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This is not finders keepers.

The article is slightly vague, but my takeaway is that employee got raises. Those numbers went through a bunch of people. The pay went out for months. Then, they realized they miscalculated the raises. “Whoops, we didn’t mean to offer you $150k, but really $140k.”

1. I think they have no chance at getting back the pay from before. This isn’t a banking error, this is regret. As an employee could you be like, “whoops I messed up my budget. I wouldn’t have taken this job at $150k. Please backpay me to bring it up to $180k”.

2. It’s well studied that losses hurt more than gains feel good. People hate having their comp lowered and the stock has already fallen. May be better to leave the comp where it’s at. I mean, it’s not like it was 10x or something. The numbers were reasonable enough for this to be super wide spread and people to not notice for months.

From what I've heard, this timeline is incorrect. People with approved Q3 promotions received Personal Compensation Statements (PCS) telling them that they would get a raise starting in October. They were never actually paid the increased amount, and the time between erroneous PCS and correction was on the order of days, not months. Some folks didn't even get their erroneous PCS because their manager was slow to share it.

Thank you. That seems less serious. Still a bummer to experience getting your comp lowered.

Right. It's not a great employee experience by any means. Mocking references to Strive to be Earth's Best Employer abound.

> Sorry, but in the real world, "finders keepers" rarely applies

If Bob signs a contract for Alice to paint a fence for $800 and a copy-paste error transfers her $1000 instead, yes.

But if the copy-paste error happened before the contract was signed? Leading to Bob promising Alice $1000 and signing a contract promising it? Then in all probability, Bob will end up paying the contract amount.

Compensation for at-will employees does not constitute a contract. That's what "at-will" means, basically. In the breakdown of good faith interaction, the remedy (for both sides) is largely limited to the ability to walk away.

But yes: if these were contractors Amazon had hired it would be very different.

This is nonsense, possibly triggered by a misunderstanding of what the word "contract" denotes.

An at-will employee and their employer contract that for each hour of work (or each ~week salaried) performed by employee on instructions from employer, employer will pay to employee $X.

Just because such a contract doesn't contain any term indicating the length of time an employee will work doesn't make it less of a contract.

As further evidence, if at-will employment were not a contractual agreement there'd be no recourse for the employee to recover unpaid wages. And yet unpaid wages are recoverable.

That's getting needless sticky about definitions, and harming understanding of the point, potentially leading people to think that these Amazon workers are going to get their raises, which they clearly won't.

Let me be more concrete: am employer presenting you with a plan for future compensation[1] in an existing employment relationship does not constitute a contract. They can pay you what they want to pay you.

[1] Your back wages argument doesn't apply here. These people never got paid at all.

None of which has anything to do with at-will employment. Since you do appear to have a good understanding of the situation, this leads me to the only possible conclusion that you were deliberately spreading disinformation about at will employment for some purpose.

Yeah … employer handbooks are considered contracts.

Every raise I’ve ever received has been accompanied by a “contract” hr puts in my folder.

So frustrating to see this interpretation repeated here. No, that's not correct, because it if were correct these Amazon folks would have an open and shut case to keep their raises, and they don't. That's not the way compensation works. It might be the way one side or the other wants it to work in some situation, but it's not. You get paid what your employer offers. Your employer gets to keep the employees that want to stay. Period.

Work done for contract is a real thing, it's just not applicable here. When you hire a plumber or a caterer or a security consultancy, you write up a contract ahead of time describing exactly the work to be done and the bill to be paid, and then get the courts to enforce that when needed. That is simply not the way that salaried employment works in the USA. It's not.

You’re wrong. “Work for contract” is irrelevant to there being contracts used for salaried jobs. There was a contract involved, but it sounds like it was covering the period starting in October - so Amazon just has to cancel it and say “actually this is how much we will be paying you” and employees have the same option to reject the new contract terms as they do the existing contract: quitting before the new terms become active.

You’re wrong and spreading confusion.

Every job I’ve had has had a contract, and it’s usually “we pay what we want, we terminate you when we want, and you quit when you want.”

No, no, no. That's not a "contract", it's just a document. Go google "seven elements of a contract" (the basic definition in common law) and note that at-will employment simply lacks several (the big one being "certainty"). In particular a "contract" that says "you can do whatever" is clearly not a contract under common law.

Now, sure, it's true that some elements of an employment agreement may constitute contracts and may have been enforced by courts. Back wages are a big one, obviously. Likewise promised benefits being denied, etc... But at-will compensation and termination just don't qualify. They don't. The Amazon workers can't sue for their mistake raises under contract law becuase those raises don't constitute contracts. Period.

Re Certainty.

I'm pretty sure if you do work, as contractually agreed, the contract requires you be paid for that work.

It's just a contract agreeing rates for work done, not a contract guaranteeing work will be done.

> I'm pretty sure if you do work, as contractually agreed, the contract requires you be paid for that work.

Yes it does (and I even said so in the comment you replied to), but compensation plans, raises, offer letters, etc... are not payment for work done, and are not contracts for work for the reason stated. These Amazon folks aren't getting a penny, and it absolutely stuns me that people want to argue otherwise.

They get paid for the previous work they have done (two weeks, half month, one month, depending on pay period).

That’s theirs.

But going forward, they don’t have any right to any level of pay above minimum wage.

I’ve personally dealt with this. I had an employer run out of money and be acquired by a new company. The new company owes paychecks for last pay period, but wants to pay everyone lower salaries.

Going forward the new company could pay whatever (above minimum wage). But they owned all the debts of the previous company including that last months wage.

We only had at will hiring agreements, but that didnt matter.

I was replying to

>note that at-will employment simply lacks several (the big one being "certainty"). In particular a "contract" that says "you can do whatever" is clearly not a contract under common law.

Which was in reply to a comment about every job having a contract.

Further your other examples could be contractually enforced.

If you accepted an employment contract based on the compensation plan, that forms part of the contract. Raises are updates to the contract, unless you're saying it's potentially ok to claw back 40 years of pay raises when some one retires. Offer letters are probably more questionable but if there's a specific start date and pay has already been discussed, it seems to me that that would form a contract.

The key thing in this particular situation seems to be that there was an error, and the error was rectified quickly.

Contracts include unbounded variables all the time.

Banks offer accounts with “whatever we feel like” interest rates. Bonds can have “whatever we feel like” interest rates. Stocks can have “whatever we feel like” dividends. Short term rentals have “whatever we feel like” rental prices.

In practice, the payer offers a very short term guarantee: “for the next pay period, you will get $50 an hour”, but after that pay period they change it.

There are contracts behind all these things.

One party offers something on a continuous basis: labor, money, etc. The other party walks away when they don’t like what they’re getting.

This area of law is usually a bit more nuanced than "what you wrote is the contract". If both parties thought the contract said $800 when it was signed (and if that could be proven...) then that might well be enough for a court to either read the contract as if it said $800, or to void it entirely.

> If both parties thought the contract said

This has zero to do with the actual matter at hand, given that the people getting the raises 100% believed they were getting raises.

If both parties thought it said $800, why are they going to court about it?

A contract is an agreement between parties. Parties are free to agree to changes to the contract.

I think they are an example, the problem here is (I believe):

* Both parties (AMZ & Employer) signed up to a bonus % in the contract

* There was a document that stated % was equivalent to $ which was miscalculated

* Employer agreed to pay whatever the % in the contract was, employee believed they were getting the $ in the estimate.

To save all the bickering here, the final answer is that the corporation always wins. No matter what the mistake.

Let the lawyers get together and do a retroactive class-action lawsuit to solve it. But Amazon will do whatever it wants until that suit comes through.

Actually the most apt comparison here is if Bob sends over a contract for $1000, but then goes "oh no I'm sorry, I really meant $800"

There are not takebacks here.

Actually, I know there legally could be, as these situations aren't always black and white, however the company, being such a position of power compared to the employee, loses all goodwill in this situation. If I were in this situation, I would already be sending out feelers.

When I was 20 something, I had an extra zero added to a severance payment. I randomly called some law firm asking if I should just keep that. The lawyer dude plunged his arm into the telephone line and slapped me silly.

I wonder if you'd be safe just sticking it in a savings account until they asked for it back. I mean, is it your responsibility to point out their mistake? And after how much time might they lose their right to demand it back?

The general consensus seems to be either leave it in the checking account until it is pulled back (and it almost always will be unless the amount is "small or reasonable" and therefor not caught in an audit) or directly contact the company immediately.

Moving it to a savings account is tricky because the automatic clawback will pull from whatever account it was sent into.

Once the company issues a W2 or 1099 the next year that covers it, I would consider it relatively safe to keep.

There's a third option for when the sum is really huge, like more money than you'll ever see in your life: find a good lawyer who can arrange transferring the money into some kind of trust fund, perhaps in a different country, that benefits your children, then wait for the knock on the door, expect to go to prison for a bit, but your children may be allowed to keep the money, and they might support you when you come out of jail. I think I read about a woman in New York successfully doing something like that with an accidental transfer from the United Nations, though I might be misremembering.

If it's a company or other body at that point you're trying to figure out what will let them settle their books - perhaps prison time for you will do so.

But other groups I'd be a bit more worried about them being willing to go to extra-judicial means to if not get the money back, at least get "revenge".

>Moving it to a savings account is tricky because the automatic clawback will pull from whatever account it was sent into.

As a non American this seems... Flawed.

The web is littered with people telling their stories of getting overpaid in comp, frequently around bonuses, and having the company ask for their money back. They're always disappointed to find out that they do, legally, owe the company the extra pay back. Good companies will work with the employees on this. Other's can be a bit shitty about it.

Big caveat that this is a US-centric view.

Practically, clawing back overpaid compensation from an uncooperative former employee requires a lawsuit with a chance of the employee winning, and has the potential to be more expensive anyway than however much could be recovered.

But, continued employment is easily dependent on recovering the overpayment one way or another. Usually by taking it out of future paychecks.

When I was in gradschool, this happened to me all the time. I had the university ask for a couple hundred dollars back probably 6 times in 5 years. Whoever ran their payroll must have been woefully incompetent.

Yes, absolutely number 1!

There is a huge precedent for companies not paying for compensation calculation mistakes, which is also supported by law (in the UK at least where I am from - but assume it would be the same in the US).

Amazing how many comments in this thread are acting like this standard practice is a completely new thing with zero precedence.

PAYWALLED, else I would RTFA.

You'd be surprised how many people follow the adage: "what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right."

In this case, a verified compensation item given to an employee should be respected on principle, as this isn't a one-time "whoops we overpaid you," it's a months-long process that affected many people. AMZ should write it off as a bonus and move on.

>basically have just come to expect that the equity portion of their compensation should be like cash.

Not just like cash. Like cash that may be worth 50% or more money by the time it vests.

Hopefully, it won't get that bad for large public companies but there are probably people out there today who are banking on their total comp being $400K (and making decisions on that basis) when it's actually more like $200K or less.

I’m out of the loop here and too lazy to check, but let’s say those people were to apply for a mortgage, would the bank only look at the “fixed” part of their income when considering one’s application? Or it will also look at the “variable” part? (i.e. the part of the comp that will vest at some point in the future). If the answer to this last question is “yes”, how does the bank “compute” that future/expected income?

> would the bank only look at the “fixed” part of their income when considering one’s application? Or it will also look at the “variable” part?

Should be both. To the latter, it depends how it’s structured. But typically by looking at a few years’ compensation.

Normally, they will look at two years of stable(typically W2) income (Salary + RSUs) from one company before they make decisions. However, in bay area, some mortgage lenders have started excusing people who jump companies, because, well jumping companies in bay area is common. They now have to tweak their models.

Source: Recently went through the mortgage

There’s a difference between variable and a new hire at my current level would get literally double my current comp as a person at the company for five years

a new hire at my current level would get literally double my current comp as a person at the company for five years

That's not unusual. Well, 2x salary might be, but it's well established that job hopping is the only way to guarantee your salary stays close to market.

To add a data point to this, I recently interviewed at a large tech company. As part of investigating the comp, I ran a linear regression on data from levels and the results indicated that you should deduct a few grand for every year of tenure.

Worth considering the biased data. Levels will only have data from job seekers- which would imply that they either have A) recent offer or B) salaries from employees who are considering jumping ship (biased towards employees who are underperforming or in underperforming business units)

There is probably a missing category of employees who have been successful, gotten raises, and aren't shopping for jobs

Levels is garbage data. How is this not obvious?

One reason it’s not obvious is that several findings of my analysis aligned neatly with things the recruiter told me about the company’s comp structure.

I know there is bias in who enters data on levels, but is there something else that makes it garbage data? Can you elaborate? Because I have never seen it as 'garbage data' and would like to know more.

This is not obvious to me. I had access to comp data at two different companies and Levels data was pretty accurate across the board.

I’ve never seen it be close to any job I’ve ever had access to data for

I wish it were easier to compare that against other considerations. Comp isn't everything (though not judging those for whom it is) and it can be challenging to weigh the benefits of being somewhere for multiple years. Especially for places with steep learning curves and very large orgs where getting established is a very different day to day type of stress than continuing on and growing in something familiar.

Right, like the company raised bands for new hires but didn’t raise current employees commensurately, that is in line with needing to job hop, and tracks with the other comment of a couple thousand. But the difference in pay now is so drastic now basically everyone with 1+ years is looking or left

And even without raising the bands, employees' salaries ends up lagging over time.

A lateral job hop comes with a >10% raise, while an annual raise is 3-6%.

i know thats the common refrain, im sure its true most of the time, but aside from this last year or so ive gotten more increases from promos/equity than from job hopping(which have mostly been flat)

Amazon recently added “being the best place to work” as one of their core values.

If the “best place to work” made an error like this, they would figure out a way to let the employee keep it.

Most places wouldn’t. But if I was in charge of a FAANG, an error like this happened, and I was committed to making the FAANG the “best place to work”, I’d cough up the change.

Does Amazon want to be the best place to work, or not?

> I work in fintech and if a bank accidentally deposits money into your account and you spend it, you can go to jail

So do I, and it depends. There was a whole case recently where chase (iirc) accidentally sent tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to a lender, and the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.

> the lender chose to interpret it is an early loan repayment, and was allowed by the courts to keep the money.

No. The appeals court smacked them silly in a unanimous opinion and the money was returned to Citi [1]. From the appellate judge:

> In a separate opinion, Circuit Judge Michael Park called the lawsuit a “straightforward case that many smart people have grossly overcomplicated and that we should have decided many months ago.”

> “Put simply, you don’t get to keep money sent to you by mistake unless you’re entitled to it anyway,” Park wrote

1. https://www.bankingdive.com/news/citi-wins-appeal-500-millio...

Ah, I did not see this update! Tfti

Regarding 1, I have seen this happen. I used to work for a govt agency that made a mistake and overpaid a number of employees, who were allowed to keep the extra payment. I'm not saying that's the norm, but it affected a number of people and I have heard of it happening other times as well.

This depends, if we sign a contract saying saying compensation is £X, i cant later lower your compensatuon claiming I made a mostake. It would be my responsebility to check befire signing.

Why all these hypotheticals that aren't relevant? That (signing of a binding contract where work was done and then the employer reneged on payment) manifestly did not happen in this case.

Your second item is so unbelievably on point, it hurts. The failure of so many to look at even a cursory sense of history would know that this industry has always had volatility baked in, and that affects not only "disruption" of business verticals, but disruption of vesting cycles :)

The proof is if, due to a bug, a person was undercompensated or money disappeared from their bank account, the person would absolutely expect to be made whole.

BTW, I've had stock options that were never above water.

> stock options that were never above water

That'd be most stock options in private companies, though.

I'd say, Banque Worms ruling as we've found out can always be at play. Cough $900,000,000.00 accidentally transferred a couple years ago from a large bank to lenders.