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Comment by ertemplin | Hacker News Reader

(Disclaimer: I left Amazon about 6 months ago)

Petitioning isn't a process in AWS, but you can ask your manager for a raise if your projected total compensation isn't to your satisfaction.

Boomerang means you leave the company, get another job, and then come back to the company with much higher compensation. It's a way for otherwise happy employees to fight salary compression.

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Petitioning is referred to as a "Dive and Save" internally. It is a last ditch offer to retain an employee, usually reserved for high performers who are seen as a flight risk.

A caveat there is, proactive dive and save is reserved for high performers who are seen as a flight risk Reactive dive and save is for anybody who can show a competing offer.

Slightly OT, but someone should set-up an (anonymous enough) wiki somewhere with all of this big IT company jargon, would make for interesting reading. Threads like this one, coupled with that Google comic written by an employee that was full of those jargons would make for a good start.

I’d have expected that to have started as “diving save” rather than “dive and save”.

Wow. Is boomeranging actually common at Amazon then? Why would you go back to a company that you had to leave in order to get a raise? It seems like the cultural aspects at the root of leaving would not have fundamentally changed the second time around.

Can't speak to Amazon, but while this seems surprising it's not that uncommon at big companies. One leaves assuming the grass is greener elsewhere and if/when that turns out not to be the case returning to the place you left provides a sense of confidence that you at least know the bad parts going in. And as described elsewhere it's sadly often an easier way to get a promotion/raise than grinding out the process at the company.

Sometimes it’s cause your TC takes a nose-dive after year 4 and the company has no interest in compensating for that drop. You might not want to leave but in order to keep pace with the market you’d boomerang to come back to be on par or above the new hires making 50% more than you.

I’ve also seen a scenario where someone has trouble getting promoted and leaves to boomerang back at a higher level.

Of course the company hates to give existing or recently departed employees raises of any type so they closed that loophole.

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