I agree, but I'm assuming it's an amount that's big enough that Amazon cares enough to piss off every affected employee. If it was a 2.99% raise instead of 3%,

I agree, but I'm assuming it's an amount that's big enough that Amazon cares enough to piss off every affected employee. If it was a 2.99% raise instead of 3%, they'd be better off just letting the employees have the money. I'm also assuming that the proper amount is what the employee would have expected and been happy with if the mistake hadn't happened, which softens the blow considerably. So if they expected 5% and got 6%, going back to 5% is a morale-dampener, but not fatal. OTOH, tech employees don't really need much excuse to change jobs any more, so literally any amount is a huge risk for your best employees.