to day working conditions are, nor does he care. It does remind me of an anecdote: Early in my career, I worked for Western Digital. They had a headquarters campus in a smaller city in Orange County. When I was there, they started growing. We didn't have the parking space, and people ended up having to park pretty far away up a hill. People were grumbling quite a bit about it, and it had a negative effect on morale to not be able to find a spot in the morning or coming back from lunch. At one of the quarterly "employees ask questions of the CEO" things, someone asked what was being done about the parking problem. The response, from the person who has a reserved parking space, came, "I wasn't aware there was a parking problem."
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    When Bezos goes to Europe, people travel from other countries to join public protests against him. Hard to miss that. He knows. https://youtu.be/eD25AWW1fwE https://youtu.be/eD25AWW1fwE The protests outside his shareholder meetings might also clue him in. https://youtu.be/KQdsyO5mu1Y https://youtu.be/KQdsyO5mu1Y
RRRA 8y ago
And how anonymous is that process? It'd be a "great" way to rat out those who support people deemed unfit...
hitekker 8y ago
In the most charitable light, this is organizational cargo-cult. "What if we brought the court of employment law into Amazon? Wow, wouldn't it be great for Amazon? It'd cost less, move faster, and be more fair! Oh and the employee too, because whatever is good for Amazon is good for everyone!" It's the similar to how some school district replace superintendents with CEO's and then blush when cost-cutting and sexual harassment kick in [1]. Unthinkipng, these prganizatibs replicate the trappings and rituals of the seemingly successful without understanding why they're successful; doing so in the faith that a new world is right around the corner if they just believe hard enough. Right under the surface, of course, is our collective loss of faith in society, and thus the impetus to award public power to private entities. Handing over healthcare, our rights, our freedoms in the "hopes" that companies will govern us "better" than our elected government. From a single modern republic to multiple feudal realms: the reality of Libertarianism realized. [1] http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-sexual-abuse/index.html http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-se...
saudioger 8y ago
I've been on an actual jury for a murder trial and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I'd rather just get fired and move on.
- CGamesPlay 8y ago
  If you're asked to be on the jury for a random other employee at the company you'd rather just get fired?
  - saudioger 8y ago
    Hah no, I meant I'd rather be fired than to be on the other side of a jury. I don't like how the sausage is made.
vinceguidry 8y ago
Systems of justice are incredibly annoying, and invariably involve a lot of careful fine-tuning that goes completely out the window with every new addition. It reminds me a little about how every time a new package manager comes out, the peanut gallery all chimes in with "well why don't we just use OS packaging?" Package managers and justice systems hard-enforce legibility in a way that completely breaks the second the landscape does. You have to do the hard work of making a new one. Getting by with what you have only increases the workload on the already-busy humans. There are Debian packages for various extremely well-used Ruby gems. But somebody got motivated enough to do that work. Similarly, if you introduce the wrong system of justice into a human social regime, it creates all kinds of perverse incentives. The task of preventing bad outcomes from perverse incentives then gets compounded onto the few extremely busy people that have to juggle being cops along with their existing jobs.
refurb 8y ago
My thought is, why would you try to appeal? If you've been marked for firing, obviously management has a poor perception of you. Sure, your coworkers can vouch for you and stop the firing, but to management you're still a marked man or woman. You might still have your job, but you're probably looking at poor performance reviews and no raises for a few years. I know very few people who've ever dug themselves out of a situation like that. You'd be far better off to just leave for another company and start fresh.
- 0xcafecafe 8y ago
  Exactly. I would be happy to take my skills elsewhere rather than stick around in a place where I am not needed.
- morogop 8y ago
  A few reasons: 1) So that you're eligible for re-hire, either in the future, or when being reference checked. 2) So that you can conduct a less panicky job search 3) Because you believe the issue is a single manager, and you'll be fine once you land outside their reach.
- optimuspaul 8y ago
  depending on the market it would be in your best interest to clear your name before you leave. I'm not sure about Seattle or SV, but many of the other markets that Amazon is in are smaller in comparison and having a bad reputation at a larger employer like amazon can make it difficult to find work elsewhere. But absolutely leave and start fresh in addition to appealing.
- occams_chainsaw 8y ago
  It's a lot easier to find a new job when you already have one. Plus, you don't lose income while you search for another one.
- JimboOmega 8y ago
  You also could, it's implied, find a job elsewhere in the organization. I agree that continuing to work with a manager who wants to fire you doesn't really work for anybody.
solidsnack9000 8y ago
This is such a poor implementation of what has proven to be a very robust mechanism. Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something), they are "the accused" and "the burden of proof lies with the accuser". All the charges that are presented must be presented in such a way as to be challenged. Allowing the manager the last word -- and not allowing the employee to even be aware of what was said -- indicates that accusations are being made without being challenged. The selection of jurors -- three non-managers or one manager -- seems strange in part because it recognizes a hierarchy of people and in part because it involves such a small number of people. The validity of a jury hinges in part on a certain notion of the equality of people -- we don't have juries of 12 ordinary people or 2 senators in the United States because we don't expect that senators are "more just" than ordinary people. It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable.
- zajd 8y ago
  > It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable. The purpose of the stated policy isn't to be "more just" it's to ensure management can control the outcome.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something) Well, the employee is depriving the employer of something as well. That's why they are in this arrangement: they believe it to be mutually beneficial, and thus agree to deprive themselves of something good, in exchange for something better. The problem this system seems to attempt to solve is where the employer is not aware of what they're getting in return for being deprived of that employee's compensation.
  - workinthehead 8y ago
    > Well, the employee is depriving the employer of something as well. Given that the employer is trying to get rid of the employee, this assertion seems questionable.
    - 8y ago
throwaway0625 8y ago
There can be plenty of reason not to trust a jury of co-workers. Somebody I worked with was fired. He wasn't doing much work and seemed to devote most of his days to manipulating his image. He was not just "managing up", in fact if he were better at that maybe he could have survived longer. What he did especially well was molding perception of peers. Maybe tops ~3 people working closest with him knew he was full of shit. But in very far breadths of the organizational tree, he spread the word that he was the guy to talk to on the team, pulling all the weight. If you asked most of his colleagues to this day, they would probably tell you he was a productive to high-performing contributor, which he was not. I think this is actually how he got the job in the first place. He schmoozed far and wide in company X, then more productive employee lands a gig at company Y, where I worked, and he greased the wheels through social connection to also go there. I suspect he collected stock options at some pretty good places over the years doing this.
- andrei_says_ 8y ago
  Are you implying that he was doing anything wrong? Unless he was especially unproductive or ignorant at his job, then the schmoozing can be seen as a multiplier. At a certain level in a company, playing golf with the client is the job, as it closes the deal.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    He wasn't hired to play golf, he was hired to work.
  - throwaway0625 8y ago
    I am implying that. In the time since this story I've had a lot of time to think about the ethics of this situation. Even if he was a sleazy liar, sleazy liars are people too, and someone getting fired is drastic. But to use your terms, a multiplier on a negative quantity is more deeply negative. He was doing his job duties none at all or poorly. Other people had to clean up after his messes and lies. I created a throwaway account to tell this story because he was the most sociopathic IC I've seen in the business, and my career is not brief, I am not normally phased or automatically put off by sociopaths.
lamontcg 8y ago
This sounds surreal.
ben509 8y ago
I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea. It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice. Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial. It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on. And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.
- walshemj 8y ago
  You are I think jumping to your conceived ideas about how labor law works if labor law and precedent says that this is how it is. You have been in the army so during your time you were employed and the UMJC is a legal system is it not?
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    The employment status of a soldier is very different than an at-will employee, not to mention the differing nature of the work...
    - ben509 8y ago
      I know, we had demo day last week. Turns out it's short for "demonstration," not "demolition." :-(
  - 8y ago
kadenshep 8y ago
If only there was some sort of organization that workers could collectively be apart of and contribute to. An organization dedicated to worker's rights, an organization that would make sure whimsical decisions couldn't aversely affect people's lives because they're in the wrong class in an organization/society. I understand the comment is snarky, but it's really quite absurd in my mind that this is an actual headline, instead of it being a bad joke (which I guess it kind of is). Because it's not even your "peers." It's mainly still just upper management trying to put on a facade of peer judgement.
matchagaucho 8y ago
PIPs and firing are the path of least resistance for lazy managers. From a Covey or Drucker style of leadership... If the Manager interviewed and hired the Employee, then the default assumption is that the Manager failed to "lead" and train the Employee. If the Manager inherited the Employee (via re-org) and is cleaning house, then that's a different circumstance. But still not an excuse for lazy leadership.
dogruck 8y ago
I hope I’m never in a spot where I have to grovel for my job, via some peer review judgement, instead of leaving for a better job.
downrightmike 8y ago
This is a good way to keep people aware of the status quo and be controlled by seeing and participating in these things. To paraphase Agents of Shield "How do you keep such control over all of your slaves?" "He has them kill each other, that's what I'd do."
gwbas1c 8y ago
Seems like the process just adds politics where they aren't needed. It makes it harder to fire bad employees, and incentives bad employees to play politics on the way out. If I worked for Amazon, I'd want no part in the process. Bad situations end best when everyone cuts their losses quickly. In my experience, the best way to get rid of someone is to offer a generous severance period. In theory, the person can take a long vacation or get two paychecks for a few months.
bunkydoo 8y ago
ITS CALLED A FUCKING WORKERS UNION.
bunkydoo 8y ago
FORKITY FORK FORK FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.
c3534l 8y ago
I remember reading about this system in some business class. They're generally well-received by staff, prevent arbitrary termination, and give feedback to manager who may not know what the realities of the job are. Is Amazon's version of it any good? I don't know, but I do know there's literature on it. I can appreciate the cynicism of Amazon trying to manipulate things in their favor, but you're forgetting that this is a check on the authority of managers to empower workers. Without such a system the person would have just been fired and they would have had no recourse. It's like giving a homeless man a dollar and he goes "what, you can't spare 5?"
codeonfire 8y ago
Seriously fuck this stupid shit. When I was there this fucker in India bribed my manager for a ticket to the US on L1 Visa as our new manager. Once there his only goal was to sell as many US-based jobs to Indians in India as possible. He kept telling me I had to set up meetings with India, set up one on ones with his buddy in India. Fuck that guy. Now there is no way in hell I would subject myself to a "jury" that had assholes like that on it. Sometimes you just have to realize your manager, your team, or your company are just unfixable shit and leave.
qbaqbaqba 8y ago
Almost as you had some labour legislation...
hughlang 8y ago
The "jury of their co-workers" is a scary farce that begins with the continuous 360 feedback that is built into their current employee performance model. I have read that this is integrated into the WorkDay HR software platform, which is used for timesheets and everything else. You might have a disagreement with a co-worker, and next thing you know, you are getting live feedback, behind your back. And then after that... you are begging to not get fired. Someday, the jury and appeal process might get automated through WorkDay as well. Sounds fun! Bezos is an investor in WorkDay and Amazon uses this 360 feature. Other companies use it too. See also: https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controversy-what-is-missing-in-its-performance-management-360-feedback https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controvers...
groupthinking 8y ago
Sounds like a violation of labor law under Electromation.

261 points by jsoc815 8y ago

I like the idea of breaking off a boss/employee relationship that's not working and allowing the employee to find a different position in the company rather than just terminating the employee. However, why not hire an independent mediation firm to judge? Why put current employees in a position of taking sides? It seems like the unfairness cited in the article would be nearly unavoidable as relationships and reputations between the judges, the bosses and the employee would all be put to the test.

pmiller2 8y ago
Why not hire an independent mediator? The key word here is “hire.” Either the employee has to pay part or all of the cost, or the mediator is paid by the company. In the first case, it places a significant economic burden on the employee; in the latter, the mediator has an incentive to find for the company to obtain more repeat business.
- eslaught 8y ago
  The mediator is absolutely working for the company. The whole point of this is to retain people who might still provide value to the company, with the idea that it's cheaper to retain an existing employee than to recruit and hire a new one. The process doesn't need to be "fair" from Amazon's perspective if it accomplishes this goal. The main goals for a mediator (again from Amazon's perspective) would be (a) to improve this process (retain more good employees, keep fewer bad ones) by bringing more objectivity and training to bear, and (b) mitigate potential PR downsides by reducing real and perceived conflicts of interest. I do think a mediator could accomplish these goals. While the conflicts of interest might not be reduced to zero, it's likely that the pool of mediators will have more degrees of separation from the managers and therefore will reduce conflicts. (Whereas the normal employees that are on the jury have to consider the very real implications of their actions if they contradict what an important manager says.)
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    This kind of thing only works if you have an employment contract and the company is willing to accept that the manager can be wrong. Meaningful investigations/mediations or tribunals tend to produce surprises, and tend to generate precedent. There’s no way a company would subject itself to that scrutiny.
  - lg 8y ago
    this sounds like it's ignoring political realities. if you find against the employee, they are gone; if you find for them, now there is a manager, maybe an important one, at your client who's pissed at you and might make noise about it to higher ups. better for business to do what the manager wants.
- everdev 8y ago
  I'm not so sure. It sounds like in these cases the company feels it had the right to terminate but is willing to admit the bus might be wrong. I think the mediators would actually have to show that they saved the jobs of some valuable employees from getting fired to get continued business. If they have a 90+% company win rate then the experiment probably isn't productive.
shados 8y ago
> I like the idea of breaking off a boss/employee relationship that's not working and allowing the employee to find a different position in the company rather than just terminating the employee. Yeah, there's two sides to it though. On one hand, its very, VERY common when an employee isn't performing that the problem is incompatible team/manager (it might be incompatible with the company, but often its a localized problem). On the other hand, I've also worked at companies that -always- assumed the problem was the employee/team relationship, and critically incompetent employees would linger around and waste the time of several teams before they were canned, which was an obvious outcome to anyone who had worked with said employee. In one case of a company being way too nice, some dude I worked with took almost 2 years before being fired, when NO ONE wanted to work with him. Imagine how many things we could have done with the 150k+ a year he was paid during that whole ordeal...
- walshemj 8y ago
  Absolutely it can just be a case of being in the wrong place and having a shit for a hr manager. one particular nasty piece of work who used to work for a large uk company I worked for comes to mind. I have tried to help some one in this situation but they did not get anyone else involved until its to late - other wise it could have been fixed.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Yes same thing happened in my last employer with one troublesome engineer who was hard to deal with. When his manager left, none of the existing managers wanted to take him into their team. He was eventually kicked out when he verbally abused one the key technical leads.
- rifung 8y ago
  > In one case of a company being way too nice, some dude I worked with took almost 2 years before being fired, when NO ONE wanted to work with him. Imagine how many things we could have done with the 150k+ a year he was paid during that whole ordeal... Sure but you shouldn't consider the 150k+ on its own; you should compare it against all the goood employees who would've been fired in a different system that you ended up saving. I like to think that it's better to keep one bad person than to fire good people for no reason but I admit that may be more an emotional stance than a logical one. And let me also say that by bad person I mean one who isn't technically able to do well, not one who is a jerk.
k__ 8y ago
In Germany we have a "Betriebsrat" (staff council?) for this. It's elected by employees and can't be fired by the employer as long as elected. They are the opposite to the members of the board. Don't know if something like that exists in the US.
- walshemj 8y ago
  that's the worker reps on the supervisory board is it not
  - k__ 8y ago
    I don't know. I just know when people get fired, the "Betriebsrat" can save the.
    - walshemj 8y ago
      That would be the union branch reps - works councils work at a higher level.
- lma21 8y ago
  Is there an equivalent in France? How does one who has a CDI appeal in court when he's facing a termination procedure?
  - ckarmann 8y ago
    In France there is a "Labour court" (conseil de Prud'hommes) that handle disputes around employment contract, including termination of it. The court is independent of the company, it's a public institution. There is no jury, but four elected non-professional judges, two of them represent employers, the remaining two represent employees. And if you're not happy with their decision, you can appeal to a higher administrative court, with professional judges.
  - invaliduser 8y ago
    In France the firing itself is a very strict procedure that includes a mandatory discussion between the parties. When an employer wants to fire an employee, here is what absolutly must happen for the procedure to be valid: - The employer appoints a meeting, with a formal convocation. The meeting can only happen 5 days at least after this letter (has to be a signed letter) - the employee can come to the meeting, and is often expected to, with a union representative. If there is no union representative in the company because of its size, the employer has to provide an official list of representative available for this purpose in the city. - During the meeting, the employer explains all the issues. At this point, if the employer provides the slightest hint that the firing decision is already made, the procedure is not valid anymore. - After the meeting the employer has to wait 2 days before they can notify the firing decision (or not). At this point, the employee has a termination period that can be between 1 and 3 months (often 3 months for developpers). If at any point the procedure is not valid, the firing is effective anyway, but the employee can appeal to the Prudhommes court, a special court composed of employers and union representative. The employee can not be reinstated in their job, but can get some compensation money.
User23 8y ago
It is interesting how the default assumption is always that the employee is at fault. There's a reason why high quality employees always consider the specific manager when evaluating a job offer. I understand why that presumption exists though, because blaming the manager is an obvious strategy for an underperforming employee to follow. Bonus points for alleging violating some protected status.

alistairSH 8y ago

Do the employees given the three options know this is coming? IE, has their manager communicated to them as part of their daily communication that there is a problem? If not, Amazon really needs to start there. If I have to fire an employee for performance problems, it should not be a surprise to them.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

783629gasd 8y ago

It seems extraordinarily generous to offer a choice of severance or a hearing in front of an impartial "jury", as alternatives to a PIP. Anyone who's been working for a while knows that when you get to a PIP, you basically have one foot out the door. Relatively few people go from PIP back to a valued, productive employee.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
I did, but that's largely because the manager who put me on the PIP was himself on a PIP, and was fired before mine was up.
- 783629gasd 8y ago
  You're lucky. A PIP is basically HR creating a paper trail to justify your eventual termination (in case of lawsuits, etc).
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Once the PIP starts, start asking coworkers you trust if they'll provide a reference and looking for a new gig. Your chances of coming back from a PIP are non-zero, but at the same time exceedingly low. You'll expend less effort moving to another gig with a chance you'll land with a better skilled manager (assuming your manager is the problem, and not you). You might even get a salary/comp bump out of the move. This advice is more valid in our current, exceedingly tight, labor market and less so when unemployment goes up again (be prepared for a longer search, network more aggressively, and have a longer emergency fund runway).
  - jopsen 8y ago
    I wouldn't b surprised if lots of people comes back from a PIP. But I would be surprised if my co-workers were bragging about that time they survived a PIP. ie. it's likely we believe the odds to be low, because it's not something people talk about.
    - 8y ago

deckar01 8y ago

> She wasn’t invited to watch her boss’s presentation, and he got the last word. Hearing the argument of your accuser and being given time to rebut with evidence contradicting it is a critical part of a justice system.

walshemj 8y ago
And in the UK this would be an automatic lose in court - even if say the employee was found bang to rights. And best practice is to have an appeal stage so you can appeal the verdict to a manger completely outside of your reporting chain.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  This is the United States. One of our two political parties is vehemently opposed to workers rights on the claim that it inhibits profit/greed.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    That's a complete strawman. Nobody is claiming that workers' rights should be limited so that employers can make more money. People are claiming that workers' rights should be limited to the same extent that employers' rights are limited (i.e. that either party can end the relationship at any time and without any specific reason) so as to avoid giving excess power to one party or the other.
    - prolikewhoa 8y ago
      Who does all of the work? That's right, the workers. The workers should have the excess of power in all circumstances. The only reason we have weekends and the "40" hour work week is because of workers and left wing movements. Corporations would have never let such happen, and are historically against the worker & only in favor of raking in profit at the expense of labor. Edit: point proven, HN doesn't care about labor rights and prefers rights for corporations over the actual workers who make the corporation.

Rotdhizon 8y ago

This is a really cool and refreshing idea on paper, but in reality it fails miserably. If one chooses the three nonmanager workers to be on the jury, they can lean towards the "support the working man" idealogy and strongly favor retaining worker jobs. On the other hand, managers might tend to favor corporate interests, and be more likely to reject appeals. The article mentioned that these employees who appeal can look at lists of potential jury people for them so they can select who would best sympathize with them. Employees literally get to select which bias' they want in their jury lineup. Not to mention the vast resource cost of these programs. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees, what if every single employee that was set to be fired made an appeal? How many thousands of man hours would that chew up? Lastly, and probably the most important is that lasting tension with boss figures. If an employee challenges a boss and they win, that boss is going to forever have a grudge against them. I'd think that could be fixed by if you win an appeal, you are automatically transferred under a new boss that isn't allowed to view your previous work history at the company. Again this is good in theory, but changes would need to be made for this to be an effective system. Bravo on Amazon for installing this type of plan though. As much hate as Amazon gets for running what are basically sweat shops in their warehouses(I know, I've been in them, it's soul crushing), at least they are in some small part giving employees a voice. Then again, this could be a rigged system for all we know and it's just to save face.

walshemj 8y ago
Well a proper grievance procedure would incentivise bosses not to be idiots and mange people properly.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Alex3917 8y ago
> How many thousands of man hours would that chew up? Given that replacing a developer could easily cost 50k or more, even if only 10% of the appeals were successful you'd still be looking at saving a huge amount of money.

nanoscopic 8y ago

I worked at Amazon developing various portions of the core software that drives their website. Code I wrote runs billions of times per day... While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful. Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment. My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]." I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal. My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn't care. They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week. I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems. After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn't have the funds to endure that. She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon's reckless disregard for mental health. Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months. During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened. Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do. They gave me the following four choices: 1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance ) 2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired 3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me ) 4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff ) I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.

shevek_ 8y ago

* doesn't apply to warehouse workers

tonetheman 8y ago

Maybe they are trying because they are widely known as being a horrible place to work. But man that sounds like Survivor and getting voted off the island... or Lord of the flies... Just sounds weird and broken.

deltateam 8y ago

Silo'd specialized software engineers often don't have the benefit of these relationships with other employees Whether it is for nomination for employee of the month or being acquitted in a workplace tribunal the most introverted people have to go out of their way to let people know how productive and beneficial they've been, and that is a losing proposition

elicash 8y ago

I mean, I suppose this is better than no review process whatsoever. But the real solution is to just have a union, so that the fired worker has some representation. (For management workers, I favor a similar process but that would require some changes to labor law to be fully protected. You could still have a union without that, but it's not going to be one that has the same recognition.)

cperciva 8y ago
I would argue that a fair appeal process is much better than a process involving a union which always sides with the employee. In Canada we recently had a case where a union negotiated a glowing letter of reference and the sealing of a personnel file... for a serial killer: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/long-term-care-inquiry-elizabeth-wettlaufer-1.4717729 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/long-term-care-inquiry...
- elicash 8y ago
  Obviously the union shouldn't have filed a grievance without investigating. Most unions wouldn't. But this adversarial system appropriately shamed the union for not investigating first and resulted in an outcome of the person being convicted. Seems quite silly to use this as an example for why those of us who are not serial killers shouldn't have unions. But I guess serial killers ruin EVERYTHING.
- lovich 8y ago
  How can it be fair if it's set up by the company? Even if it's an "agreement" between an employee and the employer, the employer is in a much more powerful position and can force a better position. The whole point of unions is to have enough labor negotiating together than it can argue on the same footing as the company

EliRivers 8y ago

I was just reading about how horrible and exploitative Amazon is. How they deliberately hire the weak, the afraid, the vulnerable. I can understand the mindset that designs an employment and recruitment system with the purpose of being able to thoroughly abuse and exploit employees. Doesn't make it any less horrible. I no longer buy anything from Amazon. They're scum. I see well-paid employees expressing their conscience and saying they won't work on surveillance, or won't work on military projects. Where are the well-paid Amazon employees taking a stand against their own company's mistreatment of other employees? I wouldn't be surprised if we had some reading this very thread. Maybe they can tell us. I expect they just don't think about it. Take the money, try not to think about it. From elsewhere: Bezos defended Amazon in a fireside chat with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner on Tuesday evening, saying he was “very proud of our working conditions and I am very proud of our wages that we pay.” He's proud of it. He's proud of the return to the workhouse. He's proud of rolling back workplace protections. He's proud of paying a pittance. He's proud of it all. Or is he oblivious?

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Of course he's going to say he's proud of it; he's kinda obligated to. I'm willing to bet he neither knows what the day to day working conditions are, nor does he care. It does remind me of an anecdote: Early in my career, I worked for Western Digital. They had a headquarters campus in a smaller city in Orange County. When I was there, they started growing. We didn't have the parking space, and people ended up having to park pretty far away up a hill. People were grumbling quite a bit about it, and it had a negative effect on morale to not be able to find a spot in the morning or coming back from lunch. At one of the quarterly "employees ask questions of the CEO" things, someone asked what was being done about the parking problem. The response, from the person who has a reserved parking space, came, "I wasn't aware there was a parking problem."
- EliRivers 8y ago
  When Bezos goes to Europe, people travel from other countries to join public protests against him. Hard to miss that. He knows. https://youtu.be/eD25AWW1fwE https://youtu.be/eD25AWW1fwE The protests outside his shareholder meetings might also clue him in. https://youtu.be/KQdsyO5mu1Y https://youtu.be/KQdsyO5mu1Y

RRRA 8y ago

And how anonymous is that process? It'd be a "great" way to rat out those who support people deemed unfit...

hitekker 8y ago

In the most charitable light, this is organizational cargo-cult. "What if we brought the court of employment law into Amazon? Wow, wouldn't it be great for Amazon? It'd cost less, move faster, and be more fair! Oh and the employee too, because whatever is good for Amazon is good for everyone!" It's the similar to how some school district replace superintendents with CEO's and then blush when cost-cutting and sexual harassment kick in [1]. Unthinkipng, these prganizatibs replicate the trappings and rituals of the seemingly successful without understanding why they're successful; doing so in the faith that a new world is right around the corner if they just believe hard enough. Right under the surface, of course, is our collective loss of faith in society, and thus the impetus to award public power to private entities. Handing over healthcare, our rights, our freedoms in the "hopes" that companies will govern us "better" than our elected government. From a single modern republic to multiple feudal realms: the reality of Libertarianism realized. [1] http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-sexual-abuse/index.html http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-se...

saudioger 8y ago

I've been on an actual jury for a murder trial and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I'd rather just get fired and move on.

CGamesPlay 8y ago
If you're asked to be on the jury for a random other employee at the company you'd rather just get fired?
- saudioger 8y ago
  Hah no, I meant I'd rather be fired than to be on the other side of a jury. I don't like how the sausage is made.

vinceguidry 8y ago

Systems of justice are incredibly annoying, and invariably involve a lot of careful fine-tuning that goes completely out the window with every new addition. It reminds me a little about how every time a new package manager comes out, the peanut gallery all chimes in with "well why don't we just use OS packaging?" Package managers and justice systems hard-enforce legibility in a way that completely breaks the second the landscape does. You have to do the hard work of making a new one. Getting by with what you have only increases the workload on the already-busy humans. There are Debian packages for various extremely well-used Ruby gems. But somebody got motivated enough to do that work. Similarly, if you introduce the wrong system of justice into a human social regime, it creates all kinds of perverse incentives. The task of preventing bad outcomes from perverse incentives then gets compounded onto the few extremely busy people that have to juggle being cops along with their existing jobs.

refurb 8y ago

My thought is, why would you try to appeal? If you've been marked for firing, obviously management has a poor perception of you. Sure, your coworkers can vouch for you and stop the firing, but to management you're still a marked man or woman. You might still have your job, but you're probably looking at poor performance reviews and no raises for a few years. I know very few people who've ever dug themselves out of a situation like that. You'd be far better off to just leave for another company and start fresh.

0xcafecafe 8y ago
Exactly. I would be happy to take my skills elsewhere rather than stick around in a place where I am not needed.
morogop 8y ago
A few reasons: 1) So that you're eligible for re-hire, either in the future, or when being reference checked. 2) So that you can conduct a less panicky job search 3) Because you believe the issue is a single manager, and you'll be fine once you land outside their reach.
optimuspaul 8y ago
depending on the market it would be in your best interest to clear your name before you leave. I'm not sure about Seattle or SV, but many of the other markets that Amazon is in are smaller in comparison and having a bad reputation at a larger employer like amazon can make it difficult to find work elsewhere. But absolutely leave and start fresh in addition to appealing.
occams_chainsaw 8y ago
It's a lot easier to find a new job when you already have one. Plus, you don't lose income while you search for another one.
JimboOmega 8y ago
You also could, it's implied, find a job elsewhere in the organization. I agree that continuing to work with a manager who wants to fire you doesn't really work for anybody.

solidsnack9000 8y ago

This is such a poor implementation of what has proven to be a very robust mechanism. Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something), they are "the accused" and "the burden of proof lies with the accuser". All the charges that are presented must be presented in such a way as to be challenged. Allowing the manager the last word -- and not allowing the employee to even be aware of what was said -- indicates that accusations are being made without being challenged. The selection of jurors -- three non-managers or one manager -- seems strange in part because it recognizes a hierarchy of people and in part because it involves such a small number of people. The validity of a jury hinges in part on a certain notion of the equality of people -- we don't have juries of 12 ordinary people or 2 senators in the United States because we don't expect that senators are "more just" than ordinary people. It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable.

zajd 8y ago
> It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable. The purpose of the stated policy isn't to be "more just" it's to ensure management can control the outcome.
microcolonel 8y ago
> Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something) Well, the employee is depriving the employer of something as well. That's why they are in this arrangement: they believe it to be mutually beneficial, and thus agree to deprive themselves of something good, in exchange for something better. The problem this system seems to attempt to solve is where the employer is not aware of what they're getting in return for being deprived of that employee's compensation.
- workinthehead 8y ago
  > Well, the employee is depriving the employer of something as well. Given that the employer is trying to get rid of the employee, this assertion seems questionable.
  - 8y ago

throwaway0625 8y ago

There can be plenty of reason not to trust a jury of co-workers. Somebody I worked with was fired. He wasn't doing much work and seemed to devote most of his days to manipulating his image. He was not just "managing up", in fact if he were better at that maybe he could have survived longer. What he did especially well was molding perception of peers. Maybe tops ~3 people working closest with him knew he was full of shit. But in very far breadths of the organizational tree, he spread the word that he was the guy to talk to on the team, pulling all the weight. If you asked most of his colleagues to this day, they would probably tell you he was a productive to high-performing contributor, which he was not. I think this is actually how he got the job in the first place. He schmoozed far and wide in company X, then more productive employee lands a gig at company Y, where I worked, and he greased the wheels through social connection to also go there. I suspect he collected stock options at some pretty good places over the years doing this.

andrei_says_ 8y ago
Are you implying that he was doing anything wrong? Unless he was especially unproductive or ignorant at his job, then the schmoozing can be seen as a multiplier. At a certain level in a company, playing golf with the client is the job, as it closes the deal.
- noobermin 8y ago
  He wasn't hired to play golf, he was hired to work.
- throwaway0625 8y ago
  I am implying that. In the time since this story I've had a lot of time to think about the ethics of this situation. Even if he was a sleazy liar, sleazy liars are people too, and someone getting fired is drastic. But to use your terms, a multiplier on a negative quantity is more deeply negative. He was doing his job duties none at all or poorly. Other people had to clean up after his messes and lies. I created a throwaway account to tell this story because he was the most sociopathic IC I've seen in the business, and my career is not brief, I am not normally phased or automatically put off by sociopaths.

lamontcg 8y ago

This sounds surreal.

ben509 8y ago

I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea. It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice. Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial. It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on. And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.

walshemj 8y ago
You are I think jumping to your conceived ideas about how labor law works if labor law and precedent says that this is how it is. You have been in the army so during your time you were employed and the UMJC is a legal system is it not?
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  The employment status of a soldier is very different than an at-will employee, not to mention the differing nature of the work...
  - ben509 8y ago
    I know, we had demo day last week. Turns out it's short for "demonstration," not "demolition." :-(
- 8y ago

kadenshep 8y ago

If only there was some sort of organization that workers could collectively be apart of and contribute to. An organization dedicated to worker's rights, an organization that would make sure whimsical decisions couldn't aversely affect people's lives because they're in the wrong class in an organization/society. I understand the comment is snarky, but it's really quite absurd in my mind that this is an actual headline, instead of it being a bad joke (which I guess it kind of is). Because it's not even your "peers." It's mainly still just upper management trying to put on a facade of peer judgement.

matchagaucho 8y ago

PIPs and firing are the path of least resistance for lazy managers. From a Covey or Drucker style of leadership... If the Manager interviewed and hired the Employee, then the default assumption is that the Manager failed to "lead" and train the Employee. If the Manager inherited the Employee (via re-org) and is cleaning house, then that's a different circumstance. But still not an excuse for lazy leadership.

dogruck 8y ago

I hope I’m never in a spot where I have to grovel for my job, via some peer review judgement, instead of leaving for a better job.

downrightmike 8y ago

This is a good way to keep people aware of the status quo and be controlled by seeing and participating in these things. To paraphase Agents of Shield "How do you keep such control over all of your slaves?" "He has them kill each other, that's what I'd do."

gwbas1c 8y ago

Seems like the process just adds politics where they aren't needed. It makes it harder to fire bad employees, and incentives bad employees to play politics on the way out. If I worked for Amazon, I'd want no part in the process. Bad situations end best when everyone cuts their losses quickly. In my experience, the best way to get rid of someone is to offer a generous severance period. In theory, the person can take a long vacation or get two paychecks for a few months.

bunkydoo 8y ago

ITS CALLED A FUCKING WORKERS UNION.

bunkydoo 8y ago

FORKITY FORK FORK FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

c3534l 8y ago

I remember reading about this system in some business class. They're generally well-received by staff, prevent arbitrary termination, and give feedback to manager who may not know what the realities of the job are. Is Amazon's version of it any good? I don't know, but I do know there's literature on it. I can appreciate the cynicism of Amazon trying to manipulate things in their favor, but you're forgetting that this is a check on the authority of managers to empower workers. Without such a system the person would have just been fired and they would have had no recourse. It's like giving a homeless man a dollar and he goes "what, you can't spare 5?"

codeonfire 8y ago

Seriously fuck this stupid shit. When I was there this fucker in India bribed my manager for a ticket to the US on L1 Visa as our new manager. Once there his only goal was to sell as many US-based jobs to Indians in India as possible. He kept telling me I had to set up meetings with India, set up one on ones with his buddy in India. Fuck that guy. Now there is no way in hell I would subject myself to a "jury" that had assholes like that on it. Sometimes you just have to realize your manager, your team, or your company are just unfixable shit and leave.

qbaqbaqba 8y ago

Almost as you had some labour legislation...

hughlang 8y ago

The "jury of their co-workers" is a scary farce that begins with the continuous 360 feedback that is built into their current employee performance model. I have read that this is integrated into the WorkDay HR software platform, which is used for timesheets and everything else. You might have a disagreement with a co-worker, and next thing you know, you are getting live feedback, behind your back. And then after that... you are begging to not get fired. Someday, the jury and appeal process might get automated through WorkDay as well. Sounds fun! Bezos is an investor in WorkDay and Amazon uses this 360 feature. Other companies use it too. See also: https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controversy-what-is-missing-in-its-performance-management-360-feedback https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controvers...

groupthinking 8y ago

Sounds like a violation of labor law under Electromation.