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Comment by masterof0 | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Amazonian here, I agree with almost everything OP say. I have a few things to add in case HR is reading this:

- RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% - second , then 5% each quarter, i think...)

- Internal tooling is pretty bad (frameworks, pipelines, ....) and the documentation is non-existent, and when it exists , is not very helpful.

- Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?

- Make it easier to switch teams

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> (5% - first year, 15% - second

This is done on purpose because a vast majority of employees leave Amazon within 18 months or so. And those who can withstand that environment for 24 months and beyond develop thick enough skin and make enough internal connections to survive till 5+ years.

(bit of a tangent)

> in case HR is reading this

HR's primary (perhaps only) job is to protect the upper management (execs and above) from the nuisance caused by workers down below. It took me a while to sink in but when it did it brought in lot of clarity to the way I deal with HR.

IMO this could be generalised to a reasonable degree. For instance, police force's primary job is to protect the government from the internal threat which is the population at large. Catching thieves happens to be a small by-product of it.

Employees' allegiance is, first and foremost, to their pay master.

I heard that their (miserly) first and second year RSU vests are made up for with a cash component during those two years, or am I mistaken about that?

Yes, you get money. There's some strings attached, you have to return the money under certain conditions.

Haha what they probably don’t mention is second year bonus is prorated.

So it’s a double fuck you, bc it gets paid out as quickly as salary but is in permanent to your TC as a bonus lol

HR's job is to protect the company from the employees (that includes execs).

> RSUs vesting schedule sucks, fix it.(5% - first year, 15% - second , then 5% each quarter, i think...)

They don’t want to fix that. I’m sure they save a ton of money by backloading vesting like that. With their turnover rate, they probably pay out a pretty small portion of their awarded grants.

As I understand it (having never worked there), they are also stingy with granting new stock, and consider unvested grants in determining what to award each year. e.g. “You had an amazing year, but you’re sitting on a bunch of stock already, so take this tiny new grant and fuck off.” I’ve heard this from multiple former employees so have no particular reason to doubt it.

> You had an amazing year, but you’re sitting on a bunch of stock already, so take this tiny new grant and fuck off

That's true, but it can go the other way too. One person I know got a needs improvement rating and no stock at all, but turned around and did rockstar work the next year. Because AMZN happened to have crashed about 50% in that time, getting the person back to target total compensation for the exceeds rating required granting considerably more RSUs than they would have received had they also gotten an exceeds in the prior year.

I think treating vesting as the time of compensation is a poor model. The compensation was when the stock was granted. Otherwise why grant vesting stock at all?

> - Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?

probably too focused on frugality to consider retention

They do consider retention, make no mistake.

Could you expand on this, please?

I believe the commenter was implying that their policy takes retention into account, and amazon simply doesn't value retaining employees

> I believe the commenter was implying that their policy takes retention into account, and amazon simply doesn't value retaining employees

I think there's some Bezos quote about people being lazy and it being easier to extract labor from fresh hires trying to prove themselves.

> Bezos believed that workers' desire to perform well decreased over time and that an entrenched workforce was a "march to mediocrity," Niekerk told The Times.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-be...

That's a solid degree of irony from someone that worked in the same place for 27 years :-D

Yes, they are well-known for having attrition targets.

> They do consider retention, make no mistake.

As in they consider retention unimportant, and something to not prioritize?

Because it sure seems that way.

I’m sure they do. They just also don’t care until it becomes a critical issue.

I am contacted by an Amazon recruiter at least once a week. I’m sure every engineer I know is. I wonder how much of their money they blow on recruiting and how much engineering time is spent in interviews replacing all the burned out engineers. Plus all the talent that won’t even entertain a job at Amazon.

Lately I've seen less recruiter pitches from Amazon and more personalized messages from managers there about specific roles on their teams, which is a new wrinkle. I doubt that those people would add hours of recruiting to their weekly workload unless the standard candidate pipeline was really running dry.

I got a message on LinkedIn from a software developer manager there less than a month ago. Was quite shocked and didn't think such a thing was even possible.

Also got a staff software engineer from Facebook who added me on there, and had in their title "hiring". lol.

Not caring until something becomes a critical issue is very deeply ingrained in Amazon's culture.

Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of nearby human beings to be concerned about retention.

https://www.essence.com/news/amazon-burning-through-workers/

> Amazon has to be at the point of literally running out of nearby human beings to be concerned about retention.

It seems like they're more than willing to hire imports. I get more recruiter spam from them than anyone else, and I don't live anywhere near any of their major offices.

This is true as well. I got an email offering me immigration support to move to Vancouver. I already live in Canada, have my entire life, and every job has also been in Canada.

You are assuming recruiters can read

They have lots of remote jobs now as well.

I read a stat that 1 out of ~154 Americans currently works for amazon.

American workers, not Americans overall - it's still astonishing, but they have a bit less than a million US employees rather than 330M/154 = 2.1M employees.

This article is about warehouse workers, not developers.

Workers are workers to management. Regardless of whether you pick up keyboards or press them.

It may be, but you may rest assured that when a recruiter asks me whether I'd like to work for Amazon, how they treat warehouse employees is going to be a factor in my answer. I've never been confident of the viability of "it's fine, they only hate other people" as a social strategy.

Not like Amazon exactly has a good reputation for treating tech workers well either.

- Amazon has the least amount of holidays of all FAANG, why?

I find the attitude in a company starts from the top - so I'd Blame Bezos for the culture that does this, look at how they treat their non software dev workers.

> RSUs vesting schedule sucks

This is a crucial part of PIP culture. It took me awhile too realize how common a pattern it is for companies to offer promising RSUs as part of total comp and then drive employees out after 10 months.

That vesting schedule is just some slight of hand so that you think Amazon is paying you XX% more than they have ever planned on. In reality you're getting paid likely less than you would sticking at a smaller, saner company. If you knew that upfront you'd never join.

To be clear, not all companies that offer RSUs are like this (of course most of them have better vesting), but this is a pattern I've seen a bit too often.

> 5% - first year, 15% - second , then 5% each quarter, i think...

It's 5%, 15%, 40%, 40%.

In lieu of RSU's in Year 1, you get a big signing bonus. Year 2, not quite as big signing bonus (hence the +10% RSU). Year 3 and 4, nothing but RSU.

It adds up to the same amount every year assuming no stock growth.

Are you saying you just want double your salary for year 1 and 2 and are planning to quit before year 3 when it drops to nil? Yeah, who wouldn't?

I wouldn't want to be a shareholder of any company dumb enough to offer this.

Doesn’t the signing bonus get revoked?

| - Make it easier to switch teams

It's actually much easier to switch teams at Amazon than most of tech.

Do you still have to go through a full interview loop?

You do, and if for any reason the next manager doesn't want you or change his/her/x mind, you are in a really awkward situation with your team.

This is not true, not in AWS nor in CDO.

The hiring manager might connect you with an engineer on their team to see if you’re a fit, but it’s not an actual interview loop. You’re certainly not coding.

Source: Been at Amazon for a many, many years across retail and AWS teams. This was never true, and if you saw this really happen, it’s a 1% minority.

That was not my experience, and certainly not the experience of my coworkers that have been at Amazon "many, many years". If you are cozy with the people of the team you hope to get into, then is easy, otherwise, you get your CRs reviewed, asked for design docs, and need to talk with several people on the team. If you worked on a small project for a year, or were hired to maintain something that was already there, you don't get to have design docs, nor impact opportunities (even if you asked your manager for it during 1on1s). Also the next manager can make you apply (your current manager gets notified) and then rejects you, just because, and you will be in a delicate situation.

I agree - you get code reviews reviewed by the other team, design documents, and other artifacts. What I was saying was that there’s no formal interview loop like the one when you join the company. You’re not going to grow through LP questions and white boarding code.

Is not, is easy to switch team if you know people in that team, and the manager already wants you, otherwise you have to go through interview loops, etc... At Google for example is way easier, as it should be.

This is a weird take. Of course it's easier when people know you. Why would the hiring manager hire someone they don't know without an interview? Asking to talk to 2-3 people is very reasonable. It's not a full loop, it's whatever the hiring manager decides to do.If you happen to have strong documentation to show about things you contributed, that helps too. When I said it's easy I meant that there are no requirements from Amazon you need to follow in order to switch teams (e.g., be on a team for at least X months, have a rating of at least Y, etc). You just need to find a hiring manager that is willing to hire you. Given that external hiring is hard at Amazon, many managers build their teams just with internal transfers.

> Internal tooling is pretty bad (frameworks, pipelines, ....) and the documentation is non-existent, and when it exists , is not very helpful.

Surprised to read this. The tooling is what I miss most from Amazon, but I was in AWS the whole time, I've heard the retail situation is quite different.

in AWS is ok, in CDO is awful.

What does CDO mean in the context of Amazon?

Consumer Digital and Other. Its a business hierarchy. Pretty sure it’s effectively not-AWS

you are right.

> in case HR is reading this

If they cared, they would have done something about this long ago.

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