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To make a sensationalist story a little more educational and useful for our HN discussions: Aside from the not-feel-good story, my god if there's a case for wa

To make a sensationalist story a little more educational and useful for our HN discussions: Aside from the not-feel-good story, my god if there's a case for wanting to get all the stats when you attribute a cause to a problem, this illustrates it. (before you jump to the conclusion that Amazon does this out of spite or purposefully, which of course it might -- and unless you happen to get your kicks from overreacting to stories on the internet/Reddit) With tens of thousands of workers recently hired, and probably a good number fired, I'm sure you will find a distribution of people who were fired 2, 3, 4, etc. any number of days before some noteworthy date in their pay schedule. This of course happens to be a case where it was dramatically close. Get enough people in a set and you will find all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant coincidences. I'm guessing there could be 10x the number of people outraged if you made the criterion: fired 1 week before bonus. How about people who died a day before their birthday, or even minutes before? Cut a sample a certain way and you're sure to find the oddest case. How about the person who lucked out and got the bonus and quit the next day? Now, as I said, maybe Amazon did it deliberately out of spite, to save $3000. Who knows. But I'm just saying it's not inconsistent with random HR behavior, and if you want to make a claim of deliberate malice with any responsibility you'd better study the matter more carefully than citing one example. I'm not jumping on the Reddit antiwork bandwagon just because of this stat. Aside from that, what does this story incentivize Amazon to do? Pretty much fire someone earlier so that they won't be accused of stuff like this.

oceanplexian 5y ago
As someone who may to may not have worked uh, somewhere like this, and observed decisions like this, they absolutely, positively don’t give a rat’s behind about losing $3,000, especially considering the money they burn in the bonfire of bad ideas. The real problem is a manager or leader doing this behavior out of spite, or a leader who really doesn’t understand the business doing it to naively prove his thriftiness to some other boneheaded leader in an act that ultimately has zero value to the company. So IMHO, blame the mid-level leadership, not the corporation.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Yeah, maybe if that isn't a whole heaping load of conjecture injected into a story you made in your head. Otherwise, you're getting mad at imaginary situations.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  If the corporation gave more money to manager fo action reducing budget it could be
roenxi 5y ago
Yes - also, if there is a break-in period for a sign on bonus or whatever it is called then what exactly are the problems here? The reason the bonus is delayed from the start date would be to enable situations like this and everyone signing up knows it. If this dude was an unsatisfactory employee and Amazon didn't tell them then that would be troubling. But they probably did, internet stories tend to filter out that sort of detail. There isn't enough here to get worked up about.
aldebran 5y ago
The title isn’t sensationalized - it’s literally factual. Sounds like a power trippy middle manager more than a corp “evil plan”.
- oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
  They did not say that the title is sensationalized.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>what does this story incentivize Amazon to do As someone else said, $3000 isn't even a rounding error on the level of amazon. However, I wouldn't put it past middle management to do this. But that's hearsay given the info. Either way I think HR dropped the ball here. Getting fired/laid off this close to a significant bonus is such an easy case with the Department of Labor. It honestly wastes more of Amazon's infinite funds than just accepting an invoice and giving the employee the bonus.

oceanplexian 5y ago

As someone who may to may not have worked uh, somewhere like this, and observed decisions like this, they absolutely, positively don’t give a rat’s behind about losing $3,000, especially considering the money they burn in the bonfire of bad ideas. The real problem is a manager or leader doing this behavior out of spite, or a leader who really doesn’t understand the business doing it to naively prove his thriftiness to some other boneheaded leader in an act that ultimately has zero value to the company. So IMHO, blame the mid-level leadership, not the corporation.

iratewizard 5y ago
Yeah, maybe if that isn't a whole heaping load of conjecture injected into a story you made in your head. Otherwise, you're getting mad at imaginary situations.
ipaddr 5y ago
If the corporation gave more money to manager fo action reducing budget it could be

roenxi 5y ago

Yes - also, if there is a break-in period for a sign on bonus or whatever it is called then what exactly are the problems here? The reason the bonus is delayed from the start date would be to enable situations like this and everyone signing up knows it. If this dude was an unsatisfactory employee and Amazon didn't tell them then that would be troubling. But they probably did, internet stories tend to filter out that sort of detail. There isn't enough here to get worked up about.

aldebran 5y ago

The title isn’t sensationalized - it’s literally factual. Sounds like a power trippy middle manager more than a corp “evil plan”.

oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
They did not say that the title is sensationalized.

johnnyanmac 5y ago

>what does this story incentivize Amazon to do As someone else said, $3000 isn't even a rounding error on the level of amazon. However, I wouldn't put it past middle management to do this. But that's hearsay given the info. Either way I think HR dropped the ball here. Getting fired/laid off this close to a significant bonus is such an easy case with the Department of Labor. It honestly wastes more of Amazon's infinite funds than just accepting an invoice and giving the employee the bonus.