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> But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. So

> But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term, and some hyper-rational VP repurposes that reward as a kind of tenure cliff forcing people out just ahead of it? All the pieces are in the article, just waiting for folks to put them together. If you're someone considering moving to a company that aggressively uses "performance management" like this ... the target of this system is you, not because you're bad at you're job but because you're new. The human toll of people in positions of trust essentially gaslighting their colleagues about their performance to confiscate special comp or satisfy the gods of analytics.... Deeply misanthropic.

miningape 3y ago
I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  Unless you're a director you will never come even close to $100K of stock vesting in a single event, and directors are not subject to PIPs. So that's a nice theory you have here but it doesn't work in practice.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    So the person interviewed is lying then, you claim? Inflating the number? > I got to the point where they offered me a job, and I was going to quit. But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. > If you walked away during the Pivot or anytime before you had your investment before it was there for you, you would lose it all. And I'm not talking a little bit of money. I'm talking: I had a couple hundred thousand dollars coming to me. > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money is in my account. That next day, I called my manager and I told them I was resigning.
    - iLoveOncall 3y ago
      No, she isn't necessarily lying but just making it seem as if she would have received $200K over a single vest while it would have likely happened over at least 2 years and 4 vests. I have £110K coming up if I look on the stock portal, but it's over the next two years, so 25K at a time, and I don't consider it as money I already have.
      - capableweb 3y ago
        Well, it seems what the interviewed person is saying is that "Day X I didn't have the money in my bank account. I waited for Day Y, and now I have \"couple hundred thousand dollars\" in my bank account", which sounds like it didn't happen over 2 years and 4 vesting occasions. But maybe it's just worded weird.
      - jeremiahbuckley 3y ago
        Good eye, and accurate original observation.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        You’re just out of touch with how much people can make in the US. An IC software dev L6 offer I reviewed for a colleague 4 years ago was TC comprised of 180k salary and a little over $1 million of stock with a 4 year vest that Amazon backloads so you get most in the last 2 years. $200k in a single 6 month vest cycle is definitely possible in that offer depending on timing of amzn stock. This article was from someone who had been at Amazon 6 years and who was managing people. They were HR, which obviously doesn’t comp like software, but once you’re managing a team the stock may be similar.
        iLoveOncall 3y ago
        I'm very aware with how much people can make per year in the US. A principal engineer that is tenured will be on around 550K a year. An HR person that administers PIPs is at most L6 and unlikely to be on more than 250K a year. 6 years in Amazon means a salary was low, not that it was high. Managing people doesn't mean anything, you can earn less than $100K TC in Seattle and be managing people. Additionally, compensation has been reworked a lot 2 years ago to increase a lot the cap on salary and reduce a stocks.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    Look at how their boss responded. If it wasn’t about the equity, why would they be so mad? The point of the PIP is generally to remove the employee.
    - pierat 3y ago
      No, a PIP is about creating a culture of fear, so that management can PIP anybody with no or manufactured reasons, and control workforce with loss of job. And it has the double advantage of 'id you leave under PIP, you lose a bunch of money'. It's 100% about culture of fear and control.
    - cpitman 3y ago
      Maybe it was that the manager was being pressured to PIP a certain percentage of people, and instead pushed back really hard to retain this person because they wanted to retain them instead. Before spending their political capital, they asked the employee if they were committed to the long haul. In the end, they went to bat for the author and then ended up in the same place. They could have just PIP'd them with a lot less effort. The article doesn't make the reason clear, but this seems more likely to me than vesting stock.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        If that were the case you wouldn’t even mention it to the person or strip them of their direct reports
        mattgreenrocks 3y ago
        Yeah. I read that as the manager taking away their ability to beat the PIP under the guise of “focus.”
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I was offered a position with near-enough 100k per quarter. With amazon, a quarter is the financial decision making resolution. And, mine was a manager position. So, yes, I did start to learn about this pip nonsense, and was asked to identify the low performers from a team that I inherited. The team was full of bright, diligent, capable workers making real impact on our project. It was foolish. But it happens. You legally need precedent to fire someone. Nowadays you even legally need precedent to not give someone the average raise. This kind of "precedent caching" is a natural outcome of a tightening budget and a desire to filter through workers to find the best of the best. I hate it. I'll never manage again.
    - throwawayamazon 3y ago
      (obvious throwaway account) I had a similar experience in Amazon, ngl the thing about "precendent caching" is real. People have to be put on PIP regardless of performance so management set crazy standards that people will fail.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Amazon has a weird vesting schedule (40% in the third and fourth year IIRC) and it has gone up quite a lot over the last few years. It also appears to have yearly vests. This doesn't seem implausible under those conditions.
    - jaktet 3y ago
      They used to have a salary cap of $165k until 1.5 years ago, I’m not sure what the cap is now but it’s significantly higher. I’m aware of a newly hired SDE2 (~2 years ago) that was hired with a TC of $305k. While the breakdown of compensation for an SDE1 and SDE2 might differ, an SDE1 breakdown is 5% vest after 1st year with 95% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. 15% vest after 2nd year with 85% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. Then after years 3 and 4 it was 40% vest + 60% from salary. It’s a little less straightforward than this because they build in an expected ~15% stock growth price YoY as part of your expected TC. So assuming SDE2 payout structure is same as SDE1, their compensation might look like this for a new hire where the strike price is $100 for AMZN at their date of hire. Y1: 165K salary, 15K stock (15 RSU), $120K bonus. Y2: 165K salary, 45K stock (45000/(1001.15) RSU), 90K bonus. Y3: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(1151.15) RSU) Y4: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(132.25*1.15) RSU) So their signing package would be like 300K TC with 15+391+1020+888 (2314) RSUs. After year 2 or 3 stocks vest twice a year. So granted payout structure is likely much different now with higher base salaries I agree it is not implausible for non-directors to receive $100k in stock in a single vest.
    - iLoveOncall 3y ago
      I work for Amazon, vests are at least spread over two per year if not more.
- bsenftner 3y ago
  How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.
  - andybak 3y ago
    > demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.
      - trgdr 3y ago
        Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.
        capableweb 3y ago
        I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.
        kortilla 3y ago
        This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.
- rawling 3y ago
  I read through the article expecting this, but... if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? > I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me. > ... > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money is in my account. That next day, I called my manager and I told them I was resigning. They let him stay long enough to find a new job and for his options to vest, and then he quit.
  - cyanydeez 3y ago
    at some point, I assume they meta game the PIP expecting employees to leave willingly.
    - NBJack 3y ago
      Bingo. Remember, one of the key points of a PIP is to gather documentation. When they sit you down for The Meeting, the 'evidence' is already on record, reducing your leverage should you decide to pursue them legally later for something like wrongful termination. Then, they often dangle a pittance in the form of severance pay if you go ahead and exit right away, of your own free will and volition. This gets even worse if the person is on a H1B. It's a machine.
  - kudokatz 3y ago
    > if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? I don't think you get it. The way this stuff is done is just as described - totally blindsiding, and potentially flat-out gaslighting. There's no actual metrics or data until they fabricate a paper trail and force you out. You don't win these things. Rather, you take your money and go elsewhere. Then turn down the subsequent job offers you get from them, using them only as leverage to juice your pay elsewhere with a competing offer ;-)
    - ballenf 3y ago
      But it sounds like he won? He got his $200k and found a new job before any PIP was implemented? Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out? Surely HR knows how long it takes to exit someone and if they wanted to keep the $200k they would have started the process earlier?
iLoveOncall 3y ago
Amazon's stock vesting schedule is 5% - 15% - 40% - 40%, so you're not new anymore by the time you reach any significant number of stocks vesting.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Convenient considering their average tenure is less than 2 years.
  - toiletduck 3y ago
    Given they backfill the first two years with grant value bonuses, this is irrelevant: the first two years just pay straight cash to make up those % to 100. First year is an up front payment, second is monthly payments. If anything that vest schedule retains people for those two years rather than being a way to pay less.
  - mmcconnell1618 3y ago
    Amazon typically offers cash bonuses during the first 2 years that bring total comp up to a similar amount in the years where 40% of stock vests. They manage towards a target compensation number. The stock vest schedule just changes the mix of cash vs. stock.
- coredog64 3y ago
  The last two 40% chunks vest at 6 month intervals. Amazon’s RSU comp also vests in 6 month intervals (May and November). If you’re in year 3, you could be waiting on a vest that includes signing bonus comp and regular comp RSUs.
- growse 3y ago
  If this isn't an open admission that it's such a shitty place to work, that they have to withold your pay to trap you there once you work it out for yourself, I don't know what is. Places that provide good working environments don't need to trap their employees into staying.
snoopsnopp 3y ago
If they did this even once how is that not criminal fraud? Proformance isn’t subjective, if an employee lies and says my proformance is bad that’s a crime.
secondcoming 3y ago
I've heard ancedotal stories years ago about Amazon trying to force employees out just before their share package vests.
ghostoftiber 3y ago
> So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term That's not correct. The financial incentive program of vesting is designed to keep the cost of actually paying people down, plain and simple. If you're interviewing, I would encourage you to pretend the stock compensation doesn't exist. I've had offers of $60k actual cash with $300k stock with a five year cliff and my next question is always "what's the average tenure here?" If they look uncomfortable, I know they know it's a golden poison pill. Consider the fact that Amazon, for instance, won't let you pay for EC2 instances in stock options at your company. They darn well know what they're doing.
- eschneider 3y ago
  Do you mean a five year vesting schedule or a five year cliff before you start vesting. The former is...bad, but I don't think I've seen the latter. That's just...no, absolutely not.
  - ghostoftiber 3y ago
    The mechanism I'm trying to describe is when employers pay a base in X dollars and stock in Y dollars which takes Z years to mature. AWS sounds like they're being somewhat reasonable about it by giving an employee cash before their options mature, but I have interviewed at places (Envestnet in New York City) where I was offered a base comp which was meh and then options which were gonzo. The offer, if I remember correctly, was $105k/y base and then $100k/y in stock which took three years to vest. I passed on the offer because $105k/y in NYC was cutting it too close for me. They did not have a "cash float" mechanism.

miningape 3y ago

I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.

iLoveOncall 3y ago
Unless you're a director you will never come even close to $100K of stock vesting in a single event, and directors are not subject to PIPs. So that's a nice theory you have here but it doesn't work in practice.
- capableweb 3y ago
  So the person interviewed is lying then, you claim? Inflating the number? > I got to the point where they offered me a job, and I was going to quit. But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. > If you walked away during the Pivot or anytime before you had your investment before it was there for you, you would lose it all. And I'm not talking a little bit of money. I'm talking: I had a couple hundred thousand dollars coming to me. > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money is in my account. That next day, I called my manager and I told them I was resigning.
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    No, she isn't necessarily lying but just making it seem as if she would have received $200K over a single vest while it would have likely happened over at least 2 years and 4 vests. I have £110K coming up if I look on the stock portal, but it's over the next two years, so 25K at a time, and I don't consider it as money I already have.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      Well, it seems what the interviewed person is saying is that "Day X I didn't have the money in my bank account. I waited for Day Y, and now I have \"couple hundred thousand dollars\" in my bank account", which sounds like it didn't happen over 2 years and 4 vesting occasions. But maybe it's just worded weird.
    - jeremiahbuckley 3y ago
      Good eye, and accurate original observation.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      You’re just out of touch with how much people can make in the US. An IC software dev L6 offer I reviewed for a colleague 4 years ago was TC comprised of 180k salary and a little over $1 million of stock with a 4 year vest that Amazon backloads so you get most in the last 2 years. $200k in a single 6 month vest cycle is definitely possible in that offer depending on timing of amzn stock. This article was from someone who had been at Amazon 6 years and who was managing people. They were HR, which obviously doesn’t comp like software, but once you’re managing a team the stock may be similar.
      - iLoveOncall 3y ago
        I'm very aware with how much people can make per year in the US. A principal engineer that is tenured will be on around 550K a year. An HR person that administers PIPs is at most L6 and unlikely to be on more than 250K a year. 6 years in Amazon means a salary was low, not that it was high. Managing people doesn't mean anything, you can earn less than $100K TC in Seattle and be managing people. Additionally, compensation has been reworked a lot 2 years ago to increase a lot the cap on salary and reduce a stocks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  Look at how their boss responded. If it wasn’t about the equity, why would they be so mad? The point of the PIP is generally to remove the employee.
  - pierat 3y ago
    No, a PIP is about creating a culture of fear, so that management can PIP anybody with no or manufactured reasons, and control workforce with loss of job. And it has the double advantage of 'id you leave under PIP, you lose a bunch of money'. It's 100% about culture of fear and control.
  - cpitman 3y ago
    Maybe it was that the manager was being pressured to PIP a certain percentage of people, and instead pushed back really hard to retain this person because they wanted to retain them instead. Before spending their political capital, they asked the employee if they were committed to the long haul. In the end, they went to bat for the author and then ended up in the same place. They could have just PIP'd them with a lot less effort. The article doesn't make the reason clear, but this seems more likely to me than vesting stock.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      If that were the case you wouldn’t even mention it to the person or strip them of their direct reports
      - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
        Yeah. I read that as the manager taking away their ability to beat the PIP under the guise of “focus.”
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  I was offered a position with near-enough 100k per quarter. With amazon, a quarter is the financial decision making resolution. And, mine was a manager position. So, yes, I did start to learn about this pip nonsense, and was asked to identify the low performers from a team that I inherited. The team was full of bright, diligent, capable workers making real impact on our project. It was foolish. But it happens. You legally need precedent to fire someone. Nowadays you even legally need precedent to not give someone the average raise. This kind of "precedent caching" is a natural outcome of a tightening budget and a desire to filter through workers to find the best of the best. I hate it. I'll never manage again.
  - throwawayamazon 3y ago
    (obvious throwaway account) I had a similar experience in Amazon, ngl the thing about "precendent caching" is real. People have to be put on PIP regardless of performance so management set crazy standards that people will fail.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Amazon has a weird vesting schedule (40% in the third and fourth year IIRC) and it has gone up quite a lot over the last few years. It also appears to have yearly vests. This doesn't seem implausible under those conditions.
  - jaktet 3y ago
    They used to have a salary cap of $165k until 1.5 years ago, I’m not sure what the cap is now but it’s significantly higher. I’m aware of a newly hired SDE2 (~2 years ago) that was hired with a TC of $305k. While the breakdown of compensation for an SDE1 and SDE2 might differ, an SDE1 breakdown is 5% vest after 1st year with 95% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. 15% vest after 2nd year with 85% comp coming from salary + signing bonus. Then after years 3 and 4 it was 40% vest + 60% from salary. It’s a little less straightforward than this because they build in an expected ~15% stock growth price YoY as part of your expected TC. So assuming SDE2 payout structure is same as SDE1, their compensation might look like this for a new hire where the strike price is $100 for AMZN at their date of hire. Y1: 165K salary, 15K stock (15 RSU), $120K bonus. Y2: 165K salary, 45K stock (45000/(1001.15) RSU), 90K bonus. Y3: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(1151.15) RSU) Y4: 165K salary, 135K stock (135000/(132.25*1.15) RSU) So their signing package would be like 300K TC with 15+391+1020+888 (2314) RSUs. After year 2 or 3 stocks vest twice a year. So granted payout structure is likely much different now with higher base salaries I agree it is not implausible for non-directors to receive $100k in stock in a single vest.
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    I work for Amazon, vests are at least spread over two per year if not more.
bsenftner 3y ago
How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.
- andybak 3y ago
  > demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.
    - trgdr 3y ago
      Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.
      - capableweb 3y ago
        I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.
        kortilla 3y ago
        This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.
rawling 3y ago
I read through the article expecting this, but... if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? > I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me. > ... > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money is in my account. That next day, I called my manager and I told them I was resigning. They let him stay long enough to find a new job and for his options to vest, and then he quit.
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  at some point, I assume they meta game the PIP expecting employees to leave willingly.
  - NBJack 3y ago
    Bingo. Remember, one of the key points of a PIP is to gather documentation. When they sit you down for The Meeting, the 'evidence' is already on record, reducing your leverage should you decide to pursue them legally later for something like wrongful termination. Then, they often dangle a pittance in the form of severance pay if you go ahead and exit right away, of your own free will and volition. This gets even worse if the person is on a H1B. It's a machine.
- kudokatz 3y ago
  > if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? I don't think you get it. The way this stuff is done is just as described - totally blindsiding, and potentially flat-out gaslighting. There's no actual metrics or data until they fabricate a paper trail and force you out. You don't win these things. Rather, you take your money and go elsewhere. Then turn down the subsequent job offers you get from them, using them only as leverage to juice your pay elsewhere with a competing offer ;-)
  - ballenf 3y ago
    But it sounds like he won? He got his $200k and found a new job before any PIP was implemented? Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out? Surely HR knows how long it takes to exit someone and if they wanted to keep the $200k they would have started the process earlier?

iLoveOncall 3y ago

Amazon's stock vesting schedule is 5% - 15% - 40% - 40%, so you're not new anymore by the time you reach any significant number of stocks vesting.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Convenient considering their average tenure is less than 2 years.
- toiletduck 3y ago
  Given they backfill the first two years with grant value bonuses, this is irrelevant: the first two years just pay straight cash to make up those % to 100. First year is an up front payment, second is monthly payments. If anything that vest schedule retains people for those two years rather than being a way to pay less.
- mmcconnell1618 3y ago
  Amazon typically offers cash bonuses during the first 2 years that bring total comp up to a similar amount in the years where 40% of stock vests. They manage towards a target compensation number. The stock vest schedule just changes the mix of cash vs. stock.
coredog64 3y ago
The last two 40% chunks vest at 6 month intervals. Amazon’s RSU comp also vests in 6 month intervals (May and November). If you’re in year 3, you could be waiting on a vest that includes signing bonus comp and regular comp RSUs.
growse 3y ago
If this isn't an open admission that it's such a shitty place to work, that they have to withold your pay to trap you there once you work it out for yourself, I don't know what is. Places that provide good working environments don't need to trap their employees into staying.

snoopsnopp 3y ago

If they did this even once how is that not criminal fraud? Proformance isn’t subjective, if an employee lies and says my proformance is bad that’s a crime.

secondcoming 3y ago

I've heard ancedotal stories years ago about Amazon trying to force employees out just before their share package vests.

ghostoftiber 3y ago

> So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term That's not correct. The financial incentive program of vesting is designed to keep the cost of actually paying people down, plain and simple. If you're interviewing, I would encourage you to pretend the stock compensation doesn't exist. I've had offers of $60k actual cash with $300k stock with a five year cliff and my next question is always "what's the average tenure here?" If they look uncomfortable, I know they know it's a golden poison pill. Consider the fact that Amazon, for instance, won't let you pay for EC2 instances in stock options at your company. They darn well know what they're doing.

eschneider 3y ago
Do you mean a five year vesting schedule or a five year cliff before you start vesting. The former is...bad, but I don't think I've seen the latter. That's just...no, absolutely not.
- ghostoftiber 3y ago
  The mechanism I'm trying to describe is when employers pay a base in X dollars and stock in Y dollars which takes Z years to mature. AWS sounds like they're being somewhat reasonable about it by giving an employee cash before their options mature, but I have interviewed at places (Envestnet in New York City) where I was offered a base comp which was meh and then options which were gonzo. The offer, if I remember correctly, was $105k/y base and then $100k/y in stock which took three years to vest. I passed on the offer because $105k/y in NYC was cutting it too close for me. They did not have a "cash float" mechanism.