5 ms·

> The same Times investigation reported the company “intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers,” according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR V

> The same Times investigation reported the company “intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers,” according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR Vice President. It’s not just for hourly workers. I was actively coached on holding promotions as a carrot. My leadership team would commit to unrealistic dates, taking input and estimates from dev teams but hand wave it. Amazon applies pressure on L7 and L6 software development managers to deliver. They in turn apply pressure to their engineering teams. We had specific projects where we easily burned out dozens of engineers. They all left within a 1-2 month window of each other. I can’t tell you how many SDEs were promised that getting some project delivered is key to their promotion. These people would kill themselves working every night, every weekend, coding, writing documents, and so on. They’d get very little in return if anything. I saw several successful launches, where specific promotions were held back because of nit picks on some engineering decision, which the whole group agreed on, including Principals and Sr. Principal engineers. It’s just a sweat shop. And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country.

golly_ned 4y ago
Further, about a quarter of workers are annotated in Ivy as "Do Not Promote." They don't know who they are. I don't know why they get put on that list.
HyperSane 4y ago
What an incredibly stupid way to run a company.
- ozzythecat 4y ago
  It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation, you’ve won the lottery. You make big promises to employees, maybe give a carrot to a very select few. Everyone else will either accept the long hours and grueling culture or they’ll leave, and if they leave, they’ll go before their RSU compensation vests. So the other thing you do is weigh compensation heavily on RSUs instead of salary. If you leave before the 4 year vest, you get massively screwed and walk away with a small fraction, since vests don’t really kick in until years 3 and 4. Now here’s the kicker. If the company does well and the value of your RSUs to up, you get nothing extra. You can get promoted and if your existing RSUs are putting you near or at the bottom of the next compensation band, you take more responsibility but without any meaningful compensation increase. Now if the company does poorly, you’ll get extra RSUs, in 1.5 to 2 years out. You can hang around for that carrot, but they’ll work you like a machine. And it’s not just the labor. It’s the gaslighting and sociopathic behavior - “you’re so great at X, but you really didn’t do a, b, and c. You’re really just being your own bottleneck. Oh you’re working extra hours? Your fault for not scaling yourself better.”
  - sparker72678 4y ago
    > If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation Everyone I know who’s worked for Amazon has said the money was great but everything else absolutely sucked. And they all held out doing whatever they had to in order to get by until they vested, and we’re instantly out. I don’t think Amazon has a good reputation.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      Amazon has millions of employees. At this point, if you burn out too many you start running out of people to burn out.
      - sneak 4y ago
        1.4 million, and the vast majority of those are low-skill, low-wage employees who are in no way related to the situations being discussed in this thread.
        ROTMetro 4y ago
        When I was at the halfway house out of prison, not 1 person went to work at Amazon's warehouse. We went to less pay sorting human waste at the recycling plant in 120 heat before that job, because everyone knows how bad it is. Good luck keeping your labour requirements met Amazon.
  - shafyy 4y ago
    > It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. It's genius if you don't have a shred of ethics left in your bones.
    - sneak 4y ago
      It's ethical too, because the terms of the deal are given to the employee up front, and if they're the kind of person who can do SWE at Amazon, it's nowhere near their only job option. Nobody forces them to take it, and they're not hurting for jobs. People opt in to this. They choose it over all of their other options because they believe it to be better than their other choices.
barbazoo 4y ago
This sounds so sad.
- junofan 4y ago
  The levels stuff is so silly. Like Jeff Bezos (or Mark Zuckerberg, or Larry Page, or Steve Jobs, or…) give a shit.
kappuchino 4y ago
Reminds me of a memorable quote from "halt and catch fire" that changed my workplace-attitude forever: “I’m so sick of hearing about the future” “What is that?” “The future is just another crappy version of the present. It’s some … it’s some bribe people offer you to make you do what they want instead of what you want.” It stopped working (mostly overtime) on promises that were impossible to keep. In return I got more sleep, social life and very recently a different job.
- illwrks 4y ago
  Great show!!
satellites 4y ago
> And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country. This matches what I saw at Nike. Though it was a bit less extreme, it was the same dynamic. Indian-born workers got paid half what the American-born workers did for the same SWE jobs. And Indian workers couldn’t complain or push back against unrealistic expectations because getting fired meant getting deported. It’s a captive, exploitable labor force. It’s really messed up.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Same with Walmart
- mayankkaizen 4y ago
  Dozens of my Indian friends who work in WITCH companies in overseas locations are actually quite happy with their salaries. They are dying to work in overseas projects. Guess they are more than happy being a part of captive, exploitable force.
  - fire 4y ago
    What does WITCH stand for here? Haven't seen that acronym before
    - zeristor 4y ago
      The first company that came to mind was Wipro, which led me to this: W- Wipro I- Infosys T- TCS C- Cognizant H- HCL A- Accenture India. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        Out of that list, working horrible hours at Amazon looks preferable.
    - deleted 4y ago
pjc50 4y ago
> We had specific projects where we easily burned out dozens of engineers "Amazon" is named after the rainforest, and like the rainforest, developers are an infinite resource that you can burn down forever and there will never be any consequences .. until somehow you run out. Really the only solution to this is for people to withdraw their labour - not just unionization but refusing to work for them in the first place.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  I straight up refuse to do phone interviews with them and force them to move me directly to an onsite (which I won't study for) just so that I can waste their engineers time and maybe have a tiny chance of stroking my ego by getting a FAANG offer. No FAANG offer yet, but by my calculations, Amazon has wasted 5 digit sums on assesing me. Bezos made it personal with how he treated my partner while they worked for him, so I'll have my petty revenge one way or another...
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I sympathise, but wasting 5 digits of Bezos' paper net worth, is like someone trying to take revenge on most people here by a dime. "But for me, it was Tuesday", as the trope is called.
edwnj 4y ago
lol this is hilarious. We are talking about the highest paid people in the world here.. "sweat shop"
- woleium 4y ago
  Just because it's well paid doesn't mean it's not greuling work.
  - edwnj 4y ago
    There is a difference between working hard and getting paid exceptionally well for it verses borderline slave labor. Comparing one of the most sought out, well paid, safe, in demand jobs in THE WORLD to being in a sweatshop is asinine and extremely arrogant.
ctvo 4y ago
> It’s just a sweat shop. Amazon engineer salaries are in the 90th+ percentile in the tech industry -- let's not bother comparing them to the typical American's income. They have almost unlimited mobility in their industry: They can find a job elsewhere anytime they want. I remember you mentioning elsewhere that in 10 years of working at Amazon you're now financially independent. This isn't the outcome you usually see in a sweat shop. I don't disagree that they have a culture of treating employees as expendable and are a harder place to work for than some other big tech companies but at some point a little perspective on your own privilege is healthy.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Amazon engineer salaries are in the 90th+ percentile in the tech industry FANG engineers are typically in the 99th percentile of tech excellence. Amazon engineers are not well paid when compared to professionals of the same league. Amazon SDE1s in Austin, Texas have a salary of around $120k/year and new hires have a total compensation package of around $160k/year. In Europe salary ranges for the same role go from €80k/year in northern countries and €40k/year in southern European countries. Check Glassdoor. We're discussing positions and professionals which compete in a global stage. Amazon is far from well paid for this sort of position. It's one of the key factors why Amazon SDEs tend to bail out after 2 or 3 years. They are smart enough to not bother with high stress, low-paying jobs .
  - ctvo 4y ago
    > Amazon is far from well paid for this sort of position. It's one of the key factors why Amazon SDEs tend to bail out after 2 or 3 years. They are smart enough to not bother with high stress, low-paying jobs . https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software... Amazon is middle of the pack for big tech in total compensation. We don't need to speculate or speak in hyperbole. They certainly are not a "low-paying" job. The OP didn't stay in a low-paying job for 10 years and certainly didn't gain financial independence selling their Amazon stock because it was a low-paying job.
atkailash 4y ago
bvoq 4y ago
Same shit happening at UK based finance firms. More than half of the employees are visa slaves.
mabbo 4y ago
> according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR Vice President. That isn't a nobody. He was a major HR guy for Amazon for over 15 years. I knew his name in passing when I was working there, and met his daughter who was a rising star at the warehouse in Phoenix. Wild to hear him speaking out against Amazon when he honestly built a lot of the system.
birdyrooster 4y ago
Funny, I find that PIP makes me work my ass off and not the other way around.

golly_ned 4y ago

Further, about a quarter of workers are annotated in Ivy as "Do Not Promote." They don't know who they are. I don't know why they get put on that list.

HyperSane 4y ago

What an incredibly stupid way to run a company.

ozzythecat 4y ago
It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation, you’ve won the lottery. You make big promises to employees, maybe give a carrot to a very select few. Everyone else will either accept the long hours and grueling culture or they’ll leave, and if they leave, they’ll go before their RSU compensation vests. So the other thing you do is weigh compensation heavily on RSUs instead of salary. If you leave before the 4 year vest, you get massively screwed and walk away with a small fraction, since vests don’t really kick in until years 3 and 4. Now here’s the kicker. If the company does well and the value of your RSUs to up, you get nothing extra. You can get promoted and if your existing RSUs are putting you near or at the bottom of the next compensation band, you take more responsibility but without any meaningful compensation increase. Now if the company does poorly, you’ll get extra RSUs, in 1.5 to 2 years out. You can hang around for that carrot, but they’ll work you like a machine. And it’s not just the labor. It’s the gaslighting and sociopathic behavior - “you’re so great at X, but you really didn’t do a, b, and c. You’re really just being your own bottleneck. Oh you’re working extra hours? Your fault for not scaling yourself better.”
- sparker72678 4y ago
  > If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation Everyone I know who’s worked for Amazon has said the money was great but everything else absolutely sucked. And they all held out doing whatever they had to in order to get by until they vested, and we’re instantly out. I don’t think Amazon has a good reputation.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    Amazon has millions of employees. At this point, if you burn out too many you start running out of people to burn out.
    - sneak 4y ago
      1.4 million, and the vast majority of those are low-skill, low-wage employees who are in no way related to the situations being discussed in this thread.
      - ROTMetro 4y ago
        When I was at the halfway house out of prison, not 1 person went to work at Amazon's warehouse. We went to less pay sorting human waste at the recycling plant in 120 heat before that job, because everyone knows how bad it is. Good luck keeping your labour requirements met Amazon.
- shafyy 4y ago
  > It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. It's genius if you don't have a shred of ethics left in your bones.
  - sneak 4y ago
    It's ethical too, because the terms of the deal are given to the employee up front, and if they're the kind of person who can do SWE at Amazon, it's nowhere near their only job option. Nobody forces them to take it, and they're not hurting for jobs. People opt in to this. They choose it over all of their other options because they believe it to be better than their other choices.

barbazoo 4y ago

This sounds so sad.

junofan 4y ago
The levels stuff is so silly. Like Jeff Bezos (or Mark Zuckerberg, or Larry Page, or Steve Jobs, or…) give a shit.

kappuchino 4y ago

Reminds me of a memorable quote from "halt and catch fire" that changed my workplace-attitude forever: “I’m so sick of hearing about the future” “What is that?” “The future is just another crappy version of the present. It’s some … it’s some bribe people offer you to make you do what they want instead of what you want.” It stopped working (mostly overtime) on promises that were impossible to keep. In return I got more sleep, social life and very recently a different job.

illwrks 4y ago
Great show!!

satellites 4y ago

> And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country. This matches what I saw at Nike. Though it was a bit less extreme, it was the same dynamic. Indian-born workers got paid half what the American-born workers did for the same SWE jobs. And Indian workers couldn’t complain or push back against unrealistic expectations because getting fired meant getting deported. It’s a captive, exploitable labor force. It’s really messed up.

Ancalagon 4y ago
Same with Walmart
mayankkaizen 4y ago
Dozens of my Indian friends who work in WITCH companies in overseas locations are actually quite happy with their salaries. They are dying to work in overseas projects. Guess they are more than happy being a part of captive, exploitable force.
- fire 4y ago
  What does WITCH stand for here? Haven't seen that acronym before
  - zeristor 4y ago
    The first company that came to mind was Wipro, which led me to this: W- Wipro I- Infosys T- TCS C- Cognizant H- HCL A- Accenture India. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Out of that list, working horrible hours at Amazon looks preferable.
  - deleted 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

> We had specific projects where we easily burned out dozens of engineers "Amazon" is named after the rainforest, and like the rainforest, developers are an infinite resource that you can burn down forever and there will never be any consequences .. until somehow you run out. Really the only solution to this is for people to withdraw their labour - not just unionization but refusing to work for them in the first place.

Der_Einzige 4y ago
I straight up refuse to do phone interviews with them and force them to move me directly to an onsite (which I won't study for) just so that I can waste their engineers time and maybe have a tiny chance of stroking my ego by getting a FAANG offer. No FAANG offer yet, but by my calculations, Amazon has wasted 5 digit sums on assesing me. Bezos made it personal with how he treated my partner while they worked for him, so I'll have my petty revenge one way or another...
- ben_w 4y ago
  I sympathise, but wasting 5 digits of Bezos' paper net worth, is like someone trying to take revenge on most people here by a dime. "But for me, it was Tuesday", as the trope is called.

edwnj 4y ago

lol this is hilarious. We are talking about the highest paid people in the world here.. "sweat shop"

woleium 4y ago
Just because it's well paid doesn't mean it's not greuling work.
- edwnj 4y ago
  There is a difference between working hard and getting paid exceptionally well for it verses borderline slave labor. Comparing one of the most sought out, well paid, safe, in demand jobs in THE WORLD to being in a sweatshop is asinine and extremely arrogant.

ctvo 4y ago

> It’s just a sweat shop. Amazon engineer salaries are in the 90th+ percentile in the tech industry -- let's not bother comparing them to the typical American's income. They have almost unlimited mobility in their industry: They can find a job elsewhere anytime they want. I remember you mentioning elsewhere that in 10 years of working at Amazon you're now financially independent. This isn't the outcome you usually see in a sweat shop. I don't disagree that they have a culture of treating employees as expendable and are a harder place to work for than some other big tech companies but at some point a little perspective on your own privilege is healthy.

arinlen 4y ago
> Amazon engineer salaries are in the 90th+ percentile in the tech industry FANG engineers are typically in the 99th percentile of tech excellence. Amazon engineers are not well paid when compared to professionals of the same league. Amazon SDE1s in Austin, Texas have a salary of around $120k/year and new hires have a total compensation package of around $160k/year. In Europe salary ranges for the same role go from €80k/year in northern countries and €40k/year in southern European countries. Check Glassdoor. We're discussing positions and professionals which compete in a global stage. Amazon is far from well paid for this sort of position. It's one of the key factors why Amazon SDEs tend to bail out after 2 or 3 years. They are smart enough to not bother with high stress, low-paying jobs .
- ctvo 4y ago
  > Amazon is far from well paid for this sort of position. It's one of the key factors why Amazon SDEs tend to bail out after 2 or 3 years. They are smart enough to not bother with high stress, low-paying jobs . https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software-engineer https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software... Amazon is middle of the pack for big tech in total compensation. We don't need to speculate or speak in hyperbole. They certainly are not a "low-paying" job. The OP didn't stay in a low-paying job for 10 years and certainly didn't gain financial independence selling their Amazon stock because it was a low-paying job.

atkailash 4y ago

bvoq 4y ago

Same shit happening at UK based finance firms. More than half of the employees are visa slaves.

mabbo 4y ago

> according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR Vice President. That isn't a nobody. He was a major HR guy for Amazon for over 15 years. I knew his name in passing when I was working there, and met his daughter who was a rising star at the warehouse in Phoenix. Wild to hear him speaking out against Amazon when he honestly built a lot of the system.

birdyrooster 4y ago

Funny, I find that PIP makes me work my ass off and not the other way around.